1898. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



709 



San Pete, gave some good reports of large yields of honey this 

 seasi:u Id different counties in the State. 



Joshua Terry, of Draper, reported that the Utah honey 

 exhibit at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha was a 

 credit to the State and to the bee-industry. 



Many of our good-natured bee-keepers promise to attend 

 the bee-meetings, but they too often forget it. 



Reporter. 



No. 1.— The Care of Bees for Wintering. 



BY C. r. DADANT. 



For a number of years past we have had very good win- 

 ters for bees, and the losses have been small. This success is 

 likely to cause us to be less particular about putting the bees 

 in proper condition to go safely through the period of cold 

 weather that may usually be expected in this latitude. 



What are the necessary requirements lo safely winter a 

 colony of bees? In roy mind I divide these requirements un- 

 der five heads : 



1st. A sufficient number of bees. 

 2nd. A sufficient quantity of food. 

 3rd. Food of the proper quality. 

 4th. An occasional flight duriug cold weather. 

 5th. A certain amount of shelter. 



The first and main requirement is the number of bees. It 

 matters but little how well the other four reqirements may be 

 fulfilled, a handful of bees, in this latitude, cannot be safely 

 wintered, and in hard winters it requires a very strong colony 

 to safely go through the almost polar extremes of cold, which 

 are so often experienced, and which make us compare our 

 winters with those of Siberia. 



The number of bees which forms the colony at the begin- 

 ning of winter often depends upon circumstances entirely in- 

 dependent of the will or the management of the apiarist, and 

 we can therefore give but little advice on this point. Probably 

 he only time when the bee-keeper can be of any help to his 

 bees, to secure a sufficient amount of strength, is after a short 

 crop, when the bees have gathered so small an amount of 

 honey that they have been unable, tho probably willing, to 

 rear a sufficient supply of brood. By judicious feeding in 

 time, that is, before the opening of cold weather, quite an 

 amount of brood-rearing may be induced, and the strength of 

 the colony materially Increast by this means. 



To obtain this end. the feeding must be slow and regular, 

 for bees will breed mostly when they find food ; while if the 

 colony is strong, and the supply of honey only is needed, the 

 feeding should be as speedy as possible. It is very easy to 

 understand why breeding depends somewhat upon feeding. 

 The queen needs to be copiously fed, in order to lay a liberal 

 number of eggs daily. When the bees are at rest, and no 

 honey is harvested, she is not induced to eat much, for none 

 of the bees are loaded. But when honey is coming in, either 

 by artificial feeding or by natural sources, the queen Inces- 

 santly meets bees with a full honey-sac, that offer food to her, 

 and the egg-laying propensity is increast in her thereby. To 

 be sure, there are natural circumstances — weather and season 

 conditions — which will tend to prevent a ready production of 

 eggs at this season ; while the reverse of these conditions in 

 the spring would have the opposite effect; but aside from the 

 circumstances that are beyond the control of man, it Is not to 

 be doubted that much may be achieved towards increasing 

 the number of bees in a hive, previous to winter. 



Yet, there are seasons in which the concourse of circum- 

 stances have created peculiar conditions, and the hive is de- 

 pleted of its bees tho the harvest has been sufficiently plentiful 

 to fill the brood-combs with even more honey than is needed 

 for winter. As an Instance of this I will cite one fall, in which 

 our bees had to travel abouc two miles in order to harvest a 

 good supply of honey, aoj during which a number of quick 

 and unexpected day-Storms destroyed many of the little har- 

 vesters on the way to and from the field. Their numbers 

 diminisht so that there were not enough bees left in the hive 

 to help keep the brood warm, and the winter loss was tre- 

 mendoui. 



I rt member, also, buying a box-hive full of honey, years 

 ago, from an old-time bee-keeper. It appeared that a swarm 



was put in this hive during a good flow of clover, and the crop 

 was so plentiful that they filled the box from top to bottom. 

 As there was no room worth mentioning for brood, and the 

 queen was perhaps old, the colony had dwindled so that the re- 

 maining bees died at tho opening of winter, and It had 

 some 60 or 70 pounds of honey, very white and nice, with 

 not to exceed six square inches of empty comb at the bottom. 

 Such occurrences are not altogether unavoidable, especially 

 to the apiarist who keeps a close watch over his bees; but 

 they are possible, and when the conditions are discovered too 

 late no help can be given. 



Then there are other circumstances, some of which are 

 not yet fully understood by us, to cause colonies to dwindle 

 and become weak. Not more than two days ago (Oct. 26) I 

 was helping the boys to remove the supers preparatory to 

 packing the hives for winter, when we came to a colony of 

 bees— fine Italians— in which perhaps two handfuls of bees 

 were scattered about away from the cluster. In the super, as 

 well as in the body of the hive. This circumstance is unin- 

 telligible to me. The morning was cold and frosty, and, in 

 normal conditions, these bees should have been united to the 

 cluster at the bottom of the hive ; but as they were scattered 

 about they had become chilled and were likely to perish. 



We can therefore say that the quantity of bees necessary 

 to a good wintering is not always dependent upon the will or 

 care of the apiarist, but can only be improved by him to a 

 certain extent. 



In another article I will examine the other propositions 

 laid down at the beginning of this article. 



Hancock Co., 111. 



An Old-Time Large Yield— HistoricaL 



BY DR. E. GALLUP. 



On page 644, Mr. Cameron says he remembered long 

 ago that Dr. Gallup said that he (Gallup) got from one colony 

 50 pounds of honey per day. Mr. Cameron made a mistake 

 of 30 pounds, thanks to Dr. Mason for correcting him. 



Now I propose to get in some of my notions that crawled 

 through my noddle at that time. I had received my first 

 honey-extractor the season before, and of course had large 

 ideas. I was then using the Gallup 12 frame hive, and my 

 idea was to get up a large hive all on the ground floor, as I 

 did not wish to be compelled lo take off a top hive or super to 

 examine the breeding department, etc. So I built a hive to 

 hold 48 frames, 24 in each end. The division between each 

 apartment had an inch wide slot the whole length for the 

 bees to pass through, with a large portico (a la Langstroth) 

 at each end ; a half-inch entrance the whole width of the hive 

 at each end, a separate honey-board over each apartment, and 

 a movable roof over all. Of course, the entrances were man- 

 aged to suit the size of the colony. 



Early in May I hived my first swarm In that hive, and It 

 was a very large swarm, from my Adam Grimm stock of Ital- 

 ians. I inserted a division-board so as to conform the size of 

 hive to the capacity of the swarm, and confined them to one 

 apartment. My first intention was to hive two swarms in the 

 hive, but that queen turned out so prolific that she knockt my 

 intentions in the head. 



As soon as they commenced building drone-comb, I filled 

 out that apartment with full sheets of ready-made worker- 

 comb (for we had no foundation at that time), and alternated 

 empty combs between full combs of brood. The season hap- 

 pened to be just right, so the bees gathered sufficient to keep 

 up all operations in the hive, and still not sufficient for them 

 to store any amount in the way of the queen; and she occu- 

 pied the whole 24: fully, with brood and eggs. In short order. 

 I then removed the openiug between the two apartments, set 

 12 combs of brood in the other apartment, and filled all up 

 with ready-made worker-comb, mixt In promiscuously with 

 the brood. 



Now, understand what I have heretofore said, that my 

 Grimm stock of bees were longer-lived than ordinary bees. I 

 do not now recollect at what time the basswooa bloomed that 

 season, but this I do recollect, that at the time 1 had the 

 largest and most numerous colony of bees that I ever had in a 

 movable-comb hive. At night, when they quit work, there 

 would be a fair-sized swarm clustered in each portico, and 

 both entrances open to their full capacity, each one-half Inch 

 wide or deep, and 86 inches long. 



I had upland and very lowland basswood, any quantity of 

 it, near my apiary, and one variety blossomed two weeks later 

 than the oiher, which prolonged the basswood season; and 

 the weather could not possibly be better for 30 days in suc- 

 cesssion. I extracted from one apartment one day, and from 

 the other the next; did not extract from any combs that had 



