THE AMERICAJS BEE JOURNAL. 



503 



inR the cask, and having plenty of 

 fresh air in contact. 



Drawins; t'lom one cask to another 

 in sui'li a way as to expose it to the 

 air, facilitates the change in propor- 

 tion to the exposiu'e. The strenjith 

 of the vinegar depends upon tlie 

 amount of sweet or alcoliol you can 

 work into it. If too sweet, it will not 

 sour. The nmtlier iii vinegar is not 

 only useless, but a detriment. One 

 gallon of good vinegar will do more 

 good than half a barrel of mother. 

 Honey-vinegar, when fully ripened by 

 age, loses all taste of the honey. 



East Saginaw, Mich. 



For the American Bee JuumaL 



Large Yields of Honey. 



W. H. STEWART. 



In a recent article I referred to ex- 

 traordinary reports of honey yields ; 

 and I will now state that I do not 

 think that Mr. Pond lias hit upon the 

 true reason why a few colonies in an 

 apiary give much more than an aver- 

 age yield of surplus honey. 



Itis very true that there may be 

 circumstances that will, for a time, 

 call most of the bees of the same col- 

 ony off in the same direction. This 

 is manifest in hunting bees. When 

 we get one bee to carry home a load 

 of honey, she will, on her return, be 

 accompanied by others belonging to 

 the same colony ; and if the bait be 

 allowed to remain at the same spot, 

 the number of bees working on it will 

 multiply at a rapid rate, and it is 

 quite probable that in a short time 

 nearly all, or perhaps the entire work- 

 ing force of the colony would work on 

 the same spot. 



Again, a colony of robbers having 

 subdued a neighboring colony, would 

 soon be out in full force to carry 

 home the booty. There may be other 

 circumstances that would induce an 

 entire colony to work in the same 

 direction from home, but where there 

 is 110 inducement, there are not many 

 bees to be found. I have kept bees 

 in several different States, and have 

 often watched them as they started 

 out and returned home ; and when the 

 flow of honey has been nearly equal 

 in all directions, I have noticed tliat 

 the bees of the same colony work in 

 ail directions about the same. 



Where I am now located, there are 

 swamp lands south and west of me ; 

 and in early spring all the bees work 

 in tiiose directions. Later, when 

 they work on white clover, they go 

 east, north and west, as there is no 

 clover within working distance of my 

 bees on the south. What basswood 

 they find is northwest, and nearly all 

 go together in that direction during 

 basswood bloom. About a week after 

 basswood bloom is past, there opens a 

 species of horse-mint or burgamont, 

 which grows on the sandy plains 

 south of me, on the other side of the 

 Wisconsin river ; and when ttie 

 weather is such that it yields honey, 

 nearly all of the bees seem to work in 

 that direction. As they start out, 

 they rise quite high in the air, and as 

 I stand on the high river bank, or if 



I am on an island in the river, I can 

 hear the very heavy buzz of the bees 

 going and returning over the river. 

 This proves that all colonies work in 

 the same direction when the honey 

 yield is in one direction ; but if the 

 clover, basswood. buckwheat, mint, 

 and other honey-yielding plants which 

 in order, were' equally distributed in 

 all directions, then I am well satisfied 

 that bees of the same colony would 

 work about alike in all directions dur- 

 ing each successive bloom. 



We often notice that when bees 

 start out in the morning, they fly 

 around in the air. all the while" en- 

 larging their circle of flight, and it is 

 probable that in so doing, they catch 

 the sweet aroma of distant bloom as 

 it is borne along on the wind, and 

 that they search the location of that 

 aroma until they are at the bloom 

 from which it came. This being the 

 case, the bees of the same colony 

 would be apt to work in different 

 directions, as the wind changed, pro- 

 vided that the blooming plants were 

 found in different directions. 



I think my experience during the 

 season of 1S83, will give some impor- 

 tant light on the question under con- 

 sideration. I may, perhaps, be con- 

 sidered a little wild when I state that 

 I am well satisfied that those colonies 

 which give such very large yields, are 

 the most unprofitable colonies that we 

 have ; and when we find one produc- 

 ing much more than an average yield, 

 we had better look well to their 

 movements, and put a stop to their 

 mischief as soon as possible. 



In the spring of 1883, 1 managed to 

 equalize my colonies as nearly as 

 possible, and at the beginning of 

 white clover bloom, they were about 

 equally strong in numbers ; all had 

 plenty of combs, and all seemed to 

 promise similar results ; but when I 

 began to extract the' honey. I found 

 that some produced double or three 

 times as much surplus as others; and 

 as this had been the order of things 

 in by-gone years, it excited in me no 

 particular suspicion until late in 

 October. 



I had been managing my bees 

 through the summer, on Geo. Grimm's 

 plan, i. e.. by saving through the sea- 

 son two or three f idl combs of early 

 white honey to give the bees for win- 

 ter stores. About the last week in 

 September, I examined all the colo- 

 nies, and gave each a good supply of 

 heavy combs of well-cured and capped 

 honey, and thought that I had all in 

 good condition for the coming winter. 



You can imagine my surprise, when 

 on Oct. 20, I had occasion to examine 

 a colony. I found those combs which 

 I had given them a month before, 

 were perfectly empty ; and that the 

 other combs in the hive were poor, 

 and I had to feed them again. I then 

 examined all the other colonies, and 

 found it the rule : that those which 

 had given the least surplus through 

 the summer, were robbed of the win- 

 ter stores that I had given them in 

 September ; and those which had 

 given larger yields had all of their 

 large frames of honey just as I had 

 hung them in the hive in September ; 

 and not only so, but they had a large 



amount of fresh honey in their other 

 combs, and were just capping it over. 



It will be remembereci that early 

 frost had cut off the honey flow in this 

 vicinity before [ fed my "bees in Sep- 

 tember, and thus those colonies which 

 had increased their stores, could not 

 have gathered the honey from the 

 field; but it is clear to me that they 

 had been borrowing of tlieir more 

 honest neighbors, until the one had 

 double the stores that they needed, 

 while the others were poor. 



Be it understood that during all 

 this time, there had been no visible 

 signs of robbing in theai)iary (I watch 

 closely during the spring and fall 

 mouths for robbers) ; but the mischief 

 had been done so adroitly and noise- 

 lessly that I suspected that nothing 

 was wrong. 



It is my opinion that this work is 

 commenced in the spring ; and when a 

 colony gains access to a neighboring 

 hive, the two colonies soon become so 

 well acquainted that the robbers are 

 allowed to pass in and out at pleas- 

 ure, and that they thus obtain those 

 large yields ; while those that produce 

 the small yields have been busy in the 

 field, and have gathered for us far 

 more honey than have those which 

 gave the large yields. 



Orion, Wis. 



For tbe AmerlcaH Bee Joamal. 



Comments on Many Subjects. 



DWIGHT FUKXESS. 



There is hardly a number of the 

 Bee Journal, so far, but what has 

 contained valuable and practical arti- 

 cles which I have indexed in my ref- 

 erence book, for future use. The arti- 

 cle on " Direct Introduction of 

 Queens," by S. Simmins, on page 4-56 

 is, I believe, " sound doctrine," and 

 well worth the price of the Bee Jour- 

 nal for the year. I first got the 

 idea from the writings of Messrs. 

 Doolittle and Heddon, and have used 

 it to a limited extent, but ahvays suc- 

 cessfully. 



My experience in introducing 

 queens, during the past two seasons, 

 has led me to believe in the theory, 

 that in ninety-nine cases in a hun- 

 dred, where a queen is not accepted, 

 she is herself the cause of the failure. 

 In support of this theory, I have used 

 Mr. H. L. Jeffrey's method of intro- 

 ducing, with uniformly good results. 



I have a few nuclei colonies which 

 take 4 frames Ji-Langstroth size, and 

 when short of. "queens or cells, I fre- 

 quently change a 'queen from one col- 

 ony to another, every 8 or 4 days, al- 

 ways taking a frame of comb and beeS; 

 with her. In this way one queen can 

 be made to keep a good many nuclei 

 strong and full of brood. I once got 

 rid of a fertile worker in this way. 



I can heartily endorse W. Z. Hutch- 

 inson's article "on ^' Hiving Swarms of 

 Bees:" but do not like his clothes- 

 basket arrangement. I use a common 

 box made of light wood, fastened to 

 the end of a long pole, and seldom 

 need to climb ladders or cut off 

 branches. A neighboring bee-keeper, 

 whose apiary is surrounded by a lot of 



