238 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 27, 



s£(4$S8"M§pm 



Bees Doing Well.— Bees here are do- 

 ing well, gathering honey steadily 

 from swamp woodbine and button 

 willow. We shall have bitter-weed 

 during August, and after that a va- 

 riety of fall flowers. 



Oscar F. Bledsoe. 



Grenada, Miss., July 18, 1881. 



The Honey Harvest.— The summer 

 yield will be but J^j crop, at most ; bass- 

 wood is a total failure, and white 

 clover not much better. Bees are 

 plenty in the hives, hang idly about, 

 with no honey to gather. I do not ex- 

 pect much of a fall harvest, and that 

 will be of a second quality. There 

 will be no surplus to speak of in this 

 immediate vicinity, though bees will 

 be in good condition for winter. 



C. B. Woodman. 



Johnson's Creek, Wis., July 17,1881. 



Regained the Loss of Last Winter.— 



My bees are doing well. I have tilled 

 all my hives again, and they are now 

 in good condition for another year. I 

 like the Weekly Bee Journal much, 

 but I am glad you are to change the 

 size of the page next year. Put me 

 down for a life subscriber. I live 10 

 miles from Louisville, the only place I 

 can get a letter registered, and some- 

 times I do not go to that city for 3 or 

 4 weeks, but I will pay up regularly, 

 and all the time, so do not stop send- 

 ing it at all. William Bence. 

 Newburg, Ky., July 15, 1881. 



[With pleasure we have marked 

 your Journal to come " without 

 ceasing." All we want to know is 

 that it is desired. We prefer to send 

 it thus, and hope all who desire its 

 continuous visits will notify us, and 

 thus save us, as well as themselves, 

 much trouble and annoyance.— Ed.] 



Hood Square Work.— I never saw 

 bees work as they are doing this sum- 

 mer. Most of the bee-keepers of 

 Kane county lost their bees last win- 

 ter. The entire loss amounted to 

 1,500 colonies, at least. There never 

 was such destruction known here be- 

 fore. I had enough bees left for seed. 

 Geo. Thompson. 



Geneva, 111., July 15, 1881. 



Ventilating a Cellar.— My bees are 

 doing well. I had only 2 colonies 

 alive in the spring ; they increased to 

 8 and gave me considerable surplus 

 honey. I made a room in the cellar 

 for wintering bees, immediately un- 

 der a coal stove, where the atmosphere 

 will be regularly at about 45 J . I have 

 a 2-inch tin pipe to bring in air, facing 

 the west, running 20 feet through the 

 cellar before entering the bee room. 

 On the east I have a pipe 4 inches to 

 conduct the air out through a window. 

 Will a 2-inch pipe give enough fresh 

 air V The room is 10 feet square, by 7 

 feet high, and kept from the stone 

 wall on all sides ; the floor is also 

 raised from the ground. 



D. Lantz. 



Forreston, 111., July 19, 1881. 



[A 2-inch pipe should give sufficient 

 ventilation. It is % an inch more 

 than used by several who ventilate in 

 a similar manner.— Ed.] 



Bees Doing Nothing Now. — Bees 

 have been doing nothing for about 3 

 weeks. Previous to that they did 

 well, as far as swarming is concerned; 

 they have killed oil' the drones al- 

 ready. What the fall harvest will be, 

 I know not. Basswood was in bloom 

 but a few days. About % of of the 

 bees winter-killed. The weather is 

 very hot. Peter Billing. 



Pawnee City, Neb., July 16. 1881. 



Queries from Georgia.— Bees in this 

 latitude have done well this season. 

 Last year I had 33 colonies, and in the 

 spring 15 died from starvation ; I now 

 have 34 ; from one I obtained 40 lbs. 

 of honey and 2 large swarms. I have 

 but one colony of black bees, and it 

 gave a swarm of as tine Italians as I 

 have. How came that to be the case V 

 All the bees have three yellow bands, 

 and are as tine as those from my im- 

 ported queen. I can only account for 

 it in this way : I had some young 

 queens about ready to take their bri- 

 dal trips, and one of them was miss- 

 ing ; it may have gone to the swarm 

 while they were settling. I had a 

 swarm come out which I hived, but 

 the queen would not stay in the hive, 

 so I clipped her wing, and in the even- 

 ing they came out again. I looked in 

 the yard and found the queen with the 

 clipped wing dead. I hived them 

 again, and found another queen. They 

 remained all right, and are doing well. 

 This may not be new to old bee men, 

 but I never had a like case before. I 

 have one colony, the bees of which 

 during the late extremely hot weather, 

 would come out and fall from the 

 bench, and have the ground covered 

 with bees that could not fly. The col- 

 ony has a large quantity of honey. 

 What was the cause of their falling to 

 the ground r How late would it be 

 safe to extract in this country ? I 

 have just received my extractor, but 

 am fearful it is too 'late to extract 

 much. I read the Bee Journal with 

 pleasure, and would not be without it 

 for double its cost. 



II. M. Williams, M. D. 



Bowdon. Ga. 



[You have undoubtedly solved the 

 problem regarding the metamorphosis 

 of your black bees into Italians. It is 

 not unusual for two swarms to emerge 

 simultaneously, and, of course, one of 

 the queens would have to desert the 

 new hive, or perish in combat. In 

 the case of the bees coming out of the 

 hive and dying on the ground, it would 

 be difficult to state definitely the cause 

 without a critical examination of the 

 interior of the hive; but we presume 

 the heat softened the brood combs so 

 that the cells were more or less dis- 

 torted by the constant passing to and 

 fro of the worker bees upon their sur- 

 face, and as a consequence the young 

 bees were deformed, and sought to die 

 in exile. So long as there is a con- 

 tinued prospect of honey, it will do to 

 extract. In your latitude, too close 

 extracting is not necessarily fatal, as 

 it might be here, for the Georgia win- 

 ters are never so severe and protracted 

 that there is not ample opportunity for 

 feeding. It is, however, quite as nec- 

 essary that bees in the South should 

 have plenty of stores provided for 

 them as in the extreme North, for 

 often more or less breeding is going 

 on through the winter, which con- 

 sumes honey rapidly. It is not an un- 

 common occurrence, in the South, for 

 bees to breed up, consume their stores, 

 and starve before the spring honey 

 How sets in. — Ed.] 



Size of the Langstroth Hive.— Hear 

 Editor: Did you not make a mistake 

 in giving the size of the Langstrotb 

 hive in the Bee Journal for July 6, 

 page 213 V I ordered a Langstroth 

 hive, and received one 18JjJxl4JjjX9Ji). 

 Frame, when adjusted in the hive, was 

 % from the top and 7 „ at each end. I 

 am aware that there are hives made 

 which are claimed to be Langstroth 

 hives, and nearly every one makes 

 them of a little different size. I wish 

 hive manufacturers would be more 

 careful about sizes, and not guess at it 

 so much ; it would be much better for 

 all of us, should we have occasion to 

 exchange hives with our neighbors. 

 I received rather a flattering report 



this morning for the box-hive men. 

 It was from one of our " street-corner- 

 hard-working-men. " who has been 

 foremost in all undertakings through 

 life, but from appearance has met with 

 misfortune, or he must have been a 

 Stewart or Rothschild. Said he : "I 

 have handled bees for over 50 years ; 

 I know all about them. The great 

 trouble is, you do not give them room 

 enough to build theircombs ; you want 

 at least \% inches for each frame — 2 

 inches is better. Then, this transfer- 

 ring is all wrong ; let them have their 

 own way about building their combs. 

 Why," said he, " I once lived down on 

 the river bottom and had one stand of 

 bees ; they swarmed 14 times one sea- 

 son ; when the last swarm came out of 

 that hive I had nothing to put them in 

 but a flour barrel, and so I put them 

 in that, quite late in August. They 

 filled that barrel full of solid white 

 comb honey .and not a particle of brood 

 or bee-bread in the barrel ; nothing 

 but clear honey. We sold $26 worth 

 of honey from that barrel, and had 

 lots left—over 300 lbs." If this is all 

 true, I think that we had better go 

 back to boxes and barrels. 

 Urbana, 111. S. Goodrich. 



[There was a typographical error in 

 the dimensions of the Langstroth hive, 

 as published in the Bee Journal for 

 July 6 ; it should have read 9 7 „ instead 

 of lO'iJ inches in depth. The hive 

 you purchased is correct. It would 

 be a very important movement, if bee- 

 keepers could determine which is the 

 best hive, and rigidly and scrupu- 

 lously adhere to the same dimensions ; 

 then one of the serious drawbacks to 

 a free interchange of hives, frames 

 and bees will have been overcome. 

 —Ed.] 



Foul Brood, Honey Crop, etc.— Foul 



brood may be carried in foundation 

 made of wax taken from foul-broody 

 hives. A friend of mine, in this val- 

 ley, with about 60 colonies, found so 

 many of them with foul brood early 

 in the spring, that he transferred them 

 into new hives and boiled the old 

 ones. He made new frames, taking a 

 great deal of pains not to let the bees 

 get any of the honey, but made up 

 the wax into foundation, and after 

 they got well filled with brood he 

 found it worse than at first in every 

 colony. He is satisfied that it was 

 carried in the wax. I commenced in 

 the spring with 75 colonies ; kept 

 them well snugged up, examining 

 them as often as once a week, and took 

 the old honey away from all that were 

 honey-bound, to give the queens a 

 chance, as they were bringing in more 

 than needed, which is unusual here 

 in February and March. By attend- 

 ing closely to them they gave me, in 

 March and April, 45 pounds of wax, 

 and 3,170 pounds of extracted honey. 

 I increased to 96, with honey enough 

 to last them through. I doubt there 

 being any more honey in this State 

 than we need. 



S. S. Butler, M. D. 

 Los Gatos, Cal., July 14, 1881 . 



[There is not a possibility of foul 

 brood being contracted by using foun- 

 dation made from foul-broody combs. 

 It is sheer nonsense, to say the least, 

 to suppose that the infection was erad- 

 icated when your friend " boiled the 

 old hives," yet would linger in the 

 foundation after the several boiling 

 processes necessary to transform the 

 comb into a perfect sheet.— Ed.] 



Not Mated.— I herewith send you a 

 young unfertilized queen. I take her 

 to be about half-way between a worker 

 bee and a queen — not sufficiently de- 

 veloped to mate with a drone. I have 

 been watching her for three weeks ; 

 she seems to have no inclination to 

 leave the hive to meet a drone. She 

 is a good layer, but, like the fertile 

 worker, locates eggs all through the 

 hive ; yet she is easily distinguished 



from the worker bees. I think she 

 might be called a fertile worker ; what 

 do you think of her V 



James T. Fife. 

 Corning, Iowa, July 17, 1881. 



[We think that, excepting her di- 

 minutive size, she is a perfect queen. 

 Either unpropitious weather, absence 

 of drones, or other circumstances pre- 

 vented her mating at the proper time, 

 after which she became what is called 

 a drone-layer, and lost all desire to 

 leave the hive.— Ed.] 



How to Winter Bees.— I lost 24 col- 

 onies of bees last winter and spring, 

 by dysentery. They were in an under- 

 ground house, well ventilated, as I 

 thought, but they became damp, and 

 I could not prevent it. Wintering ap- 

 pears to be the great problem, the so- 

 lution of which is necessary to success 

 in apiculture, and I greatly desire to 

 have the views of the editor of the 

 Bee Journal on the subject. Which 

 is better, a winter depository above or 

 below the ground V Will it do for the 

 hives to be placed in rows, with a shed 

 built over them and on one side, leav- 

 ing entrances open, as recommended 

 by some ? Different localities require 

 varied kinds of preparation, and there 

 are so many things to be considered 

 that I find myself in a quandary. As 

 with all other avocations, with all the 

 teachings and experiences of others, 

 nothing is so sure of success as good 

 brains well used. G. B. Olney. 



Atlantic, Iowa. 



[Our views have been given several 

 times of late, on wintering, and on 

 the fourth page of the Journal for 

 last week we gave statistics oh last 

 winter's losses, and "our views" upon 

 them. Next week we shall give a long 

 article from Mr. Ch. Dadant, on the 

 same subject — all of these we com- 

 mend to the careful study of our cor- 

 respondent, as an answer to his que- 

 ries.— Ed.] 



The Honey Season in Texas.— Our 

 spring honey season being over, I now 

 send you my report to June 20. I 

 wintered without any loss, including 

 several 2-frame nuclei. I commenced 

 in the spring with 7 colonies ; up to 

 June 20 I took 968 pounds of surplus 

 honey and increased to 20 good colo- 

 nies. Continued dry weather cut the 

 honey season fully 2 weeks short. I 

 think our fall honey will compare fa- 

 vorably with any in the world, both 

 in appearance and delicacy of flavor — 

 most of our spring honey being nearly 

 white. Bees are now gathering honey 

 dew from oak and elm, to a limited 

 extent, but the quality is very poor, 

 and the color is dark. I am glad to 

 see it coming in, anyhow, for it keeps 

 up brood-rearing, and makes it favor- 

 able for rearing queens. 



Jas. G. Taylor. 



Austin, Tex., July 11, 1881. 



Brushing off the Bees. — I com- 

 menced this season with 22 colonies 

 and have increased to 75, mostly by 

 natural swarming. I extracted 600 

 pounds of white clover honey, and 

 have 25 colonies working in the sec- 

 tion-boxes. Basswood is just com- 

 mencing to bloom. Is there any dan- 

 ger of losing queens, when brushing 

 off the bees in front of the hive, if 

 she should happen to be in the sec- 

 ond story when extracting, or should I 

 look for her V Emil Peterman. 



Oostburg, Wis., July 12, 1881. 



[You should look at every comb 

 taken out, whether you want the 

 queen or not. She is frequently in 

 the second story. — Ed.] 



Heavy Crop of Honey.— Bees are 



now doing their "level best" on gath- 

 ering honey. Another week or two 

 like the past one will secure for us a 

 heavy crop of honey. 



Greiner Brothers. 

 Naples, N. Y., July 20, 1881. 



