682 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Bees and Honey Thieves. 



A. R. KOIINKE. 



On the 7th of last June, a honey 

 thief from Colmac, Germany, who 

 systematically plundered the apiaries 

 of the valley of Muenster, was sent- 

 enced to 6 years in penitentiary. — 

 Alsacian Bienenzeitting. 



Another German exchange states, 

 that the bee-keepers of a certain dis- 

 trict in Nortliern Germany petitioned 

 the Government officials to be per- 

 mitted to lay iron fox or wolf- traps to 

 catch bee thieves wlio stole their bees 

 or took the honey and thus ruined the 

 colonies. The petition was granted, 



Erovided the apiaries were enclosed 

 y a fence. 



Now and then we hear in this coun- 

 try of such depredations, and perliaps 

 but very few of such cases are re- 

 ported. Honey is sweet ; but stolen 

 honey seems to some people the 

 sweetest of sweets and before you are 

 able to raise the morals of the com- 

 munity to a higher standard so that 

 they will let your bees alone, your 

 best colonies may be ruined. 



Different bee-keepers advise and 

 use different precautions, among 

 which are liigli, tight board fences, in 

 addition to which a barbed-wire is run 

 on top ; others use a barbed-wire fence 

 only ; still others advise a bull dog, 

 and some one advised an electrical 

 alarm. 



It will not be necessary to state my 

 objections to arrangements I do not 

 use, but I prefer the electrical alarm 

 as the most reliable and least expen- 

 sive. I am surrounded by some of the 

 worst elements of society— miners 

 ' and mill hands— but as soon as the 

 bees were put on their stands I put 

 up the alarm. Suspicious looking 

 characters would come along and in- 

 quire about the object of those wires 

 " they were certainly too high for 

 clothes lines." 1 would tell them, I 

 meant to use them to blow up thieves 

 by electricity, and no one ever ven- 

 tured to come into the garden after 

 honey, fruit or vegetables, while my 

 neighbors were robbed by, perhaps, 

 strikers. 



Now to construct or put up such an 

 alarm, one should not apply to an 

 electrician. I tried one, he wanted 

 $3.50 per hive, besides $7.00 for the 

 alarm proper, and about $4.00 for a 

 three-cell battery. Then I went to 

 work and made evervthing myself, 

 buying the material only, which did 

 not come to more than about $8.00, 

 and the connections for each hive can 

 be made for about 25 or 30 cents. 

 They are made of small plates or 

 pieces of sheet copper or brass, which 

 touch when the hives are closed ; the 

 alarm being arranged on tlie closed 

 circuit principle, as soon as a hive is 

 opened or moved tlie circuit is broken 

 and sets the alarm bell ringing; it 



will be seen that by cutting the line, 

 as some one hinted to me, nothing 

 would be gained, but set the alarm 

 going in a moment. The cost of run- 

 ning tlie alarm is very small, not more 

 than a dollar a month, at the utmost, 

 for any number of liives. 



To describe my arrangement min- 

 utely would take too much space at 

 present, but should there be a demand 

 for it I may do so at some future time. 



Youngstown, O. 



♦- I ^m I * 



Rural New Yorker. 



How to Winter Bees. 



PROF. A. .T. COOK. 



As the winter again approaches, 

 bee-keepers begin to inquire how they 

 may safely winter their bees. Tliis 

 matter of wintering is the only ele- 

 ment in apiculture that is precarious, 

 and when we remember that such men 

 as John Davis, of Michigan, with his 

 scores of colonies, and O. O. Popple- 

 ton, of Iowa, with his hundreds of 

 colonies, and D. A. Jones, of Ontario, 

 with bis thousands, all located in the 

 cold, bleak North, winter without loss 

 every winter, may we not conclude 

 that wintering is only precarious as 

 men are ignorant or careless V With 

 the requisite knowledge, and an equal 

 amount of care, it is more than prob- 

 able that universal success mightcome 

 with every winter. 



As Mr. Poppleton says, to insure 

 safe wintering, preparation should 

 commence early in the season. The 

 colonies should be kept strong, and 

 should be kept breeding, by stimula- 

 tive feeding if that is necessary, till 

 well into September, that there may 

 be the proper number of young bees. 

 Some bee-keepers ridicule tins idea, 

 but such men as Jones hold it to be 

 very essential. 



As soon as frost comes, at least as 

 early as October 1st, when the work 

 of the year is over, the bees of each 

 hive should be given at least 30 lbs. 

 of good capped honey in frames that 

 are at least two-thirds or three-fourths 

 full. If from too close extracting, or 

 a poor honey yield, the requisite 

 amount is not in the hive, then the 

 bees should be fed at once that they 

 may have time to get all capped be- 

 fore the cold weather prevents work. 

 Don't guess at the amount of honey, 

 but weigh, that there may be no mis- 

 take. For feed, we may use good ex- 

 tracted honey, or, better still, granu- 

 lated sugar made into a rich syrup by 

 dissolving in water and heating till it 

 boils. If we use hives with tight- 

 bottom boards we can follow Mr. D. 

 A. Jones's method, and turn the 

 honey right into the back of the hive 

 after we have raised the front. If we 

 have separate bottom boards we may 

 use any of the convenient feeders. In 

 feeding we must be careful to feed 

 late in the day, and not to spill any 

 feed about the apiary, or we may have 

 trouble with robbing. Should any 

 bees get to robbing, which will be 

 denoted by lighting and a great com- 

 motion in front at the entrance of the 

 colony being robbed, we should either 

 cover the entrance of this hive with 



wire gauze, or else nearly close it with 

 blocks. In two or three days the en- 

 trance may be again opened. 



After we have given the bees suffi- 

 cient food, we should, by the use of 

 the division board, confine the bees 

 on the frames which contain their 

 stores, and exclude all others, so that 

 the be^s will have only to warm the 

 part of the hive actually used. Above 

 this chamber we should place fine, dry 

 chaff or sawdust, which, for conveni- 

 ence and neatness, had better be con- 

 fined in a sack. If we are to winter 

 out-of-doors, either in chaff hives or 

 with chaff or savv-dust packed about 

 our hives, we should put similar chaff 

 or sawdust cushions at the sides of 

 the winter combs, just outside the 

 division boards, which latter had bet- 

 ter not reach quite to the bottom of 

 the hive. 



In all the combs to be used in win- 

 ter there should be cut a small central 

 hole, so that the bees can easily pass 

 through from one comb to another. 

 These may be cut when we weigh the 

 combs. 



Many, with Mr. Poppleton, prefer 

 chaff hives. These are double-walled 

 at the ends of the frame, with a six- 

 inch space filled with fine cliaff . Thus 

 we see that with the cushions already 

 mentioned the bees are surrounded 

 on all sides with a protection from the 

 cold. By the use of chaff hives their 

 friends claim that they can winter 

 successfully, and that they are pro- 

 tected against "spring dwindling." 

 Others object to the cost of these 

 hives and to their weight, which makes 

 them hard to handle, and many think 

 them unsafe in very cold winters, per- 

 haps because they were not fairly 

 tried. 



Owing to these objections, others, 

 who wish to winter on the summer 

 stands, place a box outside of the 

 hives, leaving a space of ten or twelve 

 inches, which they fill with chaff or 

 sawdust. It is arranged so that the 

 bees can fly if the weather is so warm 

 as to incite activity, with this pro- 

 tection. Expense and ill success have 

 robbed this method of many of its 

 friends V 



Probably no method has so many 

 friends in the Northern States, where 

 wintering is a vexed question, as that 

 of cellar wintering. This is high 

 praise for the cellar, as there are so 

 many poor cellars that we should ex- 

 pect too many tV.ilures to keep this 

 style of wintering in good repute. If 

 we may judge from experience, a prop- 

 perly constructed cellar, with the pro- 

 per preparation already referred to, 

 will never fail. 



The cellar should be entirely be- 

 neath the earth, and be so ventilated 

 that the air should always be sweet, 

 and the temperature always uniform 

 at about 45^ P. While it should never 

 be more than two degrees warmer 

 than this, it will do no harm if it is 

 five degrees colder at times. The best 

 way to secure this is by sub-earth 

 ventilation. A four-inch pipe should 

 extend from the bottom of the cellar 

 to connect with a stove-pipe in the 

 room above. From near the bottom 

 of the cellar there should be another 

 pipe (six-inch tile is the best) extend- 



