454 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



For tbe American Bee Journal. 



Extraordinary Yields in Texas. 



B. F. CARROLL. 



A barrel of lioney from one colony ! 

 and still the great flow goes on. 

 Never has there been such a flow of 

 lioney. The extremely mild weatlier, 

 with an abundance of rain even up to 

 tlie 10th of June, has given us one 

 solid mass of horsemint. Over 3,000 

 acres of tliis grand honey plant witliin 

 easy reach of my bees. Bees have in- 

 crea.sed over .500 per cent. — yes, often 

 10 colonies from 1, and novv' tliey are 

 swarming. Seven swarms liave gone 

 to the woods to be messed up by bee- 

 hunters, and yet I liave ill colonies, 

 all from 40 in tlie spring, and I liave 

 sold 32 full colonies— all this increase 

 is by natural swarming. 



Moses T. French and W. B. Melton, 

 the champion black bee men of old 

 Navarro, have gone into conniptions 

 over their great yield. Some of tlieir 

 best black colonies have given as 

 mucli as 100 lbs., wliile Capt. A. S. 

 (iill, of Purdoii, Navarro County, 

 from the under side of a bench on 

 which a black colony was sitting, took 

 118 lbs. of choice comb honey. Bee- 

 trees have been cut, and from 100 to 

 200 lbs. of comb, dirt and honey were 

 taken. The demand for improved 

 hives, etc., has been great, and it was 

 almost impossible for me to keep 

 hives to put niy own bees in. I liave 

 been obliged to use oil boxes, cracker 

 boxes, etc., to put bees in, in order to 

 forward apicultuie hereabouts. Being 

 the first to introduce the frame hive, 

 the people still call on me. 



Tlieie are now around me the fol- 

 lowing bee-keepers: Dr. fl. B. Ran- 

 som, 35 colonies ; W. R. Melton, 71 ; 

 Dr. C. 11. Hart,. 50 ; Westbrook & Mc- 

 Afee, 110; M. T. French, 3.5; Dr. W. 

 S. Robinson, llO ; R. Gowen. 10; G. 

 W. Tliomison, 11 ; B. F. Carroll (self) 

 111 ; Elizabeth Melton, 25; and about 

 75 colonies, here and tiiere, from 1 to 

 .5 in a place, giving a total of 5.53; 

 with a. \V. Acre, of Cross Roads, 25, 

 and II. Forgey, Blooming Grove, 2.5— 

 in all, 600 colonies in a radius of 7 

 miles. And in this radius 10,000 colo- 

 nies could have gathered over UOO lbs. 

 per colony. Honey is fast superseding 

 glucose syrups, called honey drips, 

 corn shuck, golden sweet, etc. 



And now let me report what my 

 bees did f<n' me from horsemint. All 

 the colonies I extracted close gave 

 from UO to 700. ; being overrun and 

 not having money to purchase sup- 

 plies, hives, foundation, etc., I lost j'X 

 of tlie grandest liouey croj) ever seen 

 in Texas. Now for that prolific queen 

 1 wrote about some time since. Up 

 to .luue 1st I extracted 22 lbs. from 

 spring flowers, <ind began taking mint 

 honey .June 1st from 3 upper stories, 

 54 lbs. ; June 7, ."> upperstories, 7olbs.; 

 June 14, 4 stories, 75 lbs.; 14th, 4 



stories, 112i>^ ; 21st, 4 stories, 1293^ 

 lbs. ; 26th, 4 stories, i23^ ; .30t!i, 4 

 stories, U5}4 ; July, 7, 4 stories, 08 

 lbs; total, from one colony, 700 lbs,; 

 nearly .5,000 lbs, up to date from all. 



Hurrah for D, A, Jones' Cyprian 

 bees ! The best b^es on the face of 

 the globe, I expect bee-keepers ought 

 to give me the premium for being 

 ahead. Had I managed this colony 

 rightly I could have obtained half a 

 ton from it, 



Dresden, Texas, July 7, 1S82, 



[Are we to understand our corre- 

 spondent obtained 700 lbs, from one 

 colony alone, or from one colony and 

 its increase V If from one colony, 

 what has been obtained by its in- 

 crease, if any ? If the honey flow, 

 as we understand, is not yet through, 

 we would like a report from this 

 colony and its increase at the close of 

 the season, — Ed. J 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Glass versus "Tin, " So-called. 



LOUIS KNOKR, M. D. 



It certainly is tlie duty of every bee- 

 keeper to scrupulously refrain from 

 any action or practice whereby the 

 purity of honey might be impaired. 

 Now, I contend, on chemical princi- 

 ples, that leaving honey in contact, 

 tor a certain lengtli of time, with tin 

 so-called ordinarily, but properly 

 speaking with the alloy of tin and 

 lead, as is the case when honey is 

 filled into tin pails for tlie retail sale, 

 or filled into tin tanks for maturing 

 it, or permitted to stay for some time 

 in tlie extractors, must expose it to 

 contamination with lead. 



Many of the readers of the Bee 

 Journal will know that the ordi- 

 nary sheet-tin is in reality sheet-iron 

 coated with a thin film of an alloy of 

 till and lead. For liygienic considera- 

 tions, it would he desirable that this 

 film should consist of pure tin. But, 

 unluckily, pure tin does adhere only 

 with the greatest difflculty and rather 

 imperfectly to iron. Thus the manu- 

 facturers of sheet-tin are compelled 

 to use an alloy of tin and lead. Nearly 

 everybody knows the injurious effects 

 of lead, in all its chemical combina- 

 tions, and even in the minutest 

 quantities, if long continued, upon 

 the human system. It is contended 

 that a small amount of lead alloyed 

 with tin is so thoroughly held by the 

 latter tluit it cannot be attacked and 

 dissolveil by the sugars and acids, 

 and thus caiinot enter into our articles 

 of food. Granted, But, as far as I 

 know, hygiene has never solved the 

 question— with the assistance of 

 analytical chemistry — how great the 

 amount of lead may be in the alloy 

 without incurring the risk of injury 

 to tlie human system. The great 

 difference in the "prices of tin and 

 lead is a standing inducement for the 

 manufacturers to increase the jn'o- 

 portions of lead enormously, and to 



: an injurious extent, 



! Some time ago I analyzed, for my 



own satisfaction, a sample of canned 

 tomatoes and one of canned peaches. 

 The first, against my expectation, did 

 not contain any lead ; but the latter 

 did to a considerable extent. Whether 

 the tin (so-called) of the tomato-can 

 contained less lead proportionately 

 than the other can, or whether the 

 sugar in the peaches could exert a 

 greater action upon the lead than the 

 acid in tlie tomatoes, I cannot de- 

 cide. In the honey, the saccharine 

 and acid principles must attack the 

 lead in the so-called tin vessels, I 

 could observe that, a couple of years 

 ago, my extractor was considerably 

 corroded by the honey that was, by 

 mistake, allowed to stay for some 

 time. 



The French government has, some 

 time ago, taken measures against the 

 indiscriminate use of tin vessels for 

 holding preserved food containing 

 acid and saccharine substances. And 

 I tliink bee-keepers ought to store 

 their honey in glass or wood (how 

 winild paper-kegs impregnated with 

 paraffine do V) as long as no discrimi- 

 nation is made in the trade between 

 tin (ricli in lead) for roofing purposes 

 and tin for holding articles of food. 



Savannah, Ga, 



For the American Beo Journal. 



How I Rear My Qneens. 



G. 31, DOOLITTLE. 



Editor Weekly Bee Journal:— 

 As this subject has engrossed so 

 much attention, I should not have 

 written on it but for the fact that 

 upon the queen depends all tliere is of 

 bee-keeping. The following 1 have 

 already contributed to the Magazine 

 on this subject, and should like you 

 to give it in the Weekly Bee Jour- 

 nal : 



When we realize that all the bees 

 of a hive are the offspring of one bee 

 (the queen), and that the more bees 

 we have in time for the honey harvest, 

 the greater the assurance of a large 

 yield of honey, we can form some 

 opinion of the worth of a good, pro- 

 lific queen, and of the disappointment 

 which will await us if we have a poor, 

 worthless queen in our hive. Nature 

 provided a sure way to rear the high- 

 est type of royal descendants, and 

 pronounced it good. Although many 

 have been the plans devised to rear 

 excellent queens outside of the natu- 

 ral swarming of bees, still I have yet 

 to hear the claim that queens reared 

 by any one of these plans are supe- 

 rior to those produced from cells, 

 nursed and cradled by a full colony of 

 bees preparing to swarm. On the 

 other hand many do believe that 

 queens so nursed and reared are bet- 

 ter than can be produced by the ordi- 

 nary plans which are used, myself in- 

 cluded in that number. Therefore I 

 rear, as far as possible, all my queens 

 from cells produced by natural 

 swarming. To accomplish this ob- 

 ject, my best colonies are selected in 

 early spring, which are stimulated to 

 tlieir utmost to get them to prepare 

 for swarming as early in tlie season 

 as possible. 



