18 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Jan. 19. 



I commenced the season with 165 colo- 

 nies, some of them were very small. 

 I received an increased of 68 swarms 

 (mostly natural) and 4,503 lbs. of sur- 

 plus honey, all from buckwheat (3,325 

 lbs. of the above was comb honey, the 

 balance extracted). This gives about 

 38 per cent, increase, and an average of 

 a little over 27 lbs. of surplus honey to 

 each colony, against an increase of 65 

 per cent, and an average of 91 lbs. and 

 a fraction (J of which was comb honey; 

 of surplus honey to each colony last 

 season. 



White and melilot clover yielded no 

 honey this season , in this section. Bass- 

 wood yielded well for three or four days 

 and then stopped short, but as the hives 

 contained but little honey at this time, 

 the bees appropriated it for their own 

 use, and they needed it much, as five or 

 six weeks of 'scarcity followed this short 

 flow. On August 10th, the bees com- 

 menced storring buckwheat honey, and 

 continued moderately for about four 

 weeks. 



I notice that several correspondents 

 complain of the frequent failure of 

 buckwheat to secrete honey. In this 

 section it is our main dependence for 

 surplus, and has not failed to give us a 

 fair yield for the past six years. 



My bees are all in one location, and 

 there is probably 150 colonies besides, 

 within a radius of one mile. I am con- 

 fident that this locality was over-stocked 

 this season, and think that I could have 

 made as good a report from half the 

 number of colonies. 



Knowersville, N. Y. 



proper name, the dear people buy it in 

 their honey, candy, sugar, golden syrup, 

 drips, and in other commodities we 

 know not of. 



If your druggist sells you poison the 

 law compels him to label it.that no harm 

 may come of it. Then why not compel 

 these men to do the same V 'Tis true 

 they may not sell a mixture so destruc- 

 tive as arsenic or any of the deadly 

 poisons, but just as certainly injurious 

 as any of them. Now my friends, in 

 justice to ourselves and humanity, let 

 us continue our warfare until the peo- 

 ple by their Representatives in Congress 

 assembled, say to those men that their 

 goods must be properly labeled and sold 

 on their own merits. 



I fancy when that is done there will 

 be a decline in the Sulphuric Acid and 

 old ray market. 



New Boston, 111. 



For the American Bee Jouruul. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Adulteration of Honey with Glucose. 



L. H. SCUDDER. 



The Duplication of Queens. 



D. A. PIKE. 



any other of our animals will perfectly 

 copy the parents, or be just alike. It is 

 contrary to nature ; and so Mr. Moon is 

 surely correct. 



The nearest approach to perfect re- 

 production and uniformity or offspring, 

 which 1 have met, is shown by the Pal- 

 estine bees— Holy Land bees. This, of 

 course, is the result of close in-and-in 

 breeding by nature. While from the 

 most severe selection of the fittest by 

 the same relentless hand, no deteriora- 

 tion, but rather the increase in excel- 

 lence, have been the unvarying result. 

 Yet even here we shall see variation 

 from perfect uniformity. A. J. Cook. 



Lansing, Mich., Dec. 13, 1S80. 



Feeling as I do the importance of 

 waging an incessant warfare against 

 the use of the " vile stuff " in adulterat- 

 ing honey, sugar and syrups of all kinds, 

 I desire to urge upon all the necessity 

 of agitating the question until we se- 

 cure the passage of a law by Congress 

 against the adulteration of food of any 

 kind. It will be useless to undertake 

 to secure the passage of a law simply to 

 prevent the adulteration of honey, for 

 we will not be able to secure the neces- 

 sary pressure to accomplish it. I re- 

 cently had a conversation with our 

 member of Congress on the subject, and 

 he informed me that a general law pro- 

 hibiting the adulteration of all articles 

 of food would be more easily obtained, 

 because more would be interested in the 

 passage of such a law, if we could 

 cause them to see the importance of it. 

 We as honey producers feel the effects 

 of the adulteration of honey keenly, be- 

 cause it is a death-blow to our business 

 unless we can secure protection. Just 

 let me call your attention to a few facts 

 in relation to the matter. First, please 

 notice the fact that now with less than 

 one-fourth of a crop of honey, there is 

 no appreciable advance in the price of 

 extracted honey V Why? Because 

 " Glucose " is cheap and unprincipled 

 men numerous, and so long as enough 

 honey can be obtained to flavor the com- 

 pound, the market will be supplied with 

 " pure honey." Notice the market quota- 

 tions on extracted honey for the last 

 three years and you will discover no 

 fluctuation worthy of notice, notwith- 

 standing the great difference in the 

 annual products. Our friends have long 

 been wishing for firm prices for honey, 

 and they seem at last to have their wish 

 7 to 8 cents seems to be the fixed price 

 at wholesale in Chicago for extracted 

 honey. 



Let me caution you not to be too con- 

 fident that even such prices can be ob- 

 tained in the near future. Just note, if 

 you please, how rapidly the manufac- 

 ture of glucose is increasing ; factories 

 are being started in all parts of our 

 country, enough are already in opera- 

 tion to consume five millions of bushels 

 of corn annually in the west alone. Now 

 when you take into consideration the 

 fact that they obtain over three gallons 

 per bushel of what they call " glucose " 

 or " corn syrup " you will see that over 

 fifteen million gallons annually are thrown 

 upon ora markets to be sold and used 

 in various ways. But mark you, not 

 one gallon is sold to the consumer by its 



It is not my intention to stir up the 

 much-vexed question of queens dupli- 

 cating themselves, but I wish to show 

 to the readers of the American Bee 

 Journal that it was no fault of mine 

 that the test did not come off. I sent 

 the queen to Prof. A. J. Cook on the 

 14th of June, according to contract. I 

 did not hear anything from him direct 

 until Sept. 12, but I heard from the edi- 

 tor of the Journal that Prof. Cook had 

 received the queen, and he was rearing 

 the queens to make the test. Here is 

 what he says about the queen and her 

 daughters : 



Lansing. Mich., Sept. 2, 1880. 

 Dear Sir : The queen came all right, 

 and was safely introduced ; I feel certain 

 that I acknowledged her receipt at the time. 

 She is very Deautiful, and her young queens 

 and drones have been greatly admired by 

 many visitors; her young queens are all 

 beautiful. I am very busy, but will try to 

 send you a queen soon. A. J. Cook. 



The readers of the Bee Journal 

 will judge for themselves in regard to 

 the queens. For their benefit let me 

 say that I have had the albino bees since 

 1873 ; in my judgment, they have proved 

 to be a superior race of bees ; they are 

 better honey gatherers than the Italians, 

 and are more gentle to handle. Sue- 

 cess to the American Bee Journal. 



Smithsburg, Md. 



[As Prof. Cookisquoted inthe above, 

 we requested him to report the result of 

 the test for the Bee Journal, and it is 

 as follows :— Ed.] 



Mr. Pike's letter gives me the oppor- 

 tunity which I desire, to rise and ex- 

 plain. The facts as given by Mr. Pike 

 are wholly correct, though he fails to 

 add that 1 wrote him that the young 

 queens were not exact copies of the one 

 he sent. I wrote the result to him, as 

 I thought he was the proper person to 

 give it publicity, inasmuch as I under- 

 stood that the sequel had no importance 

 so far as he and Mr. Moon's contract 

 was concerned, as I supposed that was 

 given up. 



I repeat here substantially what I 

 wrote to Mr. Pike. The queen was a 

 great beauty , so every one said, and I 

 showed her to many. Her worker pro- 

 geny were also well marked, very bright 

 and beautiful. Her drones were also 

 exceedingly fine, the most highly col- 

 ored ones I have ever seen. The young 

 queens were also very beautiful, but not 

 one was there which was not easily dis- 

 tinguished from the mother, and that, 

 too, after they had fully developed and 

 were well to laying. The workers were 

 not all just alike, nor were the drones. 

 These conclusions were not mine alone, 

 but were those of my students and many 

 others whose opinions I asked. I may 

 add, that the colony did not equal some 

 of my others in rapidity of increase, 

 though it was a good one. 



I believe this queen and her progeny 

 are what we may expect from long, 

 careful and faithful selection, with color 

 as our chief object. The longer we thus 

 carefully breed, the greater uniformity 

 will we secure ; but we can never attain 

 that point where we shall be perfectly 

 certain that the offspring of our bees or 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Loss of Bees in Winter. 



HIRAM ROOP. 



We have often hinted in the Bee 

 Journal that one-half of all the bees 

 were lost, each winter, in the Northern 

 States. Our assertion was based upon 

 facts, gleaned from a wide scope of 

 country, each spring, as to the condi- 

 tion of bees, how wintered, etc. 



We are now having another severe 

 winter what the result will be on the 

 honey gatherers, is easily conjectured. 

 We apprehend that two-thirds of the 

 colonies in Michigan will be lost. Shall 

 we, then, after a few ineffectual trials 

 at a more rational method for safe win- 

 tering, sit down and allow this sweep- 

 ing destruction to go on ? We can 

 winter, safely enough, in a good cellar, 

 but, alas, the spring; for our part, we 

 would rather have 100 colonies left out 

 of 200 wintered on summer stands, than 

 to have 150 left out of the same num- 

 ber wintered in any cellar or depository. 



Carson City, Mich. 



For the American Bee Journal 



Prevention of Swarming. 



GRE1NER BROS. 



When we take the above heading for 

 our subject, it is not with the intention 

 to take the position of instructors ; we 

 only wish to give our 5 years experience 

 on this point, to show that it requires 

 time and experience to get acquainted 

 with the business, and persistent labor 

 to make it profitable. 



Amongst other difficulties, swarming 

 seems to take the lead in causing disap- 

 pointments, and to illustrate this we 

 will relate an incident, which came 

 under our observation this season. 



We had occasion to pass a neighbor, 

 who kept some bees in the old fashioned 

 box-hive way of letting bees have their 

 own way, very frequently this summer, 

 and the bee question formed a good 

 share of our conversation whenever we 

 met. These few colonies of our friend 

 were nicely to work in boxes ; they were 

 tilled with comb and honey ready to be- 

 gin capping about the middle of June. 

 The next time we passed, our neighbor 

 met us with joyful countenance and in- 

 formed us that his bees had swarmed, 

 considering himself the lucky gainer of 

 so many swarms. On questioning : 

 " Do they work yet in boxes V" he an- 

 swered ; "No; they not only stopped 

 working, but they have taken all the 

 honey they had in the boxes, with them, 

 when they swarmed." We learned at 

 the close of the season, that our friend 

 had only comb without honey for bis 

 share, his bees never went to work in 

 said boxes. 



Cases of this kind all bee-keepers have 

 experienced and it is a settled matter, 

 that swarming must be controlled, the 

 only question is, which is the most profit- 

 able way. To ascertain this, we have 

 studied every thing that has been writ ten 

 on the subject for the last 8 or 4 years, 

 and have experimented on nearly all the 

 different methods, which older bee- 

 keepers have pronounced the best. We 

 would say here that we never had the 

 privilege yet, to be with our bees con- 

 stantly through swarming time, but 

 could visit them only once a week; of 

 course we had to adopt plans according 

 to this unfavorable circumstance and 

 could not manage our bees to suit our 

 own ideas. 



The different ways we have tried to 

 prevent swarming are, distroying queen 

 cells, introducing empty comb in brood- 

 nest weekly, exchanging strong with 

 weak colonies, dividing colonies, in- 

 creasing by the shaking off process 

 (see G. M. Doolittle, American Bee 

 Journal, page 355, 1879), introducing 

 a young queen, giving plenty of empty 

 comb and chaff hive as non-swarmer. 



In the beginning of our bee-keeping 

 career a bee-keeping friend told us that 

 swarming could be very easily con- 

 trolled by destroying queen-cells; we 

 did not know any different at that time 

 and consequently believed it. That 

 season turned out to be a good honey 

 year and as we had only transferred 

 colonies (which are not very liable to 

 swarm anyhow), under our care, they 

 did not swarm, to speak of. 



The second year proved to be a good 

 honey season also ; a good share of our 

 bees being transferred colonies, plenty 

 of surplus room was given and all queen- 

 cells destroyed, they worked nicely in 

 boxes and swarmed very little that year. 

 By that time we believed in destroying 

 queen-cells as an infallible means to 

 prevent swarming and made our plans 

 for the following season accordingly and 

 what was the result V The season failed 

 to give us any great amount of surplus. 

 Honey came in just fast enough to keep 

 bees breeding nicely, but too limited to 

 induce them to work in boxes. Swarm- 

 ing time arrived and in spite of our 

 distroying queen-cells, swarms poured 

 out by the wholesale, our increased la- 

 bors in cutting out cells availed us 

 nothing ; the more we worked the more 

 these swarmed, with or without queen- 

 cells. 



We transferred, that season, 15 colo- 

 nies for a bee-keeping friend, he aswell 

 as ourselves felt very anxious, that 

 these be kept from swarming and to 

 accomplish this, we made it a point to 

 examine them once a week, taking par- 

 ticular pains that no cells were over- 

 looked. Everything went well until the 

 latter part of June ; the next day, after 

 we had again destroyed all queen-cells, 

 a swarm came out, the next day another, 

 the third day still another and the fourth 

 day three more, and by the time we 

 called again, a week latter, 8 of the 15 

 colonies had swarmed and before the 

 season had passed, we had changed our 

 ideas in regard to prevention of swarms 

 by destroying queen-cells. 



We read, that the introduction of an 

 empty comb in the middle of the brood- 

 nest would keep a colony a week from 

 swarming and also that bees with a 

 young queen would not swarm. This 

 we tried the next year; we had lost 

 quite a number of colonies that winter 

 and consequently had a good many 

 combs at ouj disposition, these we used 

 as stated, forming a new colony with a 

 young laying queen of every 8 frames 

 of brood, which we took, one from a 

 hive, to make room for the empty comb. 

 Now did this keep our bees from swarm- 

 ing V No ; no more than did the distinc- 

 tion of queen-cells the year previous. 



After that we divided our Dees ; this, 

 if queen-cells are destroyed, will un- 

 doubtedly keep them from swarming, 

 but on account of the heavy increase, 

 colonies are weakened too much for 

 working in the boxes, consequently the 

 object to produce the most surplus is 

 missed. A better way is to increase by 

 the shaking off process ; we commenced 

 with those that were making strongest 

 preparation for swarming and by close 

 watching and repeating this operation 

 as often as other colonies would show 

 any inclination to swarm, we kept the 

 upper hand of our bees pretty well ; but 

 still they swarmed more than we wished 

 and hoped for. We transferred 6 colo- 

 nies late this spring, in June, and as 

 honey was coming in plentiful at that 

 time applied our section cases right off. 

 One week after we divided or rather in- 

 creased these by the shaking off pro- 

 cess, giving the three sets of comb and 

 a young laying queen. A week later, 

 one of these three swarmed, this or 

 course did not meet our approval for 

 we wished to have them continue work 

 in the sections as they had commenced, 

 and for that reason we hived them back, 

 catching the queen and clipping her 

 wings at the time, thinking that this 

 operation would put a final stop to the 

 ill-behavior of thisuumanagable queen. 



