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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Local Convention Directory. 



1886. Time and place of Meeting. 



May 5, 6.— Texas State, at McKinney, Tex. 



B. F. Carroll, Sec, Dresden, Tex. 



May 11.— Cortland Union, at Cortland, N. Y. 



D. F. Shaltuck, Sec, Homer, N. Y. 



May 18.— Central Michigan, at N. Lansing, Mich. 

 E. W. Wood. Sec. N. Lansing. Mich. 



May 20.— Wis. Lake Shore Center, at Kiel, Wis. 

 Ferd Zastrow, Sec, Millhome, Wis. 



May 25.— N.W.llls. & S.W.Wis.. at Pecatonica. 111. 

 J. Stewart, Sec, Rock City, Ills. 



Aug. 31.— Stark County, at Canton, O. 



Mark Thomson, Sec, Canton, O. 



Oct. 12— 14.— North Aaierican. at Indianapolis, Ind. 

 F. L. Dougherty. Sec. Indianapolis, Ind. 



Oct. 19. 20.— Illinois Central, at Mt. Sterling, Ilia. 

 J. M. Hambaugh, Sec. Spring, Ills. 



Dec. 1, 2.— Michigan State, at Ypsilanti, Mich. 



H. D. Cutting, Sec, Clinton, Mich. 



|y In order to have this table complete. Secre- 

 taries are requested to forward full particulars of 

 time and place of future meetings.— Kd. 





strong Nuclei— J. F. Latham,(29— 

 29), CumberlaiicL 9 Maine, on April 

 26, 1886, says : 



My bees have wintered finely. I 

 never had them winter better. Three 

 nuclei colonies, with not more than a 

 quart of bees in each, are as strong as 

 last fall, and are building up vigor- 

 ously, having been favored for a week 

 with very warm weather, for the 

 season. 



Good Season Expected. — W. V. 



Whitney, Waucoma,t5 Iowa, on April 

 23, 1886, says : 



Bees are a-booming. I put 99 colo- 

 nies into the cellar on Nov. 14, 1885, 

 and on April 9, 1886, I tools 94 colonies 

 out in good condition, except 8 that 

 were queenless, and those I doubled 

 up with others. The weather is warm 

 and nice. We have not had a frost 

 since April 8. I thinl? that my bees 

 have flown every day since they were 

 taken from the cellar. Every thing 

 bids fair for a good honey season. 

 One colony that is on scales gained 4}^ 

 pounds yesterday. 



Italianizing Bees.— W. J. Cullinan, 

 Mt. Sterlinff,-KD Ills., on April 23, 1886, 

 writes : 



Having commenced the work of 

 Italianizing my apiary, I will give my 

 success thus far. First, I purchased 

 a choice Italian queen, and introduced 

 her to a full colony with success, as 

 follows : I caught and caged the 

 queen in the colony to which 1 wished 

 to give her, leaving her caged 9 hours; 

 at the end of that time I took her out 

 and put my new (jueen in the same 

 cage, leaving her there 24 hours. I 

 then liberated her about 6 o'clock in 

 the evening. On examination the 

 next morning. I found her attending 

 quietly to business, and apparently in 



fully harmony with her large family. 

 She has since been doing good work. 

 Yesterday (it being the 6th day after 

 her introduction) I took out three 

 frames containing eggs and young 

 larvffi, and placed them in a strong 

 cjolony after depriving them of their 

 queen ; crowding the bees into six 

 Langstroth frames. I receive the 

 AsLERiC'AN Bee Journal regularly 

 every Wednesday, and though my 

 subscription is not half expired, I 

 consider I have already received more 

 than my dollar's worth. 



Beautiful Weather for Bees.— Thos. 

 Stokes, Minesing, Out., on April 20, 

 1886, writes : 



We are having most beautiful 

 weather here now, the mercury the 

 last tew days ranging from 70° to 80" 

 in the shade. Bees have been carry- 

 ing in pollen, and now they are 

 bringing in some honey. My colonies 

 are very healthy, and most of them 

 are strong, after being wintered in a 

 clamp packed with sawdust. I put 

 the first of them away on Nov. 1, 1885, 

 and put them out the last of March — 

 rather early, but I was afraid of their 

 being short of stores, as the last fall 

 was very poor for honey. Three colo- 

 nies had died from starvation, and I 

 since have found some that were 

 queenless, thus leaving 23 colonies 

 from 32 put away. These are the 

 increase from 3 colonies in the spring 

 two years ago. 



Fine Weather for Bees.— C. W. 



Dayton, Bradford, c$ Iowa, on April 

 20, 1886, says : 



Since the cold weather, which 

 ended on April 8, we have had the 

 warmest weather (from 65- to 85° 

 above) of any which I can remember 

 at this time of the year. It appears 

 like midsummer, and the bees are 

 rolling in the pollen from morning 

 till night. What I am afraid of is, 

 that it will cause them to extend the 

 brood so much that if we get a cold 

 snap there will be a great deal that 

 may be destroyed. 



An Apology.— J. E. Pond, Jr., Fox- 

 boro,o* Mass.. writes : 



Rev.Mr. Clarke arraigns myself— and 

 justly so — on page 246. I am always 

 desirous of keeping within the bounds 

 of courtesy in discussion, but in the 

 case to which Bro. Clarke refers, I 

 frankly admit that I overstepped 

 them. I trust that Bro. Clarke will ac- 

 cept my apology in the same spirit it 

 is made, when I say to him that the 

 words he alludes to were penned upon 

 the impulse of the moment, as a 

 figure of speech, without any basis 

 therefor so far as any articles of his 

 are concerned, and without thinking 

 of the inference that might be drawn. 

 All I meant to say was, that a clergy- 

 man had, without a chance to test the 

 matter, made a very favorable criti- 

 cism in favor of a theoretical ques- 

 tion. I own up to the error, and will 

 endeavor not to repeat it ; and in this 

 case I will sav, that I have never seen 



anything in Bro. Clarke's articles 

 that does in any way show that he 

 presumes upon the fact that he is a 

 clergyman, to give strength to the 

 point he argues. I might have apolo- 

 gized in a private letter, but I deem 

 that an apology to be of value should 

 be made as publicly as the offense. 



Clover Mainly Killed, etc.— Ira 



Barber, De Kalb Junction, 5 N. Y., 

 on April 21, 1886, writes : 



The bees in this locality have win- 

 tered nicely, as a rule, and are having 

 a lively time on the willow and soft 

 maple, which the last few days of hot 

 weather have rushed into bloom. The 

 bees have no time for pluiulering, but 

 go directly to work, and have all they 

 can attend to. I finished putting out 

 bees to-day, and I found a loss of 12}^ 

 per cent.— all my own fault, by care- 

 lessness in leaving two cellar-windows 

 out when the bees were put in, and 

 the cellar was closed. I have known 

 all winter that the temperature was 

 too low, and what the trouble was I 

 did not know, until I took the bees 

 out and found the windows lying on 

 the wall. The outlook for a crop of 

 honey is far from favorable in North- 

 ern New York. We have had but 

 little snow here all winter, and the 

 fields have been bare, or nearly so, all 

 the time, so that the clover is badly 

 killed out ; and that is our main de- 

 pendence for a large crop of honey. 



The "October Theory."— W. Z. 

 Hutchinson.Rogersville, 6 Mich., says: 



Mr. Bittenbender seems to possess 

 the happy faculty of drawing appar- 

 ently correct conclusions from false 

 premises. At least some of his premi- 

 ses appear to be false. He says: 

 " Bees in their natural state in the 

 woods keep themselves in the trunks 

 of trees 4 to 6 inches thick, where the 

 autumnal sun cannot disturb them in 

 their October and November repose. 

 We thwart nature's ways when we 

 put our bees into a %-inch hive, and 

 let the sun beat upon it till cold 

 weather comes, disturbing the bee in 

 its natural repose." This is the sec- 

 ond theory that has been built upon 

 the false assumption that bees in l3ee- 

 trees, " in a state of nature," winter 

 better than in the modern apiary or 

 cellar. The " hibernation theory " 

 may be true in the sense in which its 

 aiitlior MOJO uses the word ; and I cer- 

 tainly agree with the author of the 

 " October theory " in thinking it im- 

 portant that bees be packed early, 

 or else put into the cellar early ; but, 

 bee-keepers, do not build your theories 

 upon bee-trees. 



Getting Ready to Swarm —2— J. 



L. Ilaworth, (1— 7),Georgetown,oIll., 



on April 26, 1886, says : 



I have 7 colonies of Italian bees in 

 Langstroth hives. One colony has 

 had drones flying for several days, 

 and upon examination to-day I found 

 new queen-cells about ^i of an inch 

 long. They have just been booming 

 since warm weather came. 



