596 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



CONDUCTED BY 



Floyd, Hunt Co., Tex. 



Producing 1 Honey and Rearing 1 Queens 



1. Is it profitable to combine honey- 

 production with queen-rearing in the 

 South ? 



2. Is it profitable to produce comb 

 honey in the South ? 



Thorn dale, Tex. C. B. Bankston. 



I think it will pay to combine honey- 

 production with queen-rearing, provided 

 you do not run either too extensively, 

 so that your time might nearly all be 

 taken up with the one, and the other 

 be neglected. But you might make both 

 profitable, and then you have "two 

 strings to your bow," so that if one 

 should fail, you would have the other 

 to fall back on. Don't you see ? ,1 don't 

 think it sound policy to bestow all our 

 labors upon one occupation, but mix up 

 a little, and we have more chances to 

 get a living, and the result will be less 

 failures. 



I am a poultry fancier, but my whole 

 time has lately been taken up in the 

 apiary, so my poultry must go ; but I 

 produce some honey, and raise our veg- 

 etables, and enough corn and oats for 

 my cows and horses ; in fact, we usually 

 raise our bread and meat at home, then 

 we are more sure to have it. 



2. Yes, I do think now that it will pay 

 to produce comb honey in the South. 



Bee-Keeping in North Carolina. 



I do not think we have many intelli- 

 gent bee-keepers in North Carolina. I 

 have not been keeping bees very long 

 for myself, but I have been with them 

 all my life, as my father kept bees, but 

 he kept them in the old box-hives, and 

 robbed them once a year, and that is 

 about all he ever did to them. If they 

 died, it was all right, and if they lived 

 it was so, too. However, he generally 



kept a great many, and got a great deal 

 of honey, even if he did not give them 

 any attention. Most bee-keepers in 

 North Carolina to-day are keeping them 

 just as he did. 



For the past two years I have been 

 trying to post myself by reading the dif- 

 ferent works on bees, such as "Cook's 

 Manual," " Doolittle on Queen-Rearing," 

 etc. I have about 18 colonies in Sim- 

 plicity hives, and thought I would get 

 some pay for the work and attention I 

 had given them this season, but I have 

 not taken any honey at all, I might say ; 

 and, besides, almost all of my bees are 

 now in very poor condition, and will re- 

 quire a great deal of care and attention 

 to keep them alive until spring. 



Just across the street from me is a 

 very old man who keeps bees on nearly 

 the same principles as my father kept 

 them years ago — possibly he has made 

 a very few slight improvements — and he 

 is about 70 years old. He told me he 

 never saw such a poor season in all his 

 life. In the spring, when our honey- 

 plants were ready, it rained all the time, 

 and the bees could not do anything. 

 Sometime in May, when fruit and black- 

 berries were in bloom, I put on my hives 

 about 500 one-pound sections, and the 

 bees started off in all of them in grand 

 shape, and I was so much encouraged ; 

 but the rain commenced, and kept up 

 all the spring and first part of the sum- 

 mer, and the bees got the sections just 

 about half full of comb, then stopped, 

 and have done nothing since. Usually 

 at this season of the year we have a 

 good flow from what we call "aster- 

 weed" here, but it seems to be very 

 much taller than usual this season, and 

 the bees have not done anything at all 

 on it yet. Very soon now it will be too 

 cool for them to do anything with it, if 

 it does open. 



I will try to keep just as many of my 

 bees alive as possible, and see what they 

 will do another season. I have had to 

 feed some of them all along since July 

 25. My mother is living with me, and 

 she is very old, and laughs at me for 

 feeding bees in the summer time. She 

 says she never heard of such a thing. 



In the mountain sections of our coun- 

 try, which is about 75 to 100 miles 

 above us, the bee-keepers are not as bad 

 off as we are here, as they have taken 

 some honey, but nothing like our aver- 

 age crop. Those people up there are all 

 the old-time bee-keepers, and it is funny 

 to see some of their honey when they 

 bring it to market. From the looks of 

 it, we presume they use only the box- 

 hives, and they just cut out anything as 



