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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



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Motherwort. — Please give name of 

 plant inclosed, and its value as a bee 

 plant. Ttie bees work on a small 

 bunch in our yard from morning until 

 night, notwithstanding we have the 

 most profuse white clover bloom. It 

 is now six feet high, and full of bloom 

 from root to top. It seems to secrete 

 lioney during tlie entire day. Weather 

 fine and bees doing .splendidly. 



O. N. Weaver. 



Minerva, Ky., June 19, 1882. 



[It is motherwort, and an excellent 

 lioney plant. Scatter the seeds from 

 your small patch along the lanes and 

 fence corners. It will take care of it- 

 self thereafter.— Ed.] 



measures are practicable. Wlien we 

 come to understand the nature of the 

 soil, in its relation to society, and 

 enact laws that will effectually pre- 

 vent the divorcement of labor from 

 the land, adulteration, with a thous- 

 and other crimes will be prevented, 

 and not till then. One-third of our 

 farms are rented ; half of them are 

 mortgaged ; and the price tliat labor 

 pays to get at the soil is all that can 

 be made above a hard living ; hence, 

 so many are driven into necessity, 

 and by necessity, or the dread of it, 

 into crime. No amount or kind of 

 legislation will avail until we cease 

 this foolish attempt to legislate wrong 

 into right — night into day ; and until 

 we are not only willing but do follow 

 natural right and justice. 



Wm. Camm. 

 Murray ville, 111., .June 12, 1882. 



Sudden Transition.— A more dis- 

 ■couraging spring could hardly liap- 



Een, than that just i)ast. It would 

 ave been very disappointing had it 

 followed three good winters and sum- 

 mers ; but coming upon the heels of 

 three years that had gone from bad 

 to worse, and then to worst, it was 

 disheartening indeed. One could ex- 

 amine bees in the last days of Febru- 

 ary ; March was encouraging, as a 

 whole, and the (irst ten days of April 

 all the most ardent lover of apiculture 

 could have wished for ; but from that 

 date frosts, cold, rain, and winds were 

 the order of the day, so that the mid- 

 dle of May found bees starving and 

 unable to leave the hive, even had 

 there been bloom, until June. But 

 at this date the prospect is really line 

 for the future. White clover is in- 

 digenous here ; and so abundant that 

 it is almost a pest, crowding out 

 other grasses. An abundance is in 

 bloom now, and the ground is matted 

 with that which came from the seed 

 this spring, and which promises to 

 bloom this year ; so that we shall 

 probably have a much longer honey 

 season than usual, while the How is 

 already abundant. A week ago bees 

 ■were on the verge of starvatioii, and 

 now supers must be put on or the 

 <iueens will be crowded. Even meli- 

 lot sown last winter is branching and 

 will bloom this season. Near my 

 hives is a patch of five acres of white, 

 alsike, common red, and mammoth 

 clovers. The hybrids and blacks favor 

 the white ; but alsike is the favorite 

 with yellow bees, though they work 

 •on common red where the corollas 

 are shallow, and I have seen them 

 working between the flowerets. On 

 mammoth clover I have not seen 

 a honey bee this spring. Sometimes, 

 though rarely, I have seen them on 

 white and alsike at the same flight. 

 Flowers are unusually fragrant this 

 spring, and especially blackoerry, and 

 bees took to it as well as they ever do 

 to raspberry. I am heartily glad to 

 see the Journal take a determined 

 -Stand against adulteration ; but I 

 have not the slightest hope in repres- 

 sive measures, though preventive 



(Jiiestionable Borrowing.— I see that 

 my " Mating of Queens" is inserted 

 in the Iowa Homestead ?md in the loioa 

 Live Stock Journal, without credit to 

 your paper. I furnished only one 

 copy, and that one to you. 



Des Moines, Iowa. J. M. Shuck. 



[This questionable method of filling 

 up a paper occurs frequently— in fact, 

 too often to be always pleasant to the 

 enterprising publisher who secures his 

 corps of contributors at a considerable 

 outlay of time iind much trouble. 

 We feel great pleasure in having cor- 

 respondence, editorial and other mat- 

 ters copied from our columns and 

 properly accredited ; but when they 

 are appropriated as though prepared 

 for and appearing originally in such 

 paper, we feel as would a merchant 

 who had been robbed of part of his 

 stock in trade. — Ed.] 



queen cell had not hatched out, but 

 was torn down, and last week I found 

 her in the same hive laying and ap- 

 parently at home. The bees get 

 plenty of water in this district, as we 

 irrigate our gardens every week, and 

 have a pure stream of water pass out 

 door all the time. John Dunn. 

 Tooele City, Utah, June 14, 1882. 



Prospect Good for Basswood.— Bees 



are doing nothing with us in Canada 

 at present. The white clover is only 

 beginning to blossom. I had to feed 

 some of my bees ; they killed off most 

 of their drones ; some of the colonies 

 drove them out till the ground was 

 covered with them. Do you think 

 they will swarm after killing the 

 drones ? The hives are full and run- 

 ning over with bees ready to gather 

 the honey. I think in a few .lays we 

 will have a flow of honey. There is a 

 good prospect for raspberries, and 

 white clover is beginning to blossom. 

 There is promise of a basswood honey 

 harvest, as the trees are full of blos- 

 soui buds. William Coleman. 

 Devizes, Out., June Ki, 1882. 



[Yes ; they will provide more drones 

 when they become strong enough, 

 and the weather and honey-flow are 

 favorable for swarming.— Ed. J 



Rearing Queens in Utah.— Since I 

 last wrote to you I have been engaged 

 in queen-rearing, as quite a few have 

 expressed a desire to have a queen 

 from my bees, they being Italians, 

 the bees in this city mostly being 

 hybrids, and a few of the black bees. 

 I divided on the 16th of May, and in a 

 few days after had 10 queen cells in 2 

 of the hives which I had divided. On 

 the 22d I took 4 of those cells and 

 gave them to a bee man in this city, 

 he taking an active part in assisting 

 me in the queen business. On the 

 30th of May my first queen was 

 hatched, with 3 cells still remaining 

 in the hive. I formed 4 nuclei by 

 taking 7 frames from my remaining 

 hives. One of the queen cells I left in 

 the hive I divided was 2J2 inclies long 

 from the face of the comb. I thought 

 tliat it would be a prize queen, but in 

 examining the comb a few days af- 

 ter, I found the prize cell gone and no 

 queen in the liiVe. I also took the 

 queen that hatched the 30th, having 

 taken it out on a frame of foundation 

 where I found it first. My method of 

 introducing the queen was in this 

 manner : I took the frame of foun- 

 dation wiiich I had kept and put it 

 into one of the nuclei wherein the 



Coffee A Sugar for Winter.— Apple 

 blossom season closed on the 12th 

 inst. in this locality— fully two weeks 

 later than last year. Bees have been 

 booming in consequence, and have 

 occupied about one-half of the day 

 time in securing the nectar. The 

 rains and extremely cool days and 

 nights have beendetrimental to them, 

 but they have done well. White clo- 

 ver promises to be abundant, and will 

 be out in about a week when the bees 

 will " boom " again. This is also 

 about two weeks or more later than 

 last season. My colonies number 30, 

 mostly Italians. They came through 

 last winter vvjUi little loss, wintered, 

 as usual, on summer stands, in double- 

 walled chaff hives; 20 colonies are 

 ready to go into the boxes soon as the 

 honey flow coinmeuces again, and the 

 others will be ready for the basswood 

 flow, which I have seldom known to 

 fail in this locality. My bees were 

 wintered in 1880 and 1881 without loss, 

 out-of-doors in cl.aff hives. I practice 

 stimulative feeding in the spring to • 

 get my bees ready for the first honey 

 flow, and have usually been success- 

 ful. I have never had a case of dys- 

 entery in my apiary. I fed pure cof- 

 fee A sugar "for fall and winter stores, 

 but never any glucose or grape sugar, 

 or poor honey. Pure coffee A sugar 

 is the best for wintering bees, and if 

 a case of dysentery can be shown 

 where a colony has been wintered on 

 this alone, I have yet to find it out. 

 Of course, this must be melted so as 

 to be of the proper consistency, and 

 then fed early enough to give the bees 

 time to cap it over. Do not trouble 

 about pollen, that will take care of 

 itself— the greatest trouble about it 

 is that too frequently there is an ex- 

 cess of it, and that is detrimental to 

 the health of the colony. If I remem- 



