Mar. 30. 1899. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



195 



free by the formation of nuclei, as sug-g-ested above. These 

 should be kept in very close boxes, where it is cool, so that 

 "they will not melt down, or else hung in cool, lig'hted rooms 

 so as not to touch each other. 



I have kept combs over, year after year, in both these 

 ■ways. In practicing- the first method we must be sure that 

 no moth-eggs are on the combs, or, if we are uncertain, we 

 must examine, and if necessarj- must use sulphur fumes to 

 destroy these comb destroyers. 



In one respect California is very fortunate in her mis- 

 fortune ; when these seasons of disaster come to us, we 

 know for weeks long before the season opens, that no har- 

 vest will come, and so we can plan to make the best of our 

 ill-fortune, and can set about some other work to busy our 

 hands and fill the larder. 



THE FROST — ANOTHER C.\I,AMITV. 



They say calamities never come singly, and Southern 

 California seems to illustrate the truth of the saying the 

 present season. Two weeks ago we had a bad freeze-up. 

 The thermometer reacht successively, for four nights. 27 

 •degrees, Fahr., 25 degrees, Fahr., 20 degrees, Fahr., and 26 

 ■degrees) Fahr. In the East that would be thoug-ht mild, but 

 here in our citrus groves it borders on the disastrous. The 

 oranges and orange-trees seem not much injured, but the 

 lemons, and the lemon-trees, are very greatly damaged. 

 The trees look as if the blight or a fire had IJeen among 

 them. It is also reported that bees suffered, but as they 

 could fly days during the time. I think it was more probably 

 depleted larders that victimized the bees. 



Los Angeles Co., Calif., Feb. 24. 



Cold Winter for Bees— Other Matters. 



BY MRS. L. C AXTELL. 



I FEAR it has been too cold for bees in this reg^ion, as 

 they were not strong in numbers, each colony being 

 rather small. If the winter had not been colder than the 

 past few winters, I think they would have wintered all 

 right, and possibly they may }-et where they were packt 

 with chaff. Ours had filled their brood-nests very full of 

 honey, and the bees lookt and acted healthy, so we con- 

 cluded to let them go without uniting them, as uniting is 



Mrs. L. C. A.vlfll. 



inot a very satisfactory piece of business, and certainly not 

 very desirable work. 



'S3 The bees that are in the cellar I think will be all right, 

 «ven if the colonies were small. There seemed to be in our 

 whole 155 colonies scarcely any that we could call strong ; 

 yet, as I said before, they lookt and acted healthy late in 

 the season, but just about the time tl ey began to gather 

 fall honey they had dwindled down v eak. The cause, I 

 think, was from getting so much peach-juice. The last of 



July and first of August our peach-orchard was alive with 

 bees on the early peaches ; they would not only suck the 

 juice out of the ripe ones, but from those that were rotting. 

 Often we would see a peach almost covered with bees, and 

 they seemed stupid sometimes, not sick, but loth to leave 

 the peach, and often would stay all night on the peaches. 

 But on looking into the hives and in front of them, there 

 were no dead bees, and as they were almost out of honey we 

 thought it best to let them alone. I now think it would have 

 been a good plan to have fed them some white sugar each 

 day, to mix in with their peach-juice. The honey in the 

 hives had a decided peach flavor, and was rather dark. 



When the fall flowers blossomed they almost let the 

 peaches alone, so by the time the neighbors' seedling 

 peaches ripened they did not bother them much. It was the 

 early budded kinds they bothered the most. One kind, es- 

 pecially after several days of rain and damp weather, rot- 

 ted badly, the bees working on them to their harm. 



I am glad that we took great pains to pack those out-of- 

 doors with chaff, the very best we knew how, and set them 

 up from the bottom-board about an inch, as we always do. 



This has been the coldest winter here since 1885, when 

 the mercury went down to 28 degrees below zero. Last 

 week Thursday it reacht 30 degrees below, and every night 

 since has been from 15 to 25 degrees below, so we will prob- 

 ably have no peaches another season. I hope the peach- 

 juice will make no difference with the wintering of the 

 bees ; I think they did not store enough to affect their win- 

 ter honey, but I think it caused them to dwindle some, but 

 not so much as they would have dwindled if they had not 

 gotten the juice, as they had failed to fill the hives in the 

 spring full enough to carry them thru and cause the queen 

 to keep her hive full of bees. The peach-juice caused the 

 queen to go to laying eggs in the fall two or three weeks 

 sooner than she otherwise would have done. But the juice 

 seemed to sicken or cause the old bees to become less in 

 numbers, altho I could see no dead bees anywhere. 



Last spring opened up promisingly, and we got every- 

 thing in readiness for a crop of honey, but the weather was 

 so cool, wet and cloudy that flowers, especially white clover, 

 failed to secrete nectar. We had but two swarms, and they 

 were more supersedures than natural swarms : but half a 

 dozen colonies or so went to work in the sections, so we 

 secured only about 30 or 40 pounds of honey from the whole 

 apiary of 155 colonies. I think we would not have had that 

 if it had not been for the honey in some of the supers we 

 put back on the hives in the spring. I think we got the 

 least surplus honey the past year we ever did, tho we had to 

 feed the bees scarcely any — a few dollars' worth only — before 

 white clover bloomed. Warren Co., 111., Feb. 15. 



Prices of Honey Not Made by Law(?). 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLB. 



DO not conclude that it is because soniethingr is out of joint politically 

 that you gret such a low price for your honey, or have such a hard 

 time in the world.— Rev. E. T. Abbott, in American Bee Journal. 

 It is impossible at this time to form any idea of the probable 

 effect of Cuban honey on the American markets. If the present duty 

 should be removed, it is easy to see that it mi^-ht be a serious competitor 



if it were sold for less money, as it could be with the duty removed 



So far Uncle Sam has made no move to annex Cuba; and unless he 



does there is no reason why the duty should not remain on Cuban honey; 

 and even if annexation should take place, it does not necessarily follow 

 that Cuban honey will come here free. — E. R. Root, in Gleanings. 



Now it seems to the writer that law has nothing to do with increasing- 



the price of the produce of any individual or class of individuals 



"While the law has nothing- to do with hi^h or low prices, it does have 

 somethingr to do with preventing fraud and deception.— Rev. E. T. Ab- 

 bott, in American Bee Journal. 



"While the price of almost every aprricultural commodity has declined 

 g-reatly durinir the past 30 years, official salaries and ta.xes have increast. 

 This applies to local. State and national affairs, and no political party 

 pledgees itself to reduce the big- salaries nor abate the hitrh taxes. — J. C, 

 Stephenson, in Free Press. 



Will the reader carefully go over the above quotations 

 from three noted men, until they are perfectly familiar with 

 what is said, and what would be the logical result of each 

 when carried to its legitimate end ? Having done this, let 

 us look at the matter a little to see if it is a fact which Mr. 

 Abbott is stating when he tells us what he does about the 

 price of produce (honey) not being made by law. 



God made the world and placed in it, and on it, all that 

 was necessary for (7// men, and this partis included by the 

 one word "land." In the true economic sense, the fish of 

 the sea, the fowls of the air, and the bees in their wild state 

 in a cave in the rocks or hollow tree are included in the term 

 land, as well as the forests, mines and earth. But man 

 could not use or appropriate any of these things without an 



