THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



193 





Honey Vinegar and Cider. 



lu the Bee Journal, page 143, Mr. 

 W. Z. Hutchinson gives us Mr. Bing- 

 ham's plan for making honey vinegar, 

 which lie says was good. We made 

 some last fall from the washings of 

 vessels, after extracting. The honey 

 was Hrst-class, smartweed honey, but 

 the vinegar had a sickening taste 

 about it, and the only way we could 

 use it was to mix it with sorghum 

 vinegar, the kind we were using. 

 Does honey vinegar usually have such 

 a taste? Joseph Beath. 



Corning, Iowa. 



[The honey vinegar we have made 

 has not only been vinegar of the best 

 kind, but it has also, while becoming 

 vinegar, always been a palatable sub- 

 stitute for cider, and not distinguish- 

 able from it. It usually requires a 

 year to mature so as to be a " tip top " 

 article, and if very sweet, more time 

 will be required, and better vinegar 

 obtained. Mr. Beath may not have 

 made liis sufficiently sweet. — T. F. 

 Bingham.] 



My Valentine. 



The past season was too wet for ob- 

 taining much honey. My bees did 

 moderately well. I commenced the 

 last season with 7 colonies, spring 

 count, and increased to 13, and all are 

 doing well, except 2 very late swarms, 

 which are weak. I winter them on 

 the summer stands. All but 1 are 

 in box hives ; that one hive is my own 

 make, and the bees in it are doing 

 better than any of the others, and I 

 intend to transfer all the others, in 

 the spring, into Langstroth hives, and 

 would you use the old comb or foun- 

 dation y What is the best time and 

 plan of doing it V I send you a sam- 

 ple of my bees ; are they the German 

 or black bees, or are they hybrids V 

 They show the yellow bauds pretty 

 plainly. My valentine was a swarm 

 of bees. My wife being sick, leaving 

 me to do all" the house work as well 

 as out-door work, confining me closely 

 to the house, causing me to notice my 

 bees more particularly. Two late 

 swarms were weak, and I fed them 

 syrup made from coffee A sugar, 

 and yesterday, being very warm, I 

 discovered a swarm of bees about 75 

 yards away, coming toward the house ; 

 they passed over it a little distance, 

 and whirling round and round, came 

 down, and tried to enter four or five 

 hives ; tiiially entered one having a 

 weak colony. 1 have been feeding 

 them since, and they seem very quiet 

 and well satisfied. Where did they 

 come from ? And why did they come 

 in such a manner ? I neyer saw such 

 a winter as this, with incessant Hoods ; 

 even the little creeks overflowed their 

 banks, and the Ohio river was never 

 known so high ; it was almost from 



hill to hill, sweeping corn and hay 

 stacks off by wholesale ; making al- 

 most a clean sweep. Xow, the weather 

 is sultry ; the thermometer stood at 

 70"^ at 7 o'clock this morning, and at 

 80^ at noon. Hot or cold I welcome 

 the Bee Jouknal ; it is a weekly 

 treat. I would be lost without it. 



Frank B. Rife. 

 Malaby, O., Feb. 15, 1883. 



[The bees sent are hybrids. We 

 have already published several good 

 plans of transferring, and will give 

 several more before the time to do it 

 arrives, which should be during fruit 

 bloom. We cannot say where the 

 bees came from, but they left some 

 place that was distasteful to them or 

 unfit for their longer abode, and 

 sought and found some better 

 place. — Ed.] 



What harvest follows a severe winter J 



There is more mortality amongst 

 bees, in this locality, than there were 

 two years ago. One large apiarist, in 

 this town, is losing very heavily, and 

 losses are the rule. Many did not 

 have fall pasturage, and hail to be fed 

 for winter stores; there was not much 

 surplus last summer. Mr. Doolittle 

 says the largest surplus, in this State, 

 has followed severe winters ; that has 

 not been the case here, as a rule. 1868, 

 1870, 1874, 1876, 1878 and 1880 here 

 were good seasons, while 1869, 1871, 

 1873, 1875. 1877, 1879 and 1881 were not 

 so good, all following hard winters. 

 The winters previous to the first 

 named were mild with the exception 

 of 1867 and the winter of 1870-71. 

 The seasons of 1872 and 1882 were 

 failures here. My average amount 

 of extracted honey, per colony for 

 12 years, is 75 lbs. W. H. S. Grout. 



Kennedy, N. Y., March 30, 1883. 



200 Lbs. of Wax from 70 Colonies. 



In the Bee Journal for Feb. 28, 

 page 121, Mr. N. B. Tindall wishes for 

 more light as to how I obtained 200 

 lbs. of wax from 70 colonies of bees, 

 spring count. In my report I did not 

 state that about -3 of my bees were in 

 odd sizes of frames, some of which I 

 transferred on Mr. Heddon's plan, 

 rendering up all of the old combs ; 

 those old combs and the cappings 

 from 9,000 lbs. of extracted honey, is 

 the way I obtained my 200 lbs. of wax. 

 I should have stated in my report that 

 had my bees all been in Langstroth 

 hives, my report would have been 

 much larger. I think another season 

 will see all of my bees in standard 

 Langstroth hives; then do not be as- 

 tonished at any report I make. Last 

 year I had one continuous and heavy 

 flow of lioney from June 7, until Sept. 

 15, and after I had finished extracting 

 on Sept. 20, tliev filled their hives, 

 both lower and upper stories ; con- 

 sequently they are very strong now. 

 I will probably give my method of 

 making vinegar in my next, which 

 would be hard to beat. 



W. G. McLendon. 



Lake Village, Ark., March 29, 1888. 



Hard Winter In Canada. 



This has been a very hard winter 

 on bees ; I think fully one-half the 

 bees around here are gone. They 

 have been confined 130 days, and are 

 now very uneasy, and many suffering 

 from dysentery. We have about 4 

 feet of snow on the ground yet, and 

 it is freezing hard to-night. 



Geo. Garlick. 



Warsaw, Ont., March 28, 1883. 



Corrections. 



Please make the following correc- 

 tions in my article on page 166 of the 

 Bee Journal, and oblige : " The 

 cap, which should contain about 1,000 

 cubic inches," should read, 7,000 cubic 

 inches. The cap, or surplus depart- 

 ment of all my hives, is large, and 1 

 do not think the case and cover to- 

 gether should contain less than 4.000 

 cubic inches to winter well. Also, 

 the sentence, " but the bees seemed 

 too warm, and ai-e flying out, which, 

 if they did much too often," should 

 read, but the bees seemed too warm, 

 and on flying out, which they did 

 much too often. Dr. G. L. Tinker. 



New Philadelphia, O., Mar. 29, 1883. 



[The figures 1 and 7, in writing, are 

 made quite similarly, and there the 7 

 is blotted and indistinct. It occurs in 

 the eighth line of the second para- 

 graph in the second column on page 

 166. The other errors in the 12th and 

 13th lines from the bottom, were 

 caused by carelessness in the compos- 

 tor.— Ed.] 



• 

 Cheap Power for Saws. 



As I have seen some inquiry, of 

 late, in regard to a cheap power for 

 running saws for hive making, I 

 thought I would mention that the 

 Buckeye mowing machine is about 

 the best ; for one that is rather 

 •■ played out " can be bought for from 

 $2 to $5. To use it, tip the machine 

 up on one wheel, brace it up, and by 

 digging a hole in the ground the size 

 of the wheel and letting it down so 

 that the tumbling rod can be attached 

 about level with the ground, and run 

 it out any length desired, to attach a 

 pully wheel. To attach to it. take 

 the tongue of the machine to fasten 

 to the top wheel, and hitch a horse 

 at the end to go around in a circle. 

 This makes a good power as well as a 

 cheap one. I wintered 25 colonies on 

 the summer stands, with chaff inside 

 the hive, and lost only one ; the rest 

 are in fine condition. 



Dr. J. S. McAllister. 



Columbus, Neb. 



Wintered Snceessfnlly. 



I wish to record the fact that 1 have 

 wintered bees, for two winters, on sec- 

 tions, 8 inches square, two in a frame, 

 wintered on from 4 to 7 frames in 

 each hive, with the most perfect suc- 

 cess. I arranged the sections, with 

 their contents of honey and pollen, to 

 suit myself. These frames are about 

 the size of the Langstroth, and hang 

 the long way up and down ; thus hold- 

 ing one section above another, and are 



