THlf fCMERICSK BE® JQlSWt^miL. 



551 



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blanket or a basket of packing stufE to 

 keep them warm. 



This is my conviction on this subject; 

 and until I shall repeatedly fail to win- 

 ter my bees successfully, 1 shall persist 

 in the " notion" thatthe much-dreaded 

 and much-written-about '• winter prob- 

 lem " should be made a " moral issue." 

 1 mean that plenty of young bees and 

 plenty of ^ood honey will prevent — if 

 not cure — •■ winter killing " of bees. 



inoTliig; and Italianizing Bees. 



1 have moved my bees— not for fun 

 or for play — four times in as many 

 years ; and here again I have failed to 

 liiid wherein the danger and loss 

 consist. 



I began the business with black bees. 

 My efforts, though persistent, to Ital- 

 ianize, have brought success only to 

 hybrids— except 3 or 4 colonies from 

 which I breed. I try to rear only pure 

 drones, but all the bees kept in the 

 neighborhood are blacks and hybrids, 

 and my nice yellow young queens, 

 nearly every tiuie they go out, get into 

 bad company and are spoilt. 



Bees '* of Color" IJuderestliuated. 



But. after all, I think that the bees 

 ••of color" are underestimated at the 

 expense of the "bleached " race. Talk 

 about the blacks heiug cross, and lazy, 

 and what not ! Why, last summer, I 

 was stung nearly to death (figuratively) 

 by a swarm of pure Italians when 1 

 tried to take them down from an apple 

 tree ! " They tit. and fit, and tit ;" and 

 after all the trouble, vexation and pain, 

 and hiving them three times (in a nice, 

 clean hive, too, in which they had 

 empty frames, frames of honey, and a 

 frame of brood), they finally left with- 

 out so much as a " thank you. good 

 by !" No colony of blacks ever served 

 me in such a vindictive and ungrateful 

 manner. 



And robbing! They beat the worst 

 pirates at that when once on a •■ scent." 

 The only cure I have yet found for 

 your '• beautiful Italians," when they 

 go out •• coon hunting" during melon 

 time, is to play •■ tit for tat " on them. 

 That brings them home. 



" But they gather honey from red 

 clover, which the blacks aud hybrids 

 can't do." Yes. they can. but they do 

 not do it much— at least not here where 

 the clover gets very large. Besides, 

 the blacks can beat them on '•lilting 

 and finishing;" they make nicer, 

 whiter capping to their comb honey, 

 every time. 



Report and Proftpects of the Season. 



I wintered IS colonies. In the spring 

 (April 1) they had plenty of honey and 

 brood, and "though located in an or- 

 chard of 12.0(10 fruit trees (mostly apple 

 and plum), they gathered nothing but 

 pollen. In May I had to feed every one 

 of them, and yet they 'dwindled" 

 some White clover came on abund- 

 antly, but did not yield much. During 

 linden bloom, which is abundant here, 

 the weather was cold and wet until the 

 best was past, and they got in only four 

 or five days' work on "it. Three hun- 

 dred and fifty pounds of comb honey in 

 sections is my whole crop, so far. I am 

 getting 20 cents per pound for it. 



There are about SO acres of golden- 

 rod within easy range of my apiary. It 

 will begin to bloom soon, and I expect 

 a good yield from it, if nothing befalls 

 it. Last year a heavy frost overtook it 

 in all its golden glory. 



Next fall I shall {D. V.) pack up and 

 goto Alachua Co., Fla., and I shall 

 take a few colonies along. ^ 



Union Army aud Scientific Pleasantry. 



But before I go South I shall join the 

 "Union" army. Hadn't we better 

 send out recruiting officers ? I will 

 send you the fee when I sell my remain- 

 ing honey. 



Mr. Editor, you have "done up" 

 that Wiley fellow in hot glucose now. 

 No wonder he snarls and squirms. 

 Thus may it happen to all the authors 

 of "scientific pleasantries" on the 

 honey question. We owe you a vote of 

 thanks and a '• gold- headed cane." 



Parkville, Mo , .July 2.\ 1888. 



Summer 'Work of Bees. 



Written for the American Bee Jouriial 



BY GEORGE W. TORK. 



The nectar so sweet the bee-keeper sees. 

 His hives flllinK up by the work of the bees. 

 £ach coming laden with sweets f rem the trees. 



A merry young bee goes forth from the home. 

 Mingling with others thus ready to roam — 

 Every one off tor the flower-decked fields, 

 Bight where the basswood bo gratefully yields 

 Its bountiful treasure of bright, golden sweet. 

 Cheering each bee that so gladly they meet ; 

 A busy and buzzing crowd are they — 

 Xot stopping to idle, but working all day. 



But to aid their keeper, we must allow. 

 Every bee makes it a solemn vow. 

 Ever to labor as hard as now. 



Just over the hillside decked with flowers, 

 On fleld and meadow, 'neath blooming bowers, 

 Unseen and unheard does the " busy bee" work. 

 Bushing hither and thither, but never to shirk ; 

 Kow dandelicns, butter-cups, lady-slips too. 

 Are yielding their sweetness for me and for you— 

 Loving the bees for all that they do. 

 Chicago, Ills. —.Acrostic. 



STING-ING-. 



A Dream About " Holding the 

 Breath " to Prevent Stings. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 

 BY EUGENE SECOR. 



I had a dream. Yon know it has 

 been asserted as a scientific fact that a 

 bee-sting cannot penetrate a man's 

 cuticle while lie holds his breath. I 

 have a profound respect for science 

 When science says a thing is so. it's 

 got to be so. Science utrnd to say the 

 world was Hat. and that the sun made 

 his daily circuit around it. Of course 

 it icKN fiat then. Even Galileo openly 

 recanted the spherical heresy, tint 

 now the world is round because science 

 says so. When science says "thumbs 

 up," thumbs must go up. People never 

 suspect science of joking. When it 

 said several years ago that, " In com- 

 iiurciul honey, which is entirely free from 



bce-mediatinn, the comb is made of 

 parafBne and filled with pure glucose 

 by appropriate machinery," they be- 

 lieved it, and all the bee-keepers in 

 Christendom have failed to convince 

 them that it is not a fact. But to my 

 dream. 



My mind had been exercised over 

 that scientific discovery, or the revela- 

 tion of it rather. I wanted to test it. 

 I had no doubt it was scientifically 

 true, but you know the spirit of en- 

 quiry that pervades the mind of young 

 America. For a man to be an agnostic 

 in religious matters is considered 

 smart in some circles, but to be a 

 know-nothing in science is to lose caste. 



This is a practical age, too, and the 

 Yankee wants to demonstrate every 

 theory he hears of. The only reason 

 he does not, is because life is too short 

 to devote to scientific investigation and 

 money-making too. 



It was a hot day at the close of the 

 basswood harvest. But little honey 

 was coming in. Swarming was appar- 

 ently over. Bees were cross. I had 

 lain down in the hammock for a short 

 rest after dinner. I could hear the 

 sweet hum from 40 colonies as the 

 happv young bees sported in front of 

 their'hives. 1 lay there enjoying the 

 music when I saw an after-swarm rush- 

 ing with new-born z<>al from one of my 

 hybrid colonies. The frisky young 

 queen soared high. After an unusually 

 long frolic in the air they alighted in a 

 jack-oak tree fully 25 feet from the 

 ground. 



As luck would have it, the a warming- 

 pole was broken, and the boys had 

 gone to the hay-field. The great 20- 

 foot ladder was brought into requisi- 

 tion. As I could reach about 8 feet 

 myself, it looked easy enough to secure 

 them without any assistance. I leaned 

 It against a dead limb, aud it did not 

 lack more than 5 feet of reaching to 

 where the bees hung. With saw in one 

 hand I ascended. Reaching next to 

 the top round I could reach the limb on • 

 which the bees were clustered. I pro- 

 ceeded to hold the limb with one hand 

 and to saw it off with the other. Just 

 as it was severed, the added weight of 

 the limb and bees with mv own. broke 

 the dead limb. The ladder dropped 

 back 2 or 3 feet with a sudden jerk, 

 shaking about half the bees off on my 

 head, neck and hands. 



Didn't 1 have a veil on ? Not much. 

 I am no green-horn in this business. 

 Besides I was determined to demon- 

 strate a great truth in science. I tiad 

 the opportunity. They were not amia- 

 ble. They were bent on mischief. 

 With a wonderful unanimity of pur- 

 pose, and surprising concert of action, 

 they unsheathed their swords and pro- 

 ceeded to business. Of course I held 

 my breath. I had been holding it for 

 the major part of a minute in anticipa- 

 tion of just such a contingency. I filled 

 my skin so full of resistance there 

 wasn't any room for even the point of 

 a javelin. 



About a thousand bees, more or less, 

 were humping themselves to get in the 

 first ''lick' at mp. It sounded like 

 frying fresh fish in salted butter. I 

 held the fort, i. (.. I held my breath. I 

 thought they would get tired of resist- 



