60 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



received in the last year, and all, I 

 believe, from my name having been 

 printed wrong iii several papers. I 

 am greatly in favor of these Bee Con- 

 ventions and would strongly advise all 

 bee-keepers to attend at" least the 

 nearest one, if they possibly can. At 

 the Hagerstown convention it did me 

 good to meet friends with whom I had 

 had correspondence and dealing, but 

 whose faces I had never seen. This 

 association, though yet young and 

 small in numbers, has in its ranks 

 some very intelligent and progressive 

 apiarists, men who have spent many 

 years in the business, as honey pro- 

 ducers and queen breeders. I have 

 just read James B. Mason's article on 

 a "Standard Frame." It is my opin- 

 ion that when we get a universal 

 frame we shall have a universal lan- 

 guage and dialect. 



Thos. Footer. 

 Cumberland, Md., Jan. 11, 1883. 



A Candid Request. 



Bee-keepers everywhere should 

 qualify their reports, and not exagger- 

 ate, showing such large and enormous 

 yields of honey from spring counts, 

 and let the inquisitive and candid 

 apiarists know from how many col- 

 onies they get their large yield. Now, 

 let us figure a little. Scientific calcu- 

 lations are, in a good season of honey 

 flow, that a bee will gather a teaspoon- 

 ful during the season, and a colony 

 of bees will average from 20,000 to 

 25,000 ; half of thejn in the field would 

 obtain 12.500 teaspoon fuls, and if that 

 will make 1,200 lbs. of honey, they 

 must have large spoons in Texas. It 

 looks to me a little exaggerated. There 

 are some others who claim 800 lbs., 

 500 lbs. or 400 lbs. per colony. I have 

 the highest respect for intelligent 

 and scientific statements, but have no 

 relish for exaggerated statements. 

 S. J. McKennie. 



Burlington, Iowa. 



[In some of the enormous yields of 

 honey reported, we are assured that 

 the colonies are doubled up to the 

 capacity of 4 or 5 ordinary hives by 

 extra stories, one over another ; if so, 

 the statements are unfair, and mis- 

 lead the unsophisticated. Such re- 

 ports may be tnie in fact, but totally 

 imfair, and therefore quite unreason- 

 able.— Ed.] 



Wintering in Sawdust. 



I moved into the woods in Marathon 

 county. Wis., Oct. 24, 1880, and had 6 

 colonies of bees. Before spring I lost 

 all, with dysentery. Last June I 

 bought a colony of Italians that covered 

 only part of three frames. I fed the 

 some old honey, and they gave 2 natu- 

 ral swarms. I bought 2 queens and 

 made 4 colonies by dividing. They all 

 have over 25 lbs. of stores each, except 

 3, which had 45 lbs. divided between 

 them. I have Scombs full of odd-sized 

 frame that I can feed them. I only 

 had 3 six-pound boxes of surplus. We 

 had much rainy weather last summer. 

 I winter them in a sawdust house. 

 There are no bees within 4 miles. I 



have hard and soft maple, basswood, 

 and white clover pasturage. We have 

 got 15 inches of snow and no frost in 

 the ground yet. Edwin Bump. 



Marshfleld, Wis., Dec. 25, 1882. 



Mr. Heddon's Feeder. 



In the Journal of Oct. 18, 1882. Mr. 

 Ileddon says " It takes only 24 hours 

 time to give them (the bees) 25 lbs. of 

 liquid food through our feeders, and 

 they will put it in a proper position in 

 the hive." Will he be kind enough to 

 give a description of this feeder, 

 through your columns, as I have no 

 doubt it will be of great service to 

 many beside myself. As I find that 

 bees do well in the winter on .sugar 

 syrup, which, in this country, is not a 

 quarter the price of honey, I should 

 like to extract all my honey in the 

 autumn and give the bees syrup to 

 refill their combs ; but having very 

 little time to devote to my bees, the 

 time that would be required to go 

 round a number of hives to give them 

 enough for winter, by a pound or two 

 at a time, would be more than I could 

 spare. Mr. Heddon's feeder would 

 help me, and doubtless many others, 

 out of a dithculty ; and I therefore 

 hope he will give "us a full description 

 of his feeder, and thus increase the 

 debt of gratitude we already owe him 

 for his able articles. 



J. E. Williams. 



Porthywaen, Oswestry, England. 



A Telephone Connected to each Hive. 



I vote for the editor to shape the 

 " make-up " of the Bee Journal, to 

 his own notion. The readers can find 

 the editorials, let them he where they 

 may. I see that one of the writers in 

 the Bee Journal of Jan. 17, has been 

 thinking with me in regard to having 

 combs built in frames, then cut and 

 placed in small sections, any size, even 

 to nickel packaMs, and then placed in 

 a hive to have them fixed up. I have 

 been thinking again. Why not have 

 some kind of a telephone arrangement 

 attached to each hive, so that we can, 

 at any time, hear from our bees. We 

 could soon learn to know by the sound, 

 whether or not all is well ; 'then, at any 

 time in winter, if a colony is not doing 

 well, we can know it and remedy the 

 trouble, if we can. I do not know 

 much about the construction of the 

 telephone, but I do believe one of a 

 cheap kind can be made to do service 

 in the way suggested. My 35 colonies 

 of bees are wintering finely, up to this 

 time. They are on their summer 

 stands, with chaff cushions in the 

 caps. Isaac Sharp. 



Waveland, Ind., Jan. 19, 1883. 



1^" It is not yet a quarter of a cen- 

 tury since the first Italian bees landed 

 on our shores, and in this limited time 

 they have been improved both in looks 

 and in honey-gathering capacity. I 

 am bold to assert that there are breed- 

 ers of this race in America, whose 

 queens will average better in looks, in 

 vigor and in prolificness — workers bet- 

 ter for business— than queens that 

 come from Italy to-day.— Dr. /. P. H. 

 Brown. 



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925 West Madison Street., Chlcaico, III. 



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