730 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



cleaned. The wax-moth, next to foul 

 brood, is a destructive pest in api- 

 aries. It has been said that Lang- 

 stroth recommended wooden hives 

 because the wax-moth could find no 

 resting place in them ; but it is now 

 well known that the wax-moth is no 

 respecter of hives, and breeds as fast 

 in wooden as in straw hives. The 

 scales of wax that drop on the boards 

 of hives are gathered together and 

 form nests for the maggots of the 

 moth. If either earthenware or iron 

 vessels used for feeding purposes be 

 left for a short time on the centres of 

 the bottom-boards, young moths will 

 soon be found beneath them as well 

 as around the edges of the hives. The 

 maggots of the moth feed on their 

 nests — viz., the fallen or lost scales 

 of wax, till they are able to crawl to 

 and lay hold of the combs of the hives. 

 Amongst the combs the maggots 

 make sad havoc, for they live upon 

 pure wax and consume much of it. 



Covering hives well and warmly 

 for the winter months is the finishing 

 work of the apiary, and though last 

 in time it is not least in importance. 

 My preaching on this point is better 

 than my practice, for my hives are 

 never sufHciently covered in winter 

 and spring. A quantity of material 

 of some kind is necessary to cover 

 sixty large hives. Bees are tiny, 

 fragile creatures, and require atten- 

 tion in cold weather. Both cold and 

 wet are hurtful to them. Hives 

 should have good, warm under-cover- 

 ings, and their outer coverings should 

 be waterproof. Not a drop of rain 

 should be allowed to touch either 

 hives or boards after September, for if 

 either hives or boards are damp in 

 winter, frost may convert the mois- 

 ture into ice. 



Hives in bee-houses are easily kept 

 dry and warm in winter, and hence 

 my prejudices against bee-houses 

 grow less and less. The protection 

 of a good, warm covering should be 

 given to hives either with or without 

 bee-houses, and such covering should 

 not be removed altogether from hives 

 till the end of April. 



All covers of all kinds of hives should 

 be porous enough to let the moisture 

 of the hives pass through ; otherwise 

 it would be condensed, keep the hives 

 damp, and do harm. Warmth, dry- 

 ness, and ventilation should all be 

 considered In covering hives for win- 

 ter and spring. 



took what little honey a colony had, 

 and gave me the bees. I put them In 

 at the entrance between sundown and 

 dark, with no loss of bees. The next 

 day the one queen was brought out 

 dead ; the third day after, the other 

 queen was killed also. 



I never took so much pains to care 

 for my bees as I have this fall, and if 

 I get them through the coming win- 

 ter as well as I did last winter, I shall 

 owe the editor a vote of thanks for 

 urging bee-keepers to take good care 

 of their bees. 



My crop consists of 200 pounds of 

 comb honey, and 100 pounds of ex- 

 tracted. These results might give a 

 younger bee-keeper the " blues," but 

 I have faith that all will be right in 

 the end, and will not abandon my 

 bees. 



I have also been working on a de- 

 vice to make honey into vinegar in a 

 short time. My device holds one-half 

 gallon, and in warm weather in 24 

 hours it will be brought on so far that 

 in two to four weeks it will be first- 

 class vinegar. The beauty of it is, 

 that one can stop the making of the 

 vinegar at any time, and for as long 

 as he pleases, while other devices 

 have to be fed often or be unpacked. 



Union City,o Ind., Nov. 7, 1887. 



For tbe American Bee JonmnL 



ResnltsoftHe Season Of 1887. 



A. HOKE. 



or rear, and gives two or three puffs 

 of smoke in at the entrance ; waiting 

 a few moments for the bees to fill 

 themselves with honey, the cap is 

 taken off, then the corner of the quilt . 

 or honey-board (if of a movable-comb 

 hive) is lifted, and a few light pufEs 

 given as it is taken ofi. and with slow, 

 even motions, the combs can be taken 

 out, the needed work be done, and 

 the hive closed again. 



With the box-hive it can be turned 

 over and examined from the bottom, 

 or the boxes taken off for use or sale. 

 It is all done in a few minutes, no 

 fuss, and in a short time the bees are 

 working as merrily as ever with noth- 

 ing to show that their hive had been 

 touched. 



But there is much injudicious use 

 of the smoker when the poor bees are 

 smoked till they do not know what to 

 do, and run wildly all over the hive, 

 the ground, and the bee-keeper ; the 

 queen stops laying, and for the time 

 being the colony is as badly demoral- 

 ized as was the one without any 

 smoke. I have seen a man who called 

 himself a practical bee keeper, smoke 

 a colony of bees till I felt sick for the 

 poor little bees, and said, " For pity's 

 sake, hold on !" 



Oquawka,"o Ills. 



Prairie Farmer. 



JMicious Ose of MU on Bees. 



W. M. KELLOGG. 



On page 235, 1 reported 32 colonies 

 in fair condition. I lost one colony 

 by spring dwindling, sold one, lost 4 

 by robbing and queenlessness, and 

 had an increase of 2 colonies. I now 

 have 28 in winter quarters, all well 

 packed in sawdust and planer shav- 

 ings. 



One colony is queenless, and, of 

 course, it will be lost, but it will not 

 starve. 1 lost its queen in this way : 

 It was light in bees. A bee-keeper 



Every owner of a colony of bees 

 should have a smoker ; it will pay for 

 itself every year. Who does not re- 

 member the momentous times of 

 " robbing the bees," when the victim 

 prepared himself for the fray by 

 stuffing his pants into his boot-tops, 

 tying his big coat around him, gloves 

 on his hands, and if he possessed no 

 veil of any kind, his face all tied up 

 so that only one eye had a little peep- 

 hole, and nine chances to one that 

 bees enough got into that same peep- 

 hole to make his face swell up till it 

 looked like a Chinese idol. 



In this garb the honey was forcibly 

 taken away from the bees— in very 

 truth robbing them — which they very 

 naturally resented with all their little 

 might, not so very small either when 

 we consider the weight of evidence 

 a bee's stinger carries with it. But 

 the honey was gotten off at the ex- 

 pense of a very angry and sweaty 

 man ; everybody and everything 

 about the place, even to the sooty 

 iron top to the chimney, stung out of 

 their senses; the dog sent yelping 

 under the barn, and the man locked 

 out of the house because he " had so 

 many bees on him," goes into the 

 wood-shed to dissolve, pick out the 

 stingers and swear, and the bees are 

 so cross for days after, that no one 

 dares go near them. 



Now all this is changed by the use 

 of the little smoker. A piece of rot- 

 ten wood is lighted and placed in the 

 barrel ; the bellows is squeezed a few 

 times to see that it is going well, and 

 with no veil or gloves on, the bee- 

 master goes to the hive from the side 



Tlie Oflorle^n^onl Brool 



We have taken the following from 

 the London Journal of Horticulture. It 

 is written by a Hallamshire bee- 

 keeper, and will be read with interest: 



Amongst all the infectious diseases 

 from which bees suffer, the above is 

 the most insidious. Phenol, salicylic 

 acid, camphor, and in fact all and 

 every remedy which has been known 

 to cure the offensive form of foul 

 brood, is powerless to cure or prevent 

 the odorless form of the disease 

 spreading. Its appearance is exactly 

 like the other— viz., cappings of cells 

 sunken, dark-colored dead brood, 

 coffee-colored and ropy, but it has no 

 smell whatever, hence it is very apt 

 to cause no alarm, and by interchang- 

 ing combs one may get it into every 

 colony before its nature is suspected, 

 particularly when combs are changed 

 in the autumn and spring to save 

 feeding. 



I write this from bitter experience. 

 I first noticed it in 1881, but as all 

 authorities agreed that foul brood 

 could not be mistaken on account of 

 its offensive smell, and that it. was 

 the only infectious disease bees were 

 liable to, I thought it must be chilled 

 brood, then thought no more of it. In 

 1882, by changing combs, 1 had it in 

 nearly every colony— about 18 ; I then 

 began to experiment with it. First, I 

 shaved the caps off diseased combs, 

 and put them into healthy colonies to 

 see if it was infectious, and as the 

 first brood hatched out of the dis- 

 eased cells apparently healthy, I at 

 once concluded that it was not in- 

 fectious. In this I made an unfortu- 

 nate mistake, for had I noticed tbe 

 colonies until after the second batch 

 of brood began to batch, I should 



