THE AMERICA!? BEE JOURNAL. 



727 



amount of business. ^V^e stayed a 

 few days with Mr. Aspinwall, who 

 is proprietor of the Bee-Keepers' Mag- 

 azine, whom I found a most intelli- 

 gent gentleman, fond of scientific 

 pursuits. 



I found their appliances are very 

 much the same as ours ; and I may 

 here take the opportunity of saying 

 that throughout my wanderings in 

 the States and Canada, I noticed that 

 most of the contrivances in use were 

 similar to those adopted by us in 

 England. I have been enabled to 

 carry away a few new ideas ; but I 

 feel justified in remarking that we 

 are quite equal to our transatlantic 

 friends as regards hive-making and 

 all the appliances necessary in bee- 

 keeping. 



That which struck me most to the 

 disadvantage of England, was our 

 deficiency in pasturage. You would 

 be perfectly astonished to see the 

 thousands and thousands of acres of 

 waste land across the water filled 

 with an abundance of honey-yielding 

 plants, immense quantities of honey 

 being lost, owing to the want of bees 

 to collect it. 



After spending a few days with 

 Mr. Aspinwall, he took me to see 

 Messrs. Knickerbocker and Locke 

 the queen-rearers in New York State! 

 Mr. Locke is the former editor of the 

 American Apiculturist. These gentle- 

 men rear queens in a way very simi- 

 lar to the Alley system, that is, by 

 inserting strips of cells, and destroy- 

 ing every other egg. They rear the 

 queens in the same way, but destroy 

 two eggs for one left, and keep them 

 in very much the same way as he 

 does. 



From there 1 went to see the largest 

 bee-keeper in the world, Capt. Heth- 

 erington, who has 2.700 colonies. He 

 has 20 apiaries, situated at distances 

 of two or three miles apart, in a 

 radius of twelve miles, so that the 

 greatest distance he has to go from 

 home is twelve miles. He and his 

 brother manage the whole of these 

 apiaries, having several men under 

 them ; they keep horses and carts, 

 and are hard at work all day long 

 and continue till evening. Business 

 is commenced at 5 o'clock in the 

 morning. I was there during the 

 hours of business, and saw all the 

 working. The men go around from 

 hive to hive, and take off crate after 

 crate ; perhaps a hive has three stories 

 of sections, which are promptly ex- 

 amined, and removed if necessary, 

 and in this way 100 or 150 crates of 

 sections are taken off and carried 

 away. The sections are not removed 

 singly, as we remove them. 



Capt. Hetherington produces the 

 largest quantity of honey in the 

 United States. He does not puff 

 himself, and never writes for any of 

 the papers ; in fact, one seldom sees 

 his name appearing anywhere in 

 connection with honey-producing. He 

 18 one of the most advanced bee- 

 keepers, and the largest producer of 

 honey with the least fuss I have ever 

 seen. He has been at this work for 

 thirty years, always keeping a little 

 ahead of the generality of bee-keep- 

 ers. He is a good business man, and 



knows how to gratify the popular 

 taste, having no difficulty in selling 

 his honey. He uses sections the same 

 as we do, and also separators. He 

 says that it would not answer his 

 purpose to do without separators, as 

 he requires every section to fit into a 

 crate, because there is no time for 

 delicate manipulations, he and his 

 staff working at high pressure from 

 early morning till late at night. 



Capt. Hetherington drove us over 

 to see Mr. EUwood, who is also an 

 advanced bee-keeper, owning 400 col- 

 onies, and who produces principally 

 two-pound sections of honey. We 

 also made the acquaintance of Mr. 

 Van Deusen, who makes the beauti- 

 ful flat-bottom foundation so well 

 known in this country. 



From Capt. Hetherington's we went 

 to Boston, and other places. As I be- 

 fore explained, we were obliged to 

 direct our steps northward, owing to 

 the high temperature. "We therefore 

 went to Quebec, Montreal, and other 

 places, regretting that Mr. Pringle 

 was too ill to see us when we stopped 

 at Napanee. 



At Owen Sound we spent an agree- 

 able time with Mr. McKnight. He 

 has 200 colonies of bees, and uses sec- 

 tions without separators. I saw a 

 number of his sections ; they looked 

 very nice, but some not quite so even 

 as those that were produced with 

 separators. I found, generally, in 

 Canada, that it was the practice to 

 dispense with separators, while in the 

 United States they were almost in- 

 variably used. The Canadians claim 

 to produce more honey without sep- 

 arators. 



After spending some time with Mr. 

 McKnight, I went with him to visit 

 Mr. Jones, and saw his works. He is 

 the largest manufacturer of appli- 

 ances in Canada, and has a 90 horse- 

 power engine working the machinery 

 for the construction of these articles. 

 I was much interested by what I saw 

 there. The business is conducted on 

 a large scale. Hives are made in 

 pieces, and stored away by the hun- 

 dreds, and are supplied to purchasers 

 by the dozen, the score, or the gross. 

 Cases are made up of ten hives to- 

 gether. 



In Canada, bee-keepers work on a 

 large scale, there being very few in a 

 small way of business. They go in 

 for it as a commercial undertaking ; 

 and, of course, taking into account 

 the pasturage and the immense ex- 

 tent of their country, they can do so 

 better than we can. While at Mr. 

 Jones', Mr. Cornell came and invited 

 us, and we spent a very pleasant even- 

 ing together. 



The journey from London to Liver- 

 pool is only a question of a few hours, 

 but traveling in America from one 

 city to another generally occupies a 

 gi-eat many hours. The country is 

 not so populated as ours, and I found 

 it necessary sometimes to make an 

 excursion of 500 or 600 miles from one 

 bee-farm to another. On one occa- 

 sion I went nearly 1,000 miles to see 

 the establishment of one honey-pro- 

 ducer and foundation-maker, and that 

 was of Messrs. Dadants', of which I 

 shall say more hereafter. I 



After inspecting Mr. Jones' manu- 

 factory, his 400 colonies, and his 

 queen-rearing arrangements, we went 

 to Lake Superior, and from there 

 through Michigan State to Lansing, 

 where I stayed with Prof. Cook. He 

 does not keep bees on a large scale ; 

 he is more of a scientific bee-keeper, 

 and tries experiments with different 

 hives, the results of each of which are 

 kept separate. His object is to teach 

 entomology and bee-keeping to the 

 agricultural students, so as to enable 

 them to commence that pursuit on 

 leaving the college. 



There are about 300 students at this 

 Agricultural College, many of whom 

 are interested in bees. On one after- 

 noon Prof. Cook asked me to take his 

 class of about forty students, and I 

 am glad to tell you, that by means of 

 my microscope, I was enabled to show 

 them some things they had not seen 

 before. They were generally well 

 educated and intelligent men, who, 

 after leaving the college, go out as 

 farmers. The time spent at the col- 

 lege was most ag'eeable, the Profes- 

 sor being a char, liug and sterling 

 men. 



While there I foi id my way to Mr. 

 Heddon's. He see led to me a very 

 intelligent gentlem ,n, very quick to 

 seize an idea and appreciated the ex- 

 perience of others. He showed me 

 his apiaries, although he was un- 

 fortunately suffering from bee-dis- 

 ease, which affects him in a very 

 peculiar way, namely, by producing 

 catarrh, so that he cannot open a hive 

 himself without being attacked by 

 this complaint. However, as I was 

 there, he showed me how the hives 

 were manipulated, the consequence 

 being that he suffered considerably 

 all the evening. He showed me the 

 handling of the shallow hives, and 

 how easy it was to find the queen. I 

 ascertained that he brought his bees 

 through the winter very unsuccess- 

 fully, and had lost as many as from 

 40 to -50 per cent, in wintering. 



We discussed the merits of the 

 fleddon and Stewarton hives, and in 

 the course of conversation he stated 

 that last year was a very poor honey 

 season, which bore out the complaint 

 of the Canadians who were over here 

 in 1886. I cannot remember what he 

 said was the average produce, but it 

 was not more than 20 pounds a colony 

 at any rate. I found in his district 

 the honey season had been very bad, 

 whilst in some parts of New York 

 State the reverse was the fact, 60 to 

 80 pounds per colony being an average 

 yield expected ; but there were other 

 districts in which not more than 10 to 

 15 pounds were obtained. 



One gentleman (the President of 

 an association) jokingly said that no 

 one would believe I had been to the 

 United States if I returned to Eng- 

 land without boasting about some- 

 thing, and he further said if I came 

 to him I could boast I had seen the 

 apiary where nearly 1 pound of honey 

 per colony had been obtained this 

 year. 



From Mr. Heddon's I went to Chi- 

 cago, and met an old friend, Mr. 

 Newman, who showed me over his 

 place, which is in the citv. Unfort- 



