THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



573 



For tlie American Bee JouroaL 



Heddon's Report for 1883. 



JAMES HEDDON. 



As nearly all of the readers of the 

 IJee Journal know, I have run my 

 apiary more largely to experiments 

 than ever before. To the greater 

 benefit of my class of student- ap- 

 prentices, and to settle in my own 

 mind some unsettled questions, I 

 have, in fact, made my whole apiary 

 one of experiment upon several differ- 

 ent mooted questions. Beginning 

 with 133 colonies and ending the sea- 

 son with 298, 1 have made most of 

 these experiments upon a scale large 

 enough to avoid falling into errors in 

 forming conclusions. The cost in cap- 

 ital and labor, chargeable properly to 

 this experimenting, would reach into 

 the hundreds of dollars ; yet I feel 

 paid for that outlay, and if the follow- 

 mg report of my conclusions proves of 

 value to the readers of the Bee Jour- 

 nal, I give it cheerfully, and shall 

 feel that I am receiving an additional 

 payment. 



My "long term" class, or those who 

 came to stay the 5 months, number 

 4 men, H of whom had already had 

 3 or more years' experience with bees 

 and modern fixtures before coming 

 here. This class being picked from 

 many applicants, I need not say that 

 all were highly capable of making 

 experiments and forming correct 

 conclusions. To avoid any prejudice 

 that might rest with me, gathered 

 from results of former less extensive 

 experiments, I placed this department 

 in the hands of the class, and the fol- 

 lowing is their unanimous decision, if 

 I have made no mistake : 



The best manufactures of comb 

 foundation for brood and surplus are : 

 1st, Given ; 2nd, Pelham ; 3rd, Da- 

 dant's Dunham ; 4th, other Dunham ; 

 5th, Root. Late experiments with the 

 honey, show the Given superior in 

 regard to the delicacy of the combs in 

 surplus honey. Just here 1 will add, 

 that justice to all, demands that I say, 

 to my own mind, the experiments 

 with comb foundation among the bees 

 was not on a scale large enough to 

 make the decision certain, but the 

 reports given at the Northwestern 

 Convention by Messrs. Oatman, 

 Grimm and others, force me to the 

 conclusion that we are correct in 

 regard to the superior qualities pos- 

 sessed by the Given foundation. 



Hives. — We are unanimously oppos- 

 ed to double walled or chaff hives, 

 and in favor of wired frames filled 

 wi h foundation ; also in filling sec- 

 tions completely with it. 



Old vs. New Foundation.— We 

 find that bees work new foundation 

 far more readily than that a year old. 



Bees. — We consider the proper 

 crosses of the leather-colored Italians 

 and brown Germans to be the best 

 bees for honey production. 



Sbparator.s. — We prefer tin to 

 wood, as being best and cheapest in 

 the end. We prefer the non-separa- 

 tored case to the broad frame and 

 separator system. I will here men- 

 tion that, for the sake of a comprehen- 

 sive experiment, we made 300 one- 

 story broad-frame supers (all admitted 

 them to greatly excel the two-story 

 broad-frame super, possessing advan- 

 tages that no other style of surplus 

 receptacle does,) and used them with 

 3.50 of our cases, yet, all in all, we pre- 

 fer the cases and the non-use of any 

 separators. 



Surplusage.— We prefer the top of 

 the hive, and consider it the only 

 place where it is best to place surplus 

 receptacles. We find the tiering-up 

 system to work admirably, and prefer 

 it to all others. 



Sections.— We greatly prefer all 

 dove-tailed sections to any other. 



Honey Boards.— After giving this 

 matter a radical and careful test, we 

 find that the bees pass into the supers 

 and cases through the skeleton honey 

 board and double-spaces as readily as 

 where no honey board is used ; the 

 sections coming within bee-space of 

 the brood frames. We favor the 

 honey board as greatly assisting in 

 the easy manipulation of the cases. 



IIalf-Pound Sections.— We find 

 that we can get as many or more pounds 

 of honey stored in half-pound as in 

 pound sections, used either with or 

 without separators. Our experience is 

 that the bees finish them up faster 

 than the largei; sizes. 



Regarding this system of teaching 

 apiculture, we believe it to be the best 

 extant, viz : to learn, by practice, the 

 ways and means of practical and suc- 

 cessful bee-keepers. 



In this locality we have not had an 

 average honey season for 3 or 4 years 

 past ; the one just passed being the 

 poorest of them all. I do not remember 

 ever witnessing so cold a summer and 

 fall. Not only this, but at one time of 

 year the rain badly over-did the busi- 

 ness, while our fall crop was a total 

 failure on account of drouth. Could 

 I have had tlie season mapped out to 

 me in advance, I would have proph- 

 esied — " no honey." 



Notwithstanding all, bee-keepers in 

 this section have some, and by im- 

 provements in methods of manipula- 

 tion, we have a crop as good as any of 

 the 3 years past. Our crop report may 

 be found in round numbers on page 

 528 of the current volume, and it is 

 just that we here add that the fall 

 shortage made room for the fall-feed- 

 ing of 2,000 pounds of sugar, leaving 

 our credit from the 133 colonies rather 

 a large and healthy increase and about 

 2,000 pounds of extracted and 4,000 



Eounds of comb honey, about one- 

 alf in one, and the other half in half- 

 pound sections. We expect to use 

 only h^lf-pound sections the coming 

 season, except the finishing up of the 

 pounds now on hand and partly com- 

 pleted. 



Our experiments in wintering, 

 which will be made upon an extensive 

 scale and radically tested, are of 

 course still before us and must be left 

 to the decision of my class of 1884 and 



myself to report June 1, 1884, when a 

 full description of the tests and results 

 will be given through the Bee Jour- 

 nal. 



The season's experiments have not 

 reversed any of my conclusions, but 

 one test has very much modified one 

 of my decisions, which I take pleasure 

 in frankly stating to the reader. We 

 find that separators retard the work 

 in the sections but little, and I now 

 see where my assistant and myself 

 miscalculated when experimenting 

 with separators some 4, 5 and 6 years 

 ago. We used a row of six 6x6x2 sec- 

 tions, with tin separators between 

 each section, and glass at the outside. 

 Like Mr. Turner, we then thought the 

 glassing method a good one. Well, as 

 most of you know, bees are slow to 

 finish off honey next to glass, and 

 when a tin separator stands on the 

 one side and a pane of glass on the 

 other, the foundation between them 

 is often deserted and hardly touched, 

 when many of the inner combs are 

 nearly completed; you plainly see the 

 difference between the sight that pre- 

 sented itself when we peeKed through 

 the glasses of the non-separatored 

 and the separatored sections. The 

 glass was more at fault than the sep- 

 arators, though we learn by this, as 

 well as by other experiments, that sep- 

 arators can in no case be any advan- 

 tage to work in sections, and in most 

 instances a disadvantage of greater or 

 less amount, according to the other 

 conditions surrounding the apiary, 

 hives and bees. 



Advanced apiarists have tested and 

 discarded glass in all forms as con- 

 nected with the storing of surplus 

 honey, and, I predict, never to return. 

 " History repeats itself," and no less 

 so in apicultural appliances; and long 

 after false and abortive methods have 

 been proven so and laid on the shelves 

 of oblivion by advanced bee-keepers, 

 some of the less experienced, ignoring 

 all that has gone before, dig open the 

 grave and resurrect some of these old 

 errors and ask us to use glass and the 

 complicated, expensive and worse 

 than useless outer cases, that necessa- 

 rily goes with it, to shut off the day- 

 light. To throw aside the Langstroth 

 space above the frame, that invented 

 and patented claim, which above any 

 other gave us apiculture as a business, 

 deserves the highest condemnation. 



Dowagiac, Mich , Nov. 1, 1883. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Losses of Bees in Winter. 



JAMES POINDEXTER. 



History and time often bring to 

 light facts which scientific investiga- 

 tion fails to reach. What do the 

 records of the losses of bees for the 

 last ten years show V First, that the 

 mortality has been greater or less ac- 

 cording to the cold or warmth of 

 climate in which they were situated; 

 and secondly, that the losses have 

 been much greater during cold win- 

 ters than in moderate ones. 



Commencing with the winter of 1872 

 and 1873, a very cold one, great mor- 

 tality of bees was reported ; next, 1874- 



