THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



491 



quite an important prospect. Several 

 years ago I began to make the test 

 with about titty Russian mulberry- 

 trees, and now I have many thousands 

 of them, finding them perfectly hardy 

 enough to stand our cold climate. 

 They are excellent fastgrowers,which 

 furnished me food for about forty 

 thousand silk-worms, producing a 

 fine, good quality of silk, which finds 

 a ready sale this summer. I find it 

 very interesting, pleasant and light 

 work, similar to handling bees. 

 Nearly 50,000 persons are engaged 

 now in this new industry, but there 

 is room yet for 100,000 more to supply 

 our 380 silk mills with raw silk, be- 

 sides the many new ones which will 

 be started. 



Bees Doing Well.— P. L. Gibson, 

 Muscatine, o* Iowa, on July 23, 1886, 

 says : 



Bees are doing well in this locality. 

 I started with 22 colonies in the 

 spring, and I have just doubled the 

 number, all now being strong colonies. 

 My last swarm was on June 24. 

 White clover honey was pretty plenti- 

 ful, but lasted only a short time, 

 mostly being consumed by young 

 bees. We have had no rain for four 

 weeks. Bees are gathering some 

 honey-dew, and are working morn- 

 ings and evenings. I have taken off 

 about 500 pounds, and there is that 

 much more in the hives ready for 

 capping. Should we have a rain 

 soon we will get a bountiful crop of 

 fall honey. 



What? What? — J. H. Hassler, 

 De Pue, 6 Ills. ,on July 29, 1886, writes : 



My nice white sections of honey are 

 nearly all spoiled by being filled 

 around the edge with some very dark 

 honey, having the appearance of 

 muddy water. From what is it gath- 

 ered V I have some sunflowers in the 

 garden for the first time, and as I 

 never before had such honey I thought 

 perhaps the bees got it from them. If 

 I find that they are the source, I will 

 cut them down at once. 



[Cultivated sunflowers are of no 

 value for honey, and may have caused 

 the trouble, though it might be traced 

 to some other bloom in the neighbor- 

 hood of your apiary.— Ed.] 



Are Bees a Nuisance ?— Marshall 

 Darling, Waterbury,? Conn., on July 

 23, 1886, wrote as follows : 



The trial of the suit against my 

 keeping bees (as mentioned on page 

 339), came off in the District Court 

 on June 28, before Judge Bradstreet. 

 It took about all day to try the case. 

 The Judge reserved his decision and 

 has not given it yet, and may not 

 until September, when the District 

 Court meets again. The plaintiff 

 could only prove in court that he had 

 lost only 12 days rent— one family 

 having moved out on May 13, and 

 another one moved in on May 25 and 

 paid the same rent. I still keep 12 

 colonies of bees. I have sold 1 1 colo- 



nies. There is no complaint from 

 them now. I never had bees do bet- 

 ter than they are doing now. This is 

 all the Waterbury JSvening American 

 said about the case: "To-day the 

 District Court heard the very inter- 

 esting case of George L. Stanley vs. 

 Marshall Darling, application for an 

 injunction to prevent the defendant 

 from keeping bees. The plaintiff's 

 house is situated close to where the 

 bees are kept, and it is claimed that 

 they are an injury." 



Very Dry Weather, etc.— D. G. 



Purvis, Forest City,>o Mo., on July 

 26, 1886, says : 



Bees have done very well here this 

 season. I commenced with 48 colo- 

 nies, have increased to 74 by natural 

 swarms, and so far I have taken 3,220 

 pounds of extracted honey, and about 

 100 pounds of comb honey, with from 

 300 to 500 now rfady to extract. It is 

 very dry here ; we have had no rain 

 for a month, and I fear it will cut our 

 fall crop short, which is usually good 

 here. 



Curing Foul Brood.— Dr. J. C. 



Thom, of Streetsville, Ontario, writes 

 this request for publication, on July 



28, 1886 : 



I would like to have the experience 

 recorded in the American Bee Jour- 

 nal of those who have tried the 

 Cheshire method of curing Bacillus 

 alvei, commonly called " foul brood." 

 a disease which is not unknown in 

 Canada. If those who reply have 

 succeeded, will they kindly tell us just 

 how they did it, and if it is a perm- 

 anent cure V 



[This is a good suggestion, and we 

 would like to record the modus oper- 

 andi if a cure was effected, as well as 

 the disappointments of those who 

 have experimented with it unsuccess- 

 fully, if such there are.- Ed.] 



Bee-Eeeping in Texas.— Jno. A. 

 Emison, Mission Valley ,*o Tex., on 

 July 21 , 1886, wrote : 



After five year's experience in the 

 handling of bees, I find much written 

 in the bee-papers and bee-manuals 

 that will not do in Western Texas. 

 Experience though often a hard tutor 

 is the one most to be relied upon. 

 There is a universal wail going up 

 from Western Texas. There is not 

 one pound of surplus honey, and most 

 of the colonies have died from starva- 

 tion. I have 40 remaining out of 120 

 in May. The cause was a cold, back- 

 ward spring, followed by a drought, 

 and the failure in the horse-mint. I 

 might for emphases of distress say 

 tetotal failure of mint. My experi- 

 ence has been, no mint, no surplus 

 honey. Thanks to a kind Providence 

 the promised later rains came. My 

 40 colonies are now on a perfect 

 "boom" from daylight until night, 

 which puts a stop to their flight. I 

 have been impressed with this fact, 

 as brought to my notice by this sad 

 loss in my apiary, viz : The fitness of 



the black bee for this locality. I was 

 congratulating myself upon having 

 my apiary so nearly Italianized, but 

 out of B pure black colonies I lost but 

 one. My strongest colonies are the 

 remaining 5 blacks. The advocates 

 for Italians contend that they work 

 earlier and later in the day, hence are 

 better honey-gatherers. I do not find 

 it so, but the reverse. The great ob- 

 jection I have to the black bee is its 

 disposition to rob. I am in no wise 

 discouraged. I have had quite a lot 

 of comb to render. I wish to thank 

 Mr. Demaree for the light he gave in 

 the Query Department on the subject 

 of wax-rendering. In fact I find more 

 information boUed down to a few 

 words in the " Queries'" than I ever 

 found in all the profuse and verbose 

 articles. It is the wheat without the 

 chaff. 



Bloom in Mississippi.— L. J. de So- 



botker, Riverton,*o Miss., on July 6, 

 1886, says : 



The weather has been and is still 

 very pleasant for the gathering of 

 nectar. We have now in full bloom 

 all around us the Indian corn, and 

 the bees are very busy on the tassels, 

 extracting the nectar, which is a very 

 clear and fine flavored sweet ; but not 

 having a tin evaporator prevents me 

 from taking this delicious honey sep- 

 arately, and as there are also several 

 other blooms at present there might 

 be some difiiculty in doing this, al- 

 though by examining the surplus 

 combs in the second story of the hives, 

 the corn honey can be distinctly 

 known,especially when having noticed 

 the direction of the flight of the bees 

 to the surrounding extensive corn- 

 fields on the eastern side of the 

 apiary; on the north, south and west 

 is woods. The other bloom is, but- 

 ton-bush, alders, milk-weed, white 

 clover, red clover, and a variety of 

 others, their names, as yet, unknown 

 to me ; also a few magnolias, these 

 latter having been planted and culti- 

 vated here, although about a hundred 

 miles further south there was pointed 

 out to me a place called Magnolia 

 Bluff , where they grow in great abund- 

 ance. There is no lack of variety of 

 bloom at present, still I find that the 

 gathering is not in proportion to the 

 strength of the colonies. Occasionally 

 we get a natural swarm, but they get 

 so high up on large trees that they 

 cannot be taken and hived in this 

 busy season, with 142 colonies for one 

 man. 



Convention Notices, 



jy The Cortiand Union Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation will hold a basliet picnic at l>ittie Yorlc, N. 

 Y., on Wednesday, Ausr. 18, 1886. AH interested 

 in bee-culture, with their families, are cordially 

 invited to attend and have a Kood time. 



D. T. SHATTUCK, Sec, Homer, N. T. 



13^ The Tllinois Centra) Bee-Keepers' 

 Association will hold its next meetlnj? at 

 Mt. Sterling, Ills., on Tuesday and Wednes- 

 day, Oct. 19-20, 1886, .1, M. Hambacoh, Sec. 



ly The next annua] meeting of the Michigan 

 State Bee-Keepers' Association will be held Id 

 TpsUanti, Mich., on Dec. 1 and 2, 1886. 



H. D. CCTTINQ, See. 



}^~ The next meeting of the Stark County Bee- 

 Keepers' Society will be held in Grange Hall, at 

 Canton, O., on Aug. 31 , 1886. M. Thomson, See. 



