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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



April 13, 1899. 



■charg'e. Whole thing' a matter of climate. Nobody in the 

 North has any g-ood word for a north facing ; but presum- 

 ably in Cuba (if hives had to be left awhile without shade) 

 north facing- would be the only proper way. The matter is 

 very simple indeed. To get the morning sun and not much 

 else, face east. To get the most sun possible, face south. 

 To get the least possible, face north. If j-our honey mostly 

 comes in afternoons, and afternoons are apt to be too cool. 

 face west. 



MR. GKTAZ PROBABLY TWICE CORRECT. 



Cogitator agrees with Adrian Getaz, page 145, that dead 

 bees in the outer spaces, in out-door wintering, are dead of 

 cold — rest of the world to the contrarj' notwithstanding. 

 And quite possibly Mr. Getaz is correct in calling stimula- 

 tive feeding and brood-spreading two equivalents, either 

 one of which may be used, but not necessarily both at once. 

 'Tater's a little s'hy of both. 



BRUSHING HONEY INTO COMBS. 



Another way to get honey into empty combs for feeding 

 ■purposes — brush it in with a paint-brush. Maybe now that's 

 a good idea. Thanks to Mr. Bair, page 148. 



MARKETING HONEY — PECK'S PECK OF TROUBLE. 



Mr. Peck's peck of trouble, on page 149, is one where- 

 with many of us have been peckt — good local sale-route 

 patiently workt up (8 cents a pound), and, presto, a young- 

 ster strikes in at 7 cents. The satisfactorj- remedy is rather 

 hard to find. Mr. Peck thinks " edicating him " with bee- 

 journals, etc., only makes him worse — surer than ever that 

 Jie can get rich on 7-cent honey. Whatever we do, let's not 

 get mad and hate the boy in our hearts ; he's only at what 

 the world calls " business." I put my retail figure at 7 

 cents years ago, and the 6-cent boy has not yet turned up. 

 If he should, vay honey would be 6 cents directly. I admire, 

 rather than hope to imitate, the once-a-year visited route, 

 and the uniform 2S-pound package. Too late to make my 

 route stand that now, sure. Smaller packages and more 

 frequent visits are more to the mind of the average custo- 

 mer ; and once-formed habits do not change easily to habits 

 a little less agreeable. 



30,000 TONS OF COMB HONEY. 



Honey stati-stics (in this country at least) are apt to be 

 disgustingl)' unreliable, and far off from the truth ; but 

 when the big makers can be got to report how many sec- 

 tions the3' made we have somethingXo tie to. The 30,000,000 

 that Wisconsin made is a big lot. If we may credit all the 

 rest of the Union with as much more, we have an indirect 

 hint of 60,000,000 pounds of section honey. Page 152. 



DEFECT IN MICHIGAN'S FOUL BROOD BILL. 



That Michigan Foul Brood Bill looks excellent in the 

 main, but seems to have one gross fault. The minimum of 

 punishment under it is a 50-dollar fine : and this can be in- 

 flicted on a person not to blame at all. onh' densely ignor- 

 ant. Better split things. The 50-dollar minimum just so 

 as it ought to be for the man who resists the inspector ; but 

 for selling foul-broody bees or honey better let the court de- 

 cide just what the measure of guilt is. and not compel in- 

 justice by a minimum. Cogitator. 



The Omaha Convention Report ran through 14 num- 

 bers of the Bee Journal, beginning with the first number in 

 October, 1898. Now we have on hand quite a number of 

 complete sets of that report, which we will mail for just 10 

 cents each. That is, 14 copies of the American Bee Journal 

 for only a dime. There are doubtless a good many of our 

 new readers who Mrtll be glad to get that fine report. 



Langstroth on the Honey- Bee, revised by the Dadants, 

 is a standard, reliable and thoroug-hly complete work on 

 bee-culture. It contains 520 pages, and is bound elegantly. 

 Every reader of the American Bee Journal should have a 

 copy of this book, as it answers hundreds of questions that 

 arise about bees. We mail it for $1.25, or club it with the 

 Bee Journal for a year — both for only $2.00. 



Queenie Jeanette is the title of a pretty song in sheet 

 music size, written by J. C. Wallenmeyer, a musical bee- 

 keeper. The regular price is 40 cents, but to close out the 

 copies we have left, we will mail them at 20 cents each, as 

 long as they last. Better order at once, if you want a copy 

 of this song. 



Poof Stores and Want of Air Cause Loss. 



BY WM. M'EVOY. 



MISS FANNIE C. DAMON, Middlesex Co., Mass. 

 Your letter of answers to my questions was received 

 some time ago, atid I will now give you my opinion of 

 the cause of the sudden death-rate of your old bees in the 

 winter, and the unhealthy condition of your colonies in the 

 fall. Want of air in winter and poor stores in the fall were 

 the causes of all your loss of bees. 



The closing of the entrances of your colonies with ice 

 and snow in Februarj', 1898, was a very serious matter, be- 

 cause it left the bees to depend entirely on what air thev 

 could get thru the packing on the tops of the brood-cham- 

 bers. When I read of the large death-rate of bees among 

 your colonies — all dead in six, and only a small quantity 

 alive in the other 11 hives — I felt certain that you had too 

 much weight on the " safety valve '' — too much close pack- 

 ing on the brood-chambers, when the entrances of your 

 hives became closed air-tight with ice. 



To make sure that I was not mistaken, I wrote to you 

 asking how many inches of packing you had on each brood- 

 chamber, and what it was composed of. When you an- 

 swered saying that you first put on a covering of burlap, 

 and on this a woolen ma}, then an oats chaff cushion five 

 inches thick, and above this from two to five inches of 

 leaves, which made the tops of the brood-chambers almost 

 air-tight, I knew well that it would not do to let the en- 

 trances become closed solid with ice and frozen snow, and 

 remain inthat condition for several days with so much 

 packing on top of the hives, because the steam that would 

 arise from the breath of the bees in that fix would dampen 

 the packing above, soften the capping on the sealed stores, 

 thin the honey in the unsealed cells, and injure the keeping 

 qualities of a part of the honey, and particularly so with 

 honey gathered from fall flowers. 



Miss Damon, I see b)' your letter before me, that while 

 your hives were bankt up with snow in February, 1898, it 

 rained until it filled the snow with water, and then froze 

 the snow solid with a crust of ice on it strong enough to 

 bear up a horse, and after that everything seemed to be as 

 hard as adamant. Very true, and that same very extremely 

 cold dip froze the damp packing above the bees, and closed 

 the entrances with ice and snow, and then the bees began 

 dying by thousands for the want of air. 



As you say, you had been for years very successful at 

 wintering bees, and I don't wonder at it because you not 

 only gave your bees plenty of stores to winter on, but had 

 taken the greatest of pains to pack your colonies in first- 

 class order. If you had only thought of it and kept the en- 

 trances to all of your hives clear, so that the bees could'' 

 have had plenty of air, your colonies would have wintered 

 just as well as the others had done in the past. 



In reading over your letter of answers to my questions, 

 I find that you prove my opinion to be correct as to the 

 cause of your loss of bees in winter, and the dwindling in 

 spring, when you say, " But the only colorty of mine that 

 came thru .safely was in a cooler place, and not so bankt 

 with snow, and had more ventilation at the back of the 

 hive, as the loose bottom-board had become warpt.'' Ven- 

 tilation was the very thing that saved that colony, and it 

 was a pity that your other colonies did not have as much 

 ventilation as that one. 



Now about the combs with honey, which you took such 

 pains to save so nicely and so well. \'ery few of our best 

 bee-keepers vrould have thought of that. I was anxious to 

 know if your bees had not gathered considerable honey from 

 fall flowers in 1897, which I believed they did. You replied, 

 saying, " The bees did gather a great deal of fine thick 

 golden-rod honey in the fall of 1897." The keeping qualities 

 of the different kinds of honey in the comb varies a great 

 deal when exposed to dampness. Some will keep in fair 

 condition under trying circumstances for six months, while 

 .some other kinds of honey won't keep as good for three 

 months if exposed to the same amount of dampness. Some 

 of the combs which you took out of the dead colonies had 

 more or less of the honey in them, which j'our bees gath- 



