170 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



June 1, 



thorax is attached. Had I known this 

 years ago I should not have purchased 

 so many queens, trying to get a third 

 ring besides that segment. 



I find it very difficult to keep an 

 apiary up to the standard of purity. 

 Queens will mate with a scrub drone 

 as quickly as with fine pure stock, and 

 in tact, seem to prefer them, for though 

 I have discarded all native stock years 

 ago, more than }<i of my queens have 

 been fertilized by black drones, and yet 

 there are not over a dozen colonies of 

 black bees within a radius of 4 miles. 



I have wintered some of my bees in 

 the cellar for many years, and never 

 lost a colony, except by starvation. My 

 cellar is dry and well ventilated, and 

 never freezes. I always give plenty of 

 upward ventilation, and yet the hives 

 and combs get damp and moldy. I do 

 not like cellar wintering— I do not think 

 it healthy. 



The plan of wintering I like best is to 

 make a box, inches larger than the 

 hive, all around and above, taller on 

 one side than on the other to give a 

 slanting roof: then fill in with chaff, 

 straw, hay or leaves, and cover the top 

 with boards. I let them remain so till 

 late in the spring when it is warm- they 

 do not fly out every time the sun shines 

 in the winter. In the spring they are 

 strong and healthy. I have practiced 

 this plan for some time with excellent 

 results. 



I have wintered bees in many differ- 

 ent hives and by various methods, and 

 have found that they always furnished 

 themselves with all the moisture they 

 needed, and even more. 



I feel jolly ; I have saved half of 

 mine during the past winter, while so 

 many have lost all. My bees had but 

 little honey in the fall and what they 

 did have was of very poor quality, and 

 I expected great mortality. I hope the 

 present season will yield plenteously. 



With the multitude, I welcome the 

 Weekly Bee Journal. It is the best, 

 cheapest and most reliable bee literature 

 of the age. 



Kichtield, 111. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Wired Foundation a Success. 



J. E. SOLOMON. 



The season has come when every 

 bee-keeper should know how to obtain 

 the most profit or pleasure from his 

 bees. For the last 2 or 3 years I have 

 watched the experience of other bee- 

 keepers with comb foundation as re- 

 ported through the Journal, at Con- 

 ventions, and elsewhere, and I con- 

 cluded that the application of it was a 

 failure, the chief difficulty being its 

 warping out of position and eventually 

 falling to the bottom of the hive, caus- 

 ing loss of labor as well as disappoint- 

 ment, although some seemed to have 

 success with it. But I could not help 

 thinking that the invention of founda- 

 tion was a grand step in the right direc- 

 tion, and hoped that some way would be 

 devised so that whole sheets could be 

 used in the brood chamber without fear 

 of sagging or otherwise injuring the 

 occupants. Hearing that the Given 

 machine had overcome the difficulty by 

 Dressing the sheet of wax into comb and 

 fastening it into the frame at one ope- 

 ration, holding it in its proper position 

 by the aid of fine wires indented in 

 the wax, I felt so sure that the sagging 

 difficulty was overcome that I at once 

 wrote to Mr. Given about the matter, 

 and finally purchased a machine for 

 making wired foundation in the frame. 

 With wax about u Langstroth sheets to 

 the pound, and my machine, I have 

 made hundreds of wired frames, ready 

 to be placed in the hives, and as soon as 

 swarms issued I put in a proper number 

 of frames, introduce the swarms to 

 their new homes, never thinking of 

 sagging or getting out of place, even 

 with a large swarm in the warmest 

 weather. 



On examination I generally find sev- 

 eral combs containing a patch of honey 

 or eggs, or both, in from 6 to 10 hours, 

 and in a few days the whole hive would 

 be full, every comb nice and true, and 

 every bee to be hatched in those combs 

 would be a worker and able to help sup- 

 port the family — no idle drones or "lazy 



fathers of the hive " to feed and nurse, 

 which is no small matter to consider 

 when we have a large number of hives. 



I noticed in some article relating to 

 wired foundation that it was destruc- 

 tive to the brood hatched in the cells 

 through which the wires pass. I have 

 examined very closely, with a friend of 

 mine, the young brood as they emerged 

 from those identical cells, and we pro- 

 nounced them as perfect in all respects 

 as those from any part of the hive — if 

 there is any difference, my microscope 

 fails to show it. At all events I am 

 perfectly well satisfied that I have a 

 great prize in the Given Wired Founda- 

 tion fress, with which I can make a su- 

 perior article of foundation, either 

 with or without wires, thick, medium, 

 or very thin, for starters in sections or 

 boxes, and all with equal facility. I 

 would not like to part with my machine 

 for 5 times its cost if I could not get an- 

 other. I think 4 days on good founda- 

 tion equal to 10 days on empty frames. 



I have watched with great interest, 

 during the past 18 years, the rapid 

 strides some inventive minds have made 

 in regard to bee-culture for profit, as 

 compared with the superstition of the 

 past, which for ages have reigned su- 

 preme. With the information we re- 

 ceive from the excellent bee periodicals it 

 would be surprising indeed if something 

 wonderful was not accomplished. Now 

 bee-culture is a science pretty well un- 

 derstood ; a few years ago it was cov- 

 ered with the thick mist of ignorance 

 and superstition. In a great measure 

 we owe what we know about the apiary 

 and its management to books and jour- 

 nals devoted wholly to the subject, of 

 which lean truly say I think the Amer- 

 cian Bee Journal one of the very 

 best ; and anyone, whether professional 

 or amateur, desiring a knowledge of 

 the hidden mysteries of the hive, has 

 no excuse for being ignorant, if he will 

 take the trouble to read and learn the 

 lessons therein contained. 



Brighton Village, Ont. 



For the American Bee Journal- 



Calling Things by Wrong Names. 



o. o. POPPLETON. 



In the Bee Journal of April 27 is 

 an article written by Prof. Cook, giving 

 the results of different modes of win- 

 tering bees at the Agricultural College. 

 I always take very great interest in 

 anything from his pen. but I want to 

 indulge in a little friendly criticism on 

 this article. 



While the Professor has not said in 

 so many words, that the hives he tried 

 to winter a part of his bees in were 

 chaff hives, yet there is no question 

 from the entire tenor of what he writes 

 but that is what he thought they were, 

 and was the impression he intended to 

 convey. But has he not called those 

 hives by a wrong name, thus conveying 

 a wrong impression and almost entirely 

 nullifying the value of his arguments r 

 A hive packed with straw around four 

 sides and chaff on top, is not a chaff 

 hive in any sense of the word. 



Some may think this a small mistake 

 but to me it is a very important one. I 

 have used chaff hives for the past 7 

 winters, and my experience has proved 

 that the finer and cleaner chaff is the 

 best. I have entirely discarded the use 

 of the coarser kinds of chaff, such as 

 that from wheat and oats, and use only 

 that from timothy seed, and 1 go to the 

 trouble of even sifting that, so as to 

 have it as tine and free from coarse par- 

 ticles as possible. I use a thickness of 

 only 5 inches of chaff around my bees, 

 but I prefer that amount of fine chaff 

 rather than 3 feet of straw around them. 



I hope Prof. Cook will continue his 

 experiments in different methods of 

 wintering, and that he will give real 

 chaff hives a trial. I would caution 

 all, however, against the use of oat 

 chaff, for that has a decided tendency 

 to become damp when used around bees. 



I am not among those who think any 

 one method of wintering to be all right 

 and all others wrong. I simply know 

 that chaff-hive wintering in this sec- 

 tion has been more uniformly success- 

 ful than cellar wintering, and I am in- 

 clined to think that the report, heavy 

 losses by wintering in chaff hives, can 



be traced to other causes, such as poor 

 condition of colonies in the fall, the use 

 of straw instead of chaff, etc. 



My own loss is 6 out of 115, all in 

 chaff hives, and a neighboring bee- 

 keeper, in a card received yesterday, 

 says, in regard to his bees, that " some 

 are good, some light and many dead — 

 out-door wintering with me has been 

 successful — no loss." He had some 40 

 or 50 colonies in chaff hives, out-of- 

 doors, ana nearly 200 in the cellar, thus 

 making a direct contrast with Prof. 

 Cook's experience, only he used chaff, 

 while the Professor used straw. 



I am among those who at first had 

 doubts about the value to honey pro- 

 ducers of a Weekly Journal, but those 

 doubts have gone. News in our busi- 

 ness, as in any other, is worth so much 

 more if only 3 or 4 days old, instead of 

 that many weeks, and I hope we can 

 always keep at least one standard 

 Weekly Bee Journal. 



Wilhamstown, Iowa, March 3, 1881. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Wintering Bees— A Few Facts. 



H. D. BURUELL. 



As nearly as can be ascertained by 

 careful inquiries, from about 1,500 col- 

 onies of bees in Van Buren Co. last fall, 

 not over 250 colonies are alive now. My 

 loss is 75 from 153. It is difficult to find 

 out the exact facts, as many will give 

 only evasive answers to inquiries about 

 their losses. 



Why is it so many have died ? Some 

 have starved, but the main trouble has 

 been dysentery. Now what are its 

 causes '? One able writer says confine- 

 ment, but facts do not seem to prove 

 that the only cause. The past winter 

 my bees were confined about 130 days, 

 yet % of them showed no signs of dis- 

 ease until April. From March 6 to 10 

 it was mild and pleasant here, and bees 

 flew well ; 28 were dead from 153. Most 

 of the remaining colonies were strong 

 and healthy, and we felt confident but 

 few would die. But alas ! another 

 month of winter followed, and in 3 

 weeks from the time they Hew well dys- 

 entery was playing sad havoc with the 

 best colonies. Now why did these 3 

 weeks' confinement in the spring cause 

 disease in these colonies when 130 days' 

 confinement did not in the winter V In 

 the winter of 1879-80 our bees were not 

 confined 6 weeks at one time. They 

 were carefully protected with chaff on 

 their summer stands, and the winter was 

 mild, yet before Jan. 1 many colonies 

 were dead from dysentery, and before 

 May first, 30 per cent, were gone from 

 the same primary cause. Surely con- 

 finement was not the cause of the dis- 

 ease. 



For 40 years Thos. Kemp has lived on 

 a farm, 3 miles south, and for nearly 

 that time has kept bees. He "can't 

 manage your new-fangled hives" 

 though. He tells me (and he is well 

 known as a reliable man), his bees 

 never had dysentery but once (in the 

 spring of 1872), before this season and 

 he seldom loses a colony, except by 

 starvation. Last fall he had 20 or 25 

 colonies, (he " never counts them, and 

 don't know how many there are,") in 

 old box hives. Many have been used 

 so long the bottoms have rotted. A 

 couple of boards are thrown on the 

 ground, often a couple of inches apart, 

 and the bottomless hives set on them. 

 No arrangements are made for surplus 

 boxes, but when he wants honey he 

 " takes up " a swarm. Last winter 2 

 died and 5 came out weak, and as bees 

 could get out or in at a dozen or more 

 places, and they received no attention, 

 they were robbed out. 



Last season I bought 16 colonies of 

 him, and never had better working 

 stock in my apiary. One colony pro- 

 duced over 100 lbs. in sections, notwith- 

 standing the poor season. I Italianized 

 all but 6 colonies of them, which I 

 saved to see if they would winter bet- 

 ter than Italians, but they could not 

 stand civilization. All died. Now why 

 has not confinement killed his bees ? 



H. E. Bidwell told me he once buried 

 several colonies, and as an experiment 

 left them in the ground one whole sum- 

 mer and 2 winters, yet a fair portion 

 lived through it all. 



Absorbents are now generally re- 

 garded as essential to successful win- 

 tering of bees. Last fall about 1-5 of 

 my colonies were arranged with absorb- 

 ents about them, and carefully packed 

 with chaff on the summer stands. The 

 balance were placed in packing boxes, 

 but chaff could not be procured for 

 packing them until after winter had set 

 in. The brood frames were covered 

 with enameled cloth, and that by a % 

 inch solid board. Hoping mild weather 

 would soon come, and absorbents could 

 be arranged, the boxes were filled with 

 chaff. Mild weather did come — in 

 March — and these colonies, almost her- 

 metically sealed, save an entrance at 

 the bottom %\\ inches, were in better 

 condition than those arranged with ab- 

 sorbents or upward ventilation. 



Facts seems to prove that none of us 

 know much about wintering bees. A 

 few seem to be successful for a time, 

 but sooner or later the dread scourge 

 comes, and empty hives are left to tell 

 the tale, and refute pet theories. The 

 theory that impure honey causes the 

 trouble seems best substantiated by 

 facts. If I knew all my hives contained 

 perfectly pure stores and good strong 

 colonies of bees not too old, I would 

 not fear loss under almost any circum- 

 stances ; while if I knew that they con- 

 tained impure stores, I should expect a 

 heavy loss no matter how they were 

 protected, if they were confined a long 

 lime. 



Bangor, Mich., May 9, 1881. 



[Our correspondent propounds queries 

 to which only suppositious answers can 

 yet be given. We have so often given 

 our views, that it is hardly worth while 

 to repeat them at this time.— Ed.] 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Using Separators, Foundation, etc. 



.TAMES HEDDON. 



I)o the largest and most " successful " 

 honey producers use separators ? I be- 

 lieve not. My experience with a box 

 and a half of tin is decidedly against 

 them. I wonder what Mr. Doolittle saw 

 the first year he used them that caused 

 him to wish to " divide the bees as little 

 as possible" the second year. 



My method of applying sections, with- 

 out separators, must be in some way 

 superior to his, for I crate 99 out of 

 100. on an average, and with Moore's 

 style of glassing (which I count the best 

 extant) I can glass a large majority, in 

 good style. I do not propose to use sec- 

 tions without full sized sheets of comb 

 foundation in each and every one, sep- 

 arators or no separators. (This is said 

 not only in behalf of my trade in foun- 

 dation, but also that of Messrs. Alfred 

 H. Newman, A. I. Root, J. H. Nellis, 

 Chas. Dadant, and seventy or eighty 

 others, who dabble slightly in its manu- 

 facture or sale). Yes, it is true, that 

 we do not need to attach any costly and 

 complicated contrivance to make our 

 chosen surplus system work to our per- 

 fect satisfaction. 



The method I practice I think the 

 simplest and most rapid of any extant. 

 They are in use by numerous producers, 

 and I have never known one to aban- 

 don it for any other. The reason I dis- 

 carded the brood frame system was be- 

 cause the sections were so stuck up 

 with propolis. I refer to R. A. Burnett, 

 of Chicago, on the comparative cleanli- 

 ness of sections received from myself 

 and others. But suppose for logic's sake 

 that I am untruthful, does that change 

 the law of cause and effect ? Do natu- 

 ral principles depend upon my reputa- 

 tion for their existence and regular ac- 

 tion r Cannot Mr. Doolittle give us an 

 article whose points are based upon rea- 

 son, and not upon his personal experi- 

 ence, of which we know nothing. His 

 wonderful experience makes good sea- 

 soning for his general dish, but is not a 

 very palatable commodity when taken 

 all alone. While I would be far from 

 attacking Mr. Doolittle 's reputation for 

 truth, I still hold strongly to " reasons 

 why," for proofs. I hope his attack on 

 my" motives was " a joke," and here let 

 me say that I will do my very best to 

 give him all he can attend to in any 

 well meant discussion that he may enter 

 into, without taking time for "jokes." 



