698 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Local Convention Directory. 



1886. Time and place of Meeting. 



Nov. 24, 25.— Illtnois Central, at Mt. Sterling, Ills. 

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



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



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

 1887. 

 c-ian. 12.— Nebraska State, at Lincoln, Nebr. 



H. N. Patieraon, Sec, Humboldt, Nebr. 



fSr In order to have this table complete. Secret 

 liuiesare requested to forward full particulars of 

 time and place of future meetings.- HD. 



s£}iSW^MMPAf 



Scent of Honey.— J. Chapman, (7), 

 Woodville,K3 Mich., ou Oct. 11, 1886, 

 writes : 



I was somewhat surprised when I 

 read Prof. Cook's answer to Query 

 313. I had always been told from 

 boyhood that bees would scent their 

 honey with peppermint when gather- 

 ing nectar from that plant. In the 

 year of 1884 I extracted 100 pounds 

 from the hives in my apiary, that was 

 nicely flavored withpeppermint. The 

 nectar was obtained from the pepper- 

 mint plant growing along the creeks 

 about a mile from my apiary — and no 

 peppermint bottle concerned in the 

 matter. 



Infertile ftueen.— Louis Werner, 

 Edwardsville, ? Ills., ou Oct. 19, 1886, 

 says : 



I send a queen that has not laid an 

 egg in four months, and I wish that 

 Prof. Cook would give her a trial test, 

 for it is something that has never 

 before come under my observation. 

 She was hatched on June 2.5, 1886. 



[As will be seen on page 77 of my 

 " Bee-Keepers' Guide," I mention 

 this as an occasional peculiarity of 

 queen-bees, and comment upon it. 

 That queen-bees should be occasion- 

 ally infertile is no more surprising 

 than that other animals, even to the 

 highest, should be so. It is due to 

 some abnormal or defective pecu- 

 liarity of the queen's reproductive 

 organs. — A. J. Cook.] 



Bees Still at Work.-Mrs. O. T. 



Jackson, Sigourney.o, Iowa, on Oct. 

 20, 1886, writes : 



We are having lovely weather for 

 October, and very little frost yet ; 

 nearly every tiling has the appearance 

 of summer. The white clover is in 

 bloom, and the bees are quite busy 

 gathering honey from the red clover. 

 On Oct. 12 I visited the apiary of Mr. 

 Sears, of Thornburg, Iowa, 17 miles 

 from here. He is a member of our 

 State Association, andapractical bee- 

 keeper. He has about 800 colonies, 

 and his son, who is also an expert, 



very kindly offered to show me 

 through his apiary, honey-house, and 

 the rows of beautiful honey. Joining 

 this is his work-shop where he makes 

 all his hives, frames, etc. I also saw 

 the cellar where he winters his bees, 

 and took notes of his manner of ven- 

 tilation, etc. He is a reader of the 

 Bee Journal. Mr. Sears does not 

 paint his hives, as he thinks that they 

 retain moisture, and there is more 

 dead bees in the spring in a hive that 

 is painted than in one that is not 

 painted. I would like to know 

 whether Prof. Cook thinks it makes 

 any difference. 



Report for 1886.— W.M.Woodward, 



Custer,o+ Ills., on Oct. 12, 1886, says : 



The best honey flow of the season 

 was from the yellow willow, and the 

 honey is nice. It is losing the bitter- 

 ness of the flavor with age. The white 

 clover crop was prolonged, but slow 

 and tedious, and gathered with much 

 labor for both man and bees, but a 

 fair crop was secured. Heart's-ease 

 only yielded surplus honey about two 

 weeks, and then slow, and the crop is 

 light. All around we have perhaps 

 a little over an average crop. My 

 best colony of brown German bees 

 gathered 190 pounds of comb honey in 

 one-pound sections. My total crop 

 was 1,400 pounds of comb honey and 

 about 300 pounds of extracted honey 

 from 17 colonies, and increased to 54 

 colonies, all in good condition for 

 winter. 



Malignant Foul Brood.— A. H. 



Noble, Nashville, 5 Tenn., on Oct. 18, 

 1886, writes : 



I purchased some 3 and 4 frame 

 nuclei last spring and gave them 

 empty combs. They built up rapidly, 

 and did well during the honey flow of 

 May and June, but since then they 

 have been on the decline, gradually 

 dwindling. Through my ignorance I 

 supposed the queens were not doing 

 their duty, therefore I commenced 

 feeding them liberally, to " stimu- 

 late " the queens, as a bee-man would 

 say. But all to no purpose. The 

 queens looked fine, and I always 

 found plenty of eggs in the cells, but 

 they never hatched, became rotten, 

 the grub turning to a brown, ropy 

 substance, very offensive to the 

 smell. It finally dawned upon me 

 that it was foul brood. In fact I was 

 pretty well satisfied that this was 

 what ailed them. So in my helpless- 

 ness I sent for a practical bee-friend 

 of mine, who came over with his 

 bound volumes of bee-papers, and 

 proceeded at once to diagnose the 

 case. The first hive we opened con- 

 vinced him. Says he, " I would not 

 have my apiary in this fix for $.500." 

 But he could tell me nothing to do for 

 it, but to destroy them all. Well, I 

 have been reading up remedies ever 

 since, and I concluded that I must do 

 something. The disease has left 

 them all more or less weak, so I have 

 decided to unite them, making 2 

 strong colonies out of my 6 weak ones; 

 for if they are curable, I can operate 

 on 2 colonies better than I could 6. I 



am now at " the end of my rope," and 

 if any of the veterans in the business 

 can suggest anything that will be of 

 any service to me, I would be pleased 

 to hear from them. There is no doulDt 

 that mine is a well developed case of 

 malignant foul brood, corresponding 

 precisely with all descriptions given 

 of it. I have only 6 colonies, but if 

 I am advised to destroy them, they 

 shall go. 



[The only safe way for an amateur 

 is to destroy hive, bees, and all, at 

 once. It is too dangerous for such to 

 experiment with foul brood in its 

 malignant form.— Ed.] 



Only Half a Crop.-H. L. Wells, 

 Defiance,^ C, on Oct. 9, 1886, says : 



I commenced last spring with 47 

 colonies, sold 3, doubled up the bal- 

 ance until I had 40 average colonies. 

 I increased them to 100 colonies, and 

 averaged 50 pounds per colony, spring 

 count, 6.50 pounds of comb honey, the 

 balance being extracted. Owing to 

 the drouth the honey- flow ceased 

 three weeks sooner than usual. The 

 basswood was a total failure here. 

 To average up, there was not over a 

 half crop'in this section. I think I 

 did the best of anyone in this locality, 

 but it took -hard work, and I did not 

 let the bees lose a minute while the 

 flow lasted. Besides the honey that I 

 took off, I have an abundance to win- 

 ter my 100 colonies without feeding a 

 pound of sugar or anything else. ^ 



Bee-Keeping in Florida. — John 

 Craycraft, Altoona.0 Fla., on Oct. 6, 

 1886, writes : 



I find that I cannot keep bees with- 

 out the American Bee Journal. 

 Its scientific teachings apply to this 

 climate if double-walled chaff hives 

 and cellar wintering do not. Our 

 winters here do not require such fix- 

 tures. I use a single-walled Sim- 

 plicity hive, loose bottom-boards, and 

 the best of tin roof, and all painted 

 white. I also use 10 frames, 93^x13)^ 

 inches. This size suits me and my 

 methods and wants better than any 

 other. I reared queens early in the 

 season, then for comb and extracting, 

 tiering them at times to four stories. 

 For comb honey I use cases holding 

 18 one-pound sections, tiering them 

 up as the bees progress in filling 

 them, always placing the empty cases 

 under the one partly filled. I work 

 my frames close in the brood-cham- 

 ber — ten frames in a space of 13 

 inches; but alone for extracting I use 

 nine in the same space. I work all of 

 my nuclei for rearing queens in the 

 same size hives, only one story. When 

 I double up I place the queenless 

 colony over the one having the queen, 

 leaving the enameled cloth between 

 them, only turning up a little in one 

 corner so that the bees will find their 

 way below slowly. All will be right 

 in a day or two. Very few bees will 

 return to the old stand. The combs 

 can be changed to suit the colony, 

 and the cloth removed from between 

 them on the third day. 



