1881. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



283 



^Sife 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Honey Producing Plants. 



G. W. DEMAREE. 



The value of the locust tree, com- 

 monly called black locust, as a honey 

 producer, I think is not as generally 

 known and appreciated, as the true 

 merits of the tree deserves. The fact 

 that Prof. Cook, in his Manual of the 

 Apiary, merely gives this tree a pnss- 

 ing notice, indicates that it eithei 

 fails to give the best results in many 

 parts of our vast country, or the tree 

 is not as well known as it should be. 

 The time of year in which it blooms 

 nearly filling the interval between the 

 late fruit bloom, and the white clover, 

 makes it an exceedingly valuable aux- 

 iliary to the honey harvest in the mid- 

 dle states, if not elsewhere. It is a 

 most profuse honey bearer, rivaling 

 the famous linden in quality, and only 

 inferior to the product of the latter in 

 color. Locust honey cannot be said to 

 be dark in color. It is of a rich pale- 

 red color, when in a liquid state ; but 

 when in the shape of comb honey, its 

 appearance, if removed from the hive 

 when first finished, is but little infe- 

 rior to our superior clover honey. It 

 becomes exceeding thick, if left with 

 the bees till the cells are thoroughly 

 sealed, and its keeping qualities are 

 therefore most excellent. We have 

 used it on our table when first ex- 

 tracted, and after it was a year or two 

 old. Many persons have partaken of 

 it, all of whom have pronounced it ex- 

 tra good. The farmers in this part of 

 the state are planting thousands of 

 these trees, for the valuable timber 

 they furnish for fence posts, telegraph 

 poles, and for all purposes where dur- 

 able timber is needed. The locust is 

 a rapid grower, and is quite free from 

 disease. I have seen it bloom the sec- 

 ond year after transplanting. The 

 trees are planted by the side of fen- 

 ces, in waste places, and on poor worn 

 out lands. They may be propagated 

 from the seeds, or by transplanting 

 the young trees from 1 to 3 years old. 

 If the ground is plowed in the spring, 

 and the locust seeds planted on the 

 hills with corn, or with other hill- 

 crops, and cultivated the first year, 

 the young trees will grow with great 

 rapidity, even on very poor lands. In 

 this way beautiful groves can be star- 

 ted, making the land, in process of 

 time, very valuable, in locations 

 where timber is an object, besides 

 giving a perfect sea of bloom, ladened 

 with precious nectar. 



Every bee-man knows that a mere 

 patch of bee-forage amounts to but 

 little. If we are to have great results 

 in the way of yield of honey, we must 

 have a sea of bloom to obtain it from. 

 Now that this new source of bee-pas- 

 turage is being so rapidly developed, 

 all unconscious to the farmers who 

 are planting and training these trees 

 by the thousands for their valuable 

 timber, some change must necessar- 

 ily take place in the management of 

 bees in the early spring. Our colo- 

 nies must be made strong enough to 

 harvest the tons of nectar secreted by 

 the locnst bloom in the short space of 

 about 10 days. I had a few colonies 

 last spring strong enough to teach me 

 what may be gained from this source. 

 Commencing with empty hives, the 

 queens were crowded out in 4 or 5 

 days, after the locust bloom opened. 

 With strong colonies and plenty of 

 empty combs, the amount of honey 

 obtained would depend much on the 

 good management of the apiarist. It 

 is no easy matter to get bees strong 

 enough by the 10th or 15th of May to 

 give the best results. Some of the 

 best colonies can be depended upon, 

 but to get an entire apiary ready for 

 strong quick work, is another matter. 

 I know of but one way in which it can 

 be accomplished, and that is to unite 



•_• or more .•ninnies together. This I 

 shall do hereafter without hesitation. 

 Our honey seasons (even the best of 

 them), are crowded into about 2 brief 

 months of time, and it our bees must 

 be built up during these precious 

 days, the season is simply lost to the 

 apiarist. What matters it, though we 

 increase our colonies of bees, if they 

 are never ready to reap the harvest. 



Uniting bees in this climate gives 

 them the swarming fever, most aw- 

 fully bad ; but even this is preferable 

 to doing nothing. 



Christiansburg, Ky. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Pollen Detrimental to Wintering. 



JAMES HEDDON. 



ignorance, all have an equal 



" In our common 

 right to guess." 



Some time ago I threw out the bac- 

 teria hypothesis, to be thought of and 

 weighed in the scales of others' expe- 

 rience. But little has been said about 

 it, and those who have written upon 

 the subject have spent most of their 

 force in trying to pin it to me, rather 

 than to disprove the correctness of the 

 theory. 



You will see, by the records, that I 

 never failed to assert that I " had not 

 seen the animal," " did not know it 

 existed," thought it might be " vege- 

 table matter in the food" (I guessed 

 in the honey), and now, after carefully 

 examining a large number of dead 

 colonies of my own and among my 

 neighbors, I have settled down upon 

 the belief, strong and positive, that 

 the trouble is " vegetable matter in 

 the food," not. however, in the honey, 

 but in the cell-joining— that dysentery 

 is caused by the consumption of bee- 

 bread. I stand 10 to 1 on this question. 

 I understand that when any animal is 

 forced to consume of food several 

 times its bulk and weight, and that, 

 too, without any voiding of excreta, 

 which is its natural habit during an- 

 other season, that food must be of a 

 highly refined and oxygenized nature, 

 or disease will be the natural result. 



I do not believe that bee-bread can 

 be eaten during the period of confine- 

 ment, and good health to the bees be 

 the result. That they do try to use it 

 in place of their natural food (honey) 

 and that their failures are well known 

 and fully realized by us, I am sure. 



If but few agree with me, it is com- 

 forting to feel satisfied as to the cause, 

 and that step having been taken up 

 the hill of science, we can now prepare 

 to search out the cheapest and most 

 effectual method of prevention. I 

 see that others have come to the same 

 conclusion, and I have faith that the 

 preventive is near at hand. The un- 

 accountable phenomenon of Smith's 

 bees all dying, while Jones', treated 

 the same, and only three miles distant, 

 all or nearly all live, shows the fallacy 

 of looking for a cause in "cold," 

 "confinement," "dampness," or any of 

 the popular theories. None of the 

 supposed causes will agree in the ef- 

 fects as we are forced to find them. 

 I think the consumption-of-bread the- 

 ory will. 



There are more than a dozen differ- 

 ent causes for the consumption of 

 bread, which vary in the extreme in 

 different winters, and in different lo- 

 calities only a short distance apart. 



I will mention a few : First, I be- 

 lieve that the consumption or prefer- 

 ence for honey, and not bread, during 

 all that period when bees must void 

 no excrement, except by sensible and 

 insensible perspiration, is a fixed fact. 

 The cause of dysentery is a variation 

 from that rule, and the winter con- 

 sumption of bread by the older bees ; 

 the attractive quality of the bread vs. 

 the attractive quality of the honey ; 

 the closer proximity of bread, or more 

 easy of access than honey (continued 

 cold spells affect this largely) ; dispo- 

 sition to breed, in which case the bees 

 being forced to handle the bread to 

 feed the larvse, eat of it more or less 

 themselves. I have not found a dead 

 colony, where there was not either 

 plenty of bee-bread showing signs of 



late work with it, or brood in all 

 stages, and generally both ; but nearly 

 always brood. I have found a few 

 colonies that died late of starvation. 

 With those that had accessible pollen. 

 and tried that as a last resort, dysen- 

 tery is to be seen in greater or less de- 

 gree ; but with many that had little or 

 almost no pollen in the combs, all the 

 bees and combs are as bright as any 

 live colony. The sources, and conse- 

 quent time of excessive fall pollen 

 gathering in different localities only 2 

 or 3 miles apart, varies greatly, many 

 times even more so than the gathering 

 of honey. 



Allowing this to be the cause, it is 

 not the easiest matter in the world 

 to foretell by examination, late in the 

 season, whether colonies are going to 

 die generally or not, because the pollen 

 in the combs will not decide the future 

 result; much depending upon its po- 

 sition in the combs at the dangerous 

 time, and its attractiveness as com- 

 pared with the honey as they may exist 

 then, also much upon the frequency 

 with which the bees can have a thor- 

 ough voiding flight, and the excess of 

 the cold, which governs to a large ex- 

 tent the amount of food consumed. 



In a large majority of the cases 

 where sugar syrup has been used, the 

 reports have been favorable. I can 

 only account for it on the supposition 

 that the quantity and quality of the 

 food was such that it was much pre- 

 ferred to the pollen, and exclusively 

 used, and during the process of feed- 

 ing much of the pollen that would 

 have otherwise been left, was con- 

 sumed or removed. In those cases 

 where bees fed exclusively on sugar 

 syrup have died with the disease, the 

 pollen was eaten, sugar or no sugar. 



The best method of prevention is 

 what interests me most. I have given 

 the subject but little thought as yet, 

 owing to the summer's rush of work, 

 and I do not think of any method suf- 

 ficiently speedy, safe, cheap and sure 

 to warrant its adoption in preference 

 to taking the chances of success with- 

 out cost or trouble. 



It occurs to me that Mr. Grimm's 

 plan of inserting two full frames of 

 sealed honey (previously stored away 

 for the purpose) in the center of the 

 brood chamber is good, I would add the 

 following precautions : have these two 

 combs free, or nearly so, of pollen. 

 Remove three combs containing the 

 most pollen, leaving the space in the 

 center of the hive, in which space in- 

 sert the two honey frames. The extra 

 space, as recommended by many, I 

 think I would like very well, though I 

 would not create it were I not going 

 through a more important manipula- 

 tion, in which case I could do so as 

 well as not. 



Another, and perhaps better plan, 

 would be to remove the three frames 

 containing pollen as before, and insert 

 the same number of empty, straight, 

 all-worker combs in their place, and 

 feed them full of properly made sugar 

 syrup. This should be done immedi- 

 ately after all gathering is over, and 

 noi later, and the feed should be given 

 from the top, and directly over these 

 three center combs, from a capacious 

 feeder, or several feeders if smaller, 

 to the end that the feed may be taken 

 down and sealed up as soon as possible, 

 and care should be taken against inci- 

 ting the bees to robbing, which can be 

 avoided. If part of the stores are not 

 sealed no harm will result from it. 

 Place two bent sticks over the tops and 

 under the cloth or cushion thus, •— , to 

 give the bees free access among the 

 combs during the latter part of win- 

 ter. This plan might pay even in large 

 apiaries, especially if the colonies 

 needed more stores than they had on 

 hand. 



I think even feeding light colonies 

 with white sugar syrup is largely a 

 preventive of dysentery. While honey 

 of any color or flavor might be as good 

 a food when eaten, still I suspect that 

 sugar syrup has an extra attraction for 

 the bees, that induces them to use it 

 to the exclusion of pollen. 



Some simpler, cheaper and less com- 

 plicated method of causing the bees to 

 abstain from eating pollen during all 



that period when they are obliged to 

 semi-hibernate, is what I most desire. 



I still believe that there is a differ- 

 ence in races and strains of bees in re- 

 gard to their wintering — bees that 

 breed earlier are in most danger. My 

 colon ies that were not packed wintered 

 best, but were summered in another 

 field. More than nine-tenths of the 

 bees about here perished, while I saved 

 over one-third of mine. Those in box 

 hives died worse from some cause — 

 probably chance. 



Dowagiac, Mich. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



My Early Experience with Bees. 



MRS. M. L. PARSONS. 



We began the season of 1870 with 2 

 colonies of Italian bees, one of which 

 was quite inferior. Our expenses, in- 

 cluding cost of bees were $24.25. Re- 

 compense for our labor was 1 10 lbs. , box 

 honey, 60 lbs. in frames, and increased 

 stock to 6 colonies ; left them for win- 

 ter 7 frames of good capped honey ; 

 put chaff cushion on inner side frames ; 

 filled covers with chaff, and packed a 

 foot or more of straw around and over 

 them. They took but one general 

 flight, Jan. 4. We opened them April 

 1 ; they were bringing some pollen ; 

 inferior queen had but a handful of 

 bees. One young queen, superseded 

 by a laying worker, gave me much 

 trouble ; remaining 4 had brood in all 

 stages, some capped ; 1 colony killed 

 the queen in April, so we had. May 1, 

 3 good colonies, and 2 queenless ones. 

 We then bought of the Misses Wil- 

 kins, lOcolonies of as beautiful Italians 

 as one could wish. With 2 sample 

 hives, frames, etc., they cost us, de- 

 livered at our station, % of a mile 

 from home, §149.74 cts. Our hives, 

 frames, sections, section frames, ship- 

 ping crates, separators, 4-frame Ever- 

 ett extractor, etc., brought our to- 

 tal expenses to $341.70, all but sec- 

 tions being a permanent investment. 

 From the 19 colonies with which we 

 began in 1880, we have 847 1 4 lbs. comb, 

 530 lbs. extracted honey, 11?4 lbs. wax, 

 and have increased to 47 colonies, 

 each of which made from 30 to 35 lbs. 

 of good capped honey. When packed, 

 Nov. 8, some queens too, had a little 

 brood and some eggs. We bridged 

 over entrances, packed 8 inches of hay 

 in front, 12 or more at the back, and 

 filled entire space between the hives 

 (about 3 feet), with hay ; have a duck 

 sheet, woolen blanket and cotton quilt 

 over frames. A good tight roof pro- 

 tects them all. Every queen has a 

 name and number, my book giving 

 credit to each the work of her own 

 colony. Our dark bees gave best re 

 turns, " Nettie Carr" with 104 10-16 

 lbs. comb honey, besides some ex- 

 tracted. We get 16 cts. for comb, and 

 12^2 for extracted honey, at Bay City. 

 There was considerable buckwheat 

 within reach of our bees, but either it 

 secreted no honey, or the bees liked 

 other plants better, for we have no 

 dark honey, some of the last taken be- 

 ing as white as linden. We took 

 every section from the hive as soon as 

 finished ; at close of the season ex- 

 tracted from unfinished sections. Use 

 .l^xiii, sections; adopted Miss Wil- 

 kins style of hive, the 10- frame Ameri- 

 can, with Doolittle hive for surplus 

 honey, enlarged to take American 

 frame. 



We have used the Van Deusen 

 foundation, both in frames and sec- 

 tions, successfully. Used at the last 

 sheets that nearly filled sections, and 

 like those best. Shall try the Dun- 

 ham foundation this season coming. 



We lost some young queens, by 

 their either not returning at all. or to 

 wrong hive. I rescued 2 that were 

 balled, and put them in the right hive; 

 had 5 queens fly from frames while in 

 mv hand, 2 of which were laying, re- 

 turned, but the 3 " foolish virgins" 

 I never sawagain. We united several 

 colonies without loss, by use of atomi- 

 zer, using oil of spruce cut with alco- 

 hol, and reduced with water, and 

 sprayed all the bees and the hive well, 

 and they gave us no trouble ; placed a, 



