OBSERVATIONS BY APIARISTS. 95 



on forty-eight sections, and prop the hive off the bottom board to 

 give better ventilation. In this way I prevent swarming to a very 

 large degree. I thus secure strong colonies, and in this lies the 

 secret of profits in honey. I have one ton of surplus honey at my 

 elbow taken from forty colonies, spring count 1500 pounds ex- 

 tracted, and 500 pounds comb, or an average of 50 pounds per colony." 



LAURENS HAWN, Leavenworth, Leavenworth county. "I have had 

 no experience with alfalfa. White clover is the main dependence for 

 a flow of nectar in this vicinity, and as it is very uncertain, the bee 

 business is consequently not very profitable. There seems to be a 

 prevalent though erroneous idea among horticulturists and people in 

 general who raise a little fruit that bees are destructive to the ripe 

 fruit. On the contrary, they are very beneficial to fruit-growers, and 

 this fact should be promulgated among the people. I have had con- 

 siderable experience in this matter for several years, and know posi- 

 tively that without bees our fruit crops would be more often a failure. 

 My apiary is in an orchard between two small vineyards ; vines within 

 twenty feet of the hives. I have suspended a bunch of ripe grapes in 

 a hive during a time when the bees were working on decayed grapes 

 in the vineyard, and not a grape was punctured. Of course, when 

 grapes or other fruits are punctured or have rotten spots in them, and 

 there is no nectar in the blooms, they will work on such fruit ; hence 

 arise the erroneous ideas concerning their destructive qualities. I 

 have observed that if there is so much rain during the blooming 

 period that bees cannot visit the fruit blossoms, there is always a 

 failure of fruit crops. Many people spray their fruit-trees when 

 they are in bloom, while they should never be sprayed until the 

 bloom is falling. If people spray trees in full blossom they not 

 only kill bees, but run the risk of poisoning the people who eat the 

 honey made at that time. Another point is that in reference to the 

 wholesomeness of honey as food : it can be used in all diseases when 

 sugar and other sweets are prohibited, and if bought of reliable 

 parties is free from all adulterations, which can hardly be said of 

 sugar and other sweets.' Bee-keeping in this local ily, as a single occu- 

 pation, is not profitable." 



J. F. CROCKER, Garden City. Finney county. "Alfalfa is a splendid 

 honey plant if it has plenty of moisure, either from rain or irrigation. 

 During protracted dry weather it does not secrete nectar, and during 

 excessive wet weather the bloom sloughs off, and we get no honey. 

 If we were situated so we could irrigate the alfalfa fields immediately 

 after each crop of hay was cut, and the fields were not all mowed at 

 the same time, and none mowed until the seed-pods begin to form, 

 we would have a continuous honey flow from June 15 to October 1." 



