1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



825 



CONDUCTED BY 

 DTt. C. C. MILLER, AIAREKGO, ILL. 



[Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal, or to Ur. Miller direct.! 



Sweet Clover Probably the Best. 



1. Which plant would be best to sow on waste places and 

 pastures without doing any injury to the place, such as getting 

 Into the fields ? Is sweet clover very good ? 



Over one-third of my bees have already died this fall from 

 the moths. U. T. 



Leon Springs, Tex. 



Answers. — 1. I have some doubt whether you could 

 strike anything better than the one you mention — sweet clo- 

 ver. It will spread along the roadside and in waste places, 

 but it is a rare thing for it to get a foothold in the fields. If it 

 should get in, it isn't hard to get out, for it is a biennial, dying 

 out root and branch at the close of the second year. So if it 

 is kept cut down the second year so as not to go to seed, that's 

 the last of it. By a little attention to the matter you may 

 train horses and cows to eat it, and thus have a valuable for- 

 age plant, both for green feed and for hay, as well as an excel- 

 lent honey-plant. 



Transferringf Bees. 



1. The hive I use is a chaff one, after Falconer's pattern. 

 The outer wall is of }-2-inch lumber, plowed and grooved to- 

 gether. The inner walls are %-inch lumber, the height of 

 the brood nest. The size of brood-chamber is 14x16x9 J^' 

 inches, with chaff packing space 2 inches all around. I use 

 10 frames, 16%xlJ-^ inch top-bar, 9}i deep. On top of these 

 hives I can use the T supers or pattern-slat supers of 28 sec- 

 tions, or almost any other super I wish. As for single-walled 

 or dove-tailed hives, I can screw one piece on each end %i2, 

 and it is ready to take on any 28-section super, either a T 

 or pattern-slat. 



As to the size of frames, if I change from these it will be for 

 the deeper. I winter my bees with an arch device, and 

 forest leaves packed on top of them. I make all ray hiyes, su- 

 pers, and accessories for my small apiary and a few for friends, 

 by foot-power machinery. 



2. I will give my experience in transferring last spring. 

 I bought a colony in a hive for $1.00 and transferred it to 

 movable-frames, according to the old method, that is, remove 

 the honey, brood and suitable combs, and filled up ths balance 

 of the hive with comb foundation. It paid well. They gave 

 me 70 capped sections, 14 uncapped, and plenty for winter. 

 I tried to do the job under Heddon's new way, by the instruc- 

 tion in the " A B C of Bee-Culture;" I also tried another 

 colony in a nail-keg, and failed in both instances. I followed 

 instructions by drumming for about two hours, and I could 

 not get them up into the box for that purpose. I operated 

 both colonies the same way, by turning the hives bottom side 

 up, and drumming with sticks on the sides, puffing smoke in 

 here and there, where I could get smoke in, and could not get 

 them up. 



I have the balance of my bees to transfer in the spring, if 

 they winter. If you can give a few pointers on this, please do 

 so. I am like the boy — I will try again — that Is, Heddon's 

 new way, by putting on full sheets of foundation, instead of 

 running them into a small box. I will put on a small 5-frame 

 hive, with a couple of frames of unsealed brood from another 

 hive. If there is anything I should or should not do, please 

 inform me. 



I practice spring feeding to stimulate early brood-rearing. 

 For using the feeder, simply pull back the quilt from one 

 side, and uncover three frames, and lay the feeder on. By the 

 construction of feeder, the most of the heat is retained In the 

 brood-nest. A. M. S. 



Koch, Ohio, Nov. 25. 



Answer. — I really don't know why you should fail in 

 drumming the bees out. Certainly two hours was long enough 

 for any reasonable bees. Possibly you were too mild-mannered 

 in your pounding, for it should be no gentle tapping but a pound- 

 ing that would make the bees think their house was coming 

 down about their ears, and the best thing would be to save 

 their lives by getting out of it. Whether the smoke did good 

 or harm depends upon how it was used. If blown in at the 

 junction of the hive and the driving-box, it might drive them 



down instead of up, for bees are inclined to retreat before 

 smoke. Unless there was a place of entrance somewhere near 

 the ground, the smoke would hardly help. 



I think your scheme of putting a couple of frames of brood 

 in a hive to drum them in will help. Indeed, If you turn the 

 hive upside down and set over it the new hive with one or two 

 frames of brood, and leave it thus for a day or so, you'll find a 

 goodly number of bees taking care of the brood. Of course, 

 the bees must be allowed to fly out. Then it will take less 

 time to get the rest of the bees drummed up than if they were 

 to go Into an empty box. 



Possibly you might like this plan : Wait till the bees 

 swarm, and then hive the swarm in your frame hive, setting it 

 on the old stand and putting the old hive close beside it. In 

 four or five days remove the old hive to a new locality, and 

 that will make a pretty sure thing of it that there will be no 

 second swarm. In 2 1 d;iys from the date of swarming all the 

 brood will be hatched out, and you can then drum out the bees 

 into a frame hive. Having no brood to protect they will be 

 more easily driven. 



Wintering in a Iiarge Hive — Swarming, Etc. 



Suppose I make a hive 20 inches square, outside meas- 

 ure, and allow a swarm to fill the hive before extracting any, 

 and winter the bees with every pound of honey in the hive 

 that they gathered through the season, extracting all just be- 

 fore the honey-flow in the spring — 



1st. Is there any ad>rantage in wintering bees with a 

 large hive full of honey ? 



2nd. Will they breed up better in the spring ? 



3rd. Will a two-story, 13-frame Langstroth hive prevent 

 swarming ? 



4th. Is the honey just as good where left in the hive all 

 winter? 



Please point out all defections and advantages in this plan. 



Davison, Mich. E. B. T. 



Answers. — 1. I suppose the thing might be overdone, 

 but there are advantages in a good supply of honey. For one 

 thing, you can feel secure against the danger of their running 

 out of stores and starving if you feel sure they have a good 

 deal more honey than they can possibly use. Without being 

 able to see any good reason for it, you will sometimes see one 

 colony use up two or three times as much stores as another 

 colony that appears, so far as you can see, to be just about the 

 same. So it's a good plan to let every colony have more than 

 as much as you think will be used by the colony that uses the 

 most. 



2. B. Taylor — and he's a man whose opinion I respect 

 — thinks it's just as well to have enough stores on hand at all 

 times so there's no danger of immediate want, supplying from 

 time to time as the supply runs low. But I think nearly every 

 one else is agreed that bees will breed up better in spring if, 

 on taking stock, they find quite a surplus on hand so they 

 needn't be anxious about the future. I certainly would rather 

 my bees should at all times have stores ahead. Another item 

 is, that it's easier to keep a small space warm than a large one, 

 and if the cells are filled with honey there's just that much less 

 air-space to keep warm. 



3. A two-story barn wouldn't always keep bees from 

 swarming. But as a rule they will swarm less in a large hive 

 than a small one. I should hardly expect half as much swarm- 

 ing in a two-story (or a one-story) hive containing a total of 13 

 frames, as I would in a hive containing only eight frames. If 

 you mean 13 frames in each of the two stories, I should expect 

 still lessswarming. But remember that no amount of room 

 will always, without fall, prevent swarming. 



4. If the honey is well ripened before cold weather sets 

 in, it will probably be just as good. If thin, it may candy. 

 With a good, strong colony, well wintered, I should expect the 

 honey to be as good in spring as it was the previous fall, and 

 in some cases better. 



Honey from Mountain Laxirel. 



The following clipping is from the New York Sun, of Nov. 

 26,1895: 



"Trenton, N. J., Nov. 25. — Dr. Wra. Elmer has received 

 from Theodore G. Wormley, the analytical chemist of the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania, a report on the samples of honey sent 

 to him last week. Mr. and Mrs. John S. Chambers, of this city 

 ate some of the honey and narrowly escaped death. 



" Dr. Wormly says he has failed to find any metallic or or- 

 ganic poisons, but that experiments made upon dogs show that 



