1883 



GLEAirmas In bee culturI!. 



127 



be made good this summer. During the month of 

 September (for that month gave us in this locality 

 about all the honey we got) I took in boxes, and ex- 

 tracted, as nearly as I can guess, about 300 lbs. I 

 think if I had weighed it, it would prove to have 

 been more rather than less. I now have 17 col- 

 onies in the best condition, packed in chaflf on the 

 summer stand. Yesterday being a beautiful day, I 

 let them have a fly, which seemed to please them 

 very much. Frank M. Snydir. 



Urbana, 111., Jan. 30, 1883. 



BEES IN KANSAS. 



FROM 9 TO 28, AND 325 LBS. OF HONEY. 



AM Still an A B C scholar, and am still pretty 

 near the foot of the class. I began last spring 

 with 9 medium colonies. The spring proved so 

 very cold and wet that the bees got no benefit from 

 the fruit-bloom, so I had to feed till the middle of 

 June; they then began to fill up very fast with bees; 

 In July they took the swarming fever, and no 

 amount of room, nor any of the rules laid down, 

 would stop it; so I just let them swarm. They in- 

 creased from 9 to 28, and all filled up well with 

 honey. 



I did not get the extractor I ordered of you soon 

 enough to get much honey; that is, I did not order 

 It soon enough. It came promptly on time, and is a 

 good one too. All the trouble was 



THICK HONEY. 



My honey was so very thick that the strainers would 

 clog so as to hinder operations. Having to stop and 

 change strainers so often, I finally made one four 

 inches in diameter, of mosquito bar doubled, and 

 then got along much better. I obtained 325 lbs. of 

 honey, very thick; weighs 12 lbs. to the gallon, 

 which I sold at 20 cts. per lb. 



I found an old-style bee-keeper who told me he 

 was going to kill some bees to get the honey. I told 

 him if he would let me, I would go and take out the 

 bees and try to save them. He consented. So, late 

 in November, I went aud took out 8 swarms, doub- 

 led to 6, and gave them 5 frames of sealed honey; 

 packed with chaflf cushions on each side, and chaff 

 cushion on top, and now they are all on their sum- 

 mer stands, nearly buried up in snow. I feel pretty 

 sure that another fall I will put my bees in a clamp, 

 a la Boomhower. There every bright sunny day the 

 bees will not come out and perish on the snow, as 

 some are doing to-day. 



Then the dollar-queen business, that ought to 

 have been included in friend Wiltse's "Fallacies," 

 in bee-keeping. Some of my very best queens I 

 bred right among black drones; two queen-cells I 

 grafted (from the same comb) into 2 nucleus hives; 

 one was a bright yellow queen, and the other was a 

 very dark leather-colored one. Each produced 

 three-banded bees. These experiments prove to me 

 that home-bred dollar queens are often as good as 

 any. 



I have bought quite a number of dollar queens of 

 friend Hayhurst, and only one proved to be impure- 

 ly mated, and that one he promptly replaced. If all 

 the dollar-queen breeders were as square as friend 

 H., there would be no cause for complaint. I should 

 not like to pay 3 or 5 dollars for a queen that its own- 

 er bad kept one-third its lifetime, used it one year 



to test it, and found just what I could have found 

 out, and had the whole season's use of It. I expect 

 to use dollar queens till I see differently than now. 



HONEY-DEW. 



Last summer we had a great amount of honey- 

 dew— the first I ever saw. It was on the cotton- 

 wood trees in town; every case proved to be the 

 work of the aphis. The honey-dew dropped on the 

 sidewalks till, in some places, they would show the 

 large drops like the effects of drops of grease on a 

 pine floor; yet the bees would not work on the 

 leaves of this tree more than till 9 o'clock, when the 

 sun would have dried it up. I am somewhat afraid 

 that it may cause dysentery among the bees this 

 winter. J. W. Margrave. 



Hiawatha, Brown Co., Kan., Jan. 27, 1883. 



MOANING BEES FOR BETTER PASTURE. 



THE WAY FRIEND SWARTWOUT DOES IT? 



^0^ ACH year as I watched the honey come and go, 

 f[*J\ \ I have been more impressed with the idea, 

 that to gain the most profit I must move my 

 bees. The next questions which came into my 

 mind were, when, where, and how to move. As clo- 

 ver and basswood form the main crop here, and as it 

 would cost about 80 cents per colony to move, I 

 thought it would pay better to feed up to clover^ 

 bloom. It does not cost much to feed when your 

 colonies are weak, and a little honey ia coming every 

 few days; but at the close of the basswood, with 

 heavy colonies and lots of hatching bees, it is quite 

 a different thing, so I decided that was the time to 

 move. 



Where? Where there are marshes with plenty of 

 fall flowers, or buckwheat bloom. Be careful not to 

 overstock, as it is much easier than you think in the 

 fall. 



How? Extract all the honey, with the exception 

 of 6 or 8 lbs.; place two thicknesses of burlap over 

 the frames, and close the entrance with wire screen. 

 If you are working for comb honey, remove all sec- 

 tions that are filled, or nearly so; extract what is 

 left, to be used to fill those removed which were not 

 finished, as it is white honey; fill up with sections, 

 put on the burlap, and close the entrance with wire 

 screen. Have every thing all ready the day before 

 you move, so all you have to do is to close the en" 

 trances and take off the tops. Have a good spring 

 wagon — platform springs are the best ; place it as 

 near the bees as possible. Now get up early, close 

 the entrances; take off the tops; place the hives on 

 the wagon, with the frames running lengthwise, as 

 they will ride much better in that position ; hitch on 

 your team, and, where the road is smooth, drive 

 rapidly so as to get to your destination before the 

 sun is very hot. Unload your bees; place where 

 you want them to stand; open the entrances, and 

 look to see that no frames have been moved. 



The man who moves bees once with these condi* 

 tions will move again. J. J. Swartwout. 



Union City, Mich., Jan. 4, 1883. 



Very good, friend S.; but I wanted you to 

 tell us just how much you gained by it, aud, 

 in short, a full report of your proceedings 

 and success in the matter. It is true you 

 give us a hint that you did well, but we want 

 to know just how well. 



