VOL. XIX. 



CHICAGO, ILL., JUNE 27, 1883. 



No. 26. 



Published every Wednesday, by 



THOMAS G. NEWMAN, 



Editor and Puoprietor, 



Mourning Turned to Joy. 



Only a few weeks ago the bee-keep- 

 ers indnlsed in a mournful song, now 

 that song has turned to joy, as maybe 

 seen by looking over the letters in 

 this issue of tlie Bee Journal. The 

 present indications are that the honey 

 harvest of this year will be exceed- 

 ingly bountiful. Now is the time to 

 give every moment to the bees, and 

 see that everything is in order, and 

 that all manipulations are attended to 

 promptly. It will pay well to do so. 

 The Indiana Farmer remarks as fol- 

 lows : 



The heart of tlie bee-keepei- is glad 

 in the land. Colonies that have cast 

 a swarm will require looking after at 

 frequent intervals to see that the 

 young queen is not lost on her bridal 

 trip. Do not neglect them, then, af- 

 ter slie gets lost. With no eggs from 

 which to rear a queen, the colony 

 dwindles away. All sections should 

 be removed from the hives just as 

 soon as they are capped over, thus 

 preserving the pearly whiteness of the 

 capping. If left standing on the hives, 

 the bees soon soil the combs by travel- 

 ing over them. Honey thus early 

 removed is not thoroughly ripened, 

 and should be placed in a warm place. 

 It is not necessary to wait until every 

 cell is capped over, for the bees will 

 continue to find a place for a cell or 

 two long after the section is sufficiently 

 full to be removed. 



1^ By the Canadian Farmer we 

 leai;n that tlie National Bee-Keepers' 

 Convention has been appointed to be 

 held at Toronto, Canada, during the 

 third week of September— probably 

 on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 

 Sept. 18 to 20; but so far we have had 

 no official notice of it, and, therefore, 

 presume that it is not yet fully de- 

 termined upon. 



King-Birds as Bee Enemies. 



Mr. Wm. M. Slater, writes thus: 

 "Mk. Editor.— The following arti- 

 ticle I noticed in the Pittsbugh Stock- 

 man, please investigate and report in 

 the Bee Journ.\l : " 



It is a remarkable fact that all the 

 experts on bee-culture have over- 

 looked the prime laws of all the 

 trouble, and that is by simply letting 

 the king-bird have his way while he 

 makes a perfect fraud of all the Yan- 

 kee bee appliances, and even the Ohio 

 bee journal itself. On Monday, May 

 1, my colony was attacked by seven 

 kingbirds, and J went to shooting 

 them, but did not succeed in getting 

 all in until Wednesday evening, and 

 in that short time they had got very 

 nearly one-half of my bees, and in 

 desecting them I found nothing else 

 but bees. Their formation is the 

 same as a duck ; they have no craw, 

 and everything they swallow passes 

 direct to the gizzard, consequently 

 requiring double the amount of food 

 of common birds. You can see him 

 all day, purched on fence stakes, 

 stumps or mullon stalks, waiting for 

 the industrious bee, and if it gets 

 within any reasonable distance of 

 him, it is gone. I have seen him dart 

 up in the air nearly 100 feet and catch 

 a heavy laden bee going home. I 

 have seen him dart from his perch 

 and catch four bees and return to his 

 perch, when he would most ingeni- 

 ously put his bill down to the perch 

 and then take hi.s long middle toe and 

 hold them fast while he would pick 

 off the head and shoulders and throw 

 them away, and swallovv the bottle 

 ends, and in ten seconds of time he is 

 ready for another haul. 



1 am paying the boys 10 cents apiece 

 for all they fetch me, dead or alive. 

 Every bee-keeper knows that bees 

 are divided into two squads, and for 

 convenience we will name one the 

 field hands, and tlie otlier the colony 

 hands. Now let the king-birds pick 

 off the field hands, and then the col- 

 ony hands have got nothing to do, 

 and they go to playing ; then we call 

 them idle, lazy bees, and are doing no 

 good, and never for one moment 

 think of the kingbird being the prime 

 cause of all the trouble. J. R. A. 



The Stockman has been imposed 

 upon. The king-bird has been re- 

 peatedly denounced by the Bee Jour- 

 nal as a murderous thief, and a 



" shot-gun " is very generally used to 

 wake up the ideas of that " bird," 

 when he visits apiaries, on his destruc- 

 tive mission. Mr. A. is simply trying 

 to play '■ smart," in papers that know 

 nothing of bee-culture, and are there- 

 fore unable to detect his false accusa- 

 tions against the bee papers. 



Wonderful Instinct in Bees. 



Many interesting accounts have 

 been written of the wonderful, in- 

 stincts of honey bees, some, in fact, 

 which would almost tend to prove 

 that they possessed reasoning facul- 

 ties. Au Australian bee-keeper con- 

 tributes to the Queenslander the fol- 

 lowing interesting incident, illustra- 

 tive of their sagacity : 



A neighbor of mine who keeps bees 

 in bar-frame hives, had robbed them 

 of some of their surplus stores, but 

 noticing a few days afterwards the 

 honey running from the entrance to 

 the hive, and the bees clogged with it, 

 he raised the top to ascertain the 

 cause, when he found the bees in so 

 woful a plight that he knew not what 

 to do, and was quite disheartened. 

 He mentioned the matter to me, and 

 I went to his assistance. I found the 

 hive in a dreadful state ; the frames 

 were very large, and the weight of 

 honey proportionally great ; the combs 

 had fallen down, and the lioney been 

 set free. Thousands of bees were 

 suffocated and smeared with the 

 honey, and it was a work of some dif- 

 ficulty to set matters right. On the 

 floor of the hive, and floating in the 

 escaped honey, were dozens of white 

 grubs, which had evidently been 

 torcibly drawn from the cells by the 

 bees, and the reason they sacriliced 

 their progeny appears to be ihat, 

 finding themselves overwhelmed with 

 the d-isaster that had fallen upon 

 them, and having filled every avail- 

 able crevice with the over-flowed 

 honey, they had found it necessary to 

 empty the cells of the young brood in 

 order to find space to store the balance 

 until the wreck could be repaired. 

 There was reason, certainly, for what 

 they did, and the fact has not, per- 

 haps, been noticed before, because 

 the people who kept bees fiu' observa- 

 tory purposes, would never have al- 

 lowed such a calamity to happen to 

 them. 



