126 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



$15,000 by his experiment. It is impossible 

 to keep up with the season on a river How- 

 ing soutli like the Mississippi ; besides, im- 

 mense (quantities of bees are lost by drown- 

 ing, and some are left when changing loca- 

 tions, by being l)elatf'd over niglit in the 

 woods and fields. 



I would advise migratory bee-keeping only 

 for sliort distances ; and then there ouglit to 

 be excellent outfits, and good roads to travel. 



Greenville, Miss., .Tnly 2(1, 1SS<». 



Accompanying the foregoing was a little 

 note lieaded : — 



ASIDE. 



For the last six weeks we have had a large 

 flow of honey, and, if I could have given the 

 business my personal attention, I would 

 have secured a heavy crop. As it is, I liavo 

 shij)ped thirty-six barrels (S.W ll)s. net, each) 

 of Cypress honey, and S(X) pounds of wax : 

 having melted many of my old combs. 



(). M. B. 



If the Conditions are Right, Moving Bees to 

 Other Localities may be Profitable. 



JAMES HEDDON. 



Ms YOU ask for thoughts from bee- 

 keepers who have had no personal ex- 

 perience , I will write as one of that 

 class. You see, .here, we have the 

 spring, summer and fall honey crops, and 

 we would hardly know what to move for, 

 and as for the difference in climatic in- 

 fluences, rainfall, etc., we never can tell 

 where the same blossoms are going to yield 

 best with any degree of certainty. From my 

 twenty-one years experience, had I the 

 power to fix the weather during the bass- 

 wood bloom of 1887 and 1888 I would not 

 have made it different from what it was, and 

 yet we did not get half a crop, and why 'i 



Well, I do not know. The nectar yielding 

 principle is to deep for me. I frankly ad- 

 mit that I do not understand it. I have con- 

 cluded to prophesy like Josh Billing's hen ; 

 that is, do my cackling after the things come 

 to pass, in regard to good honey yields. 



Before C. O. Perrine took his fatal Missis- 

 sippi river, migratory, honey producing ex- 

 ploit, he came down and spent four days 

 with me, testing comb foundation ( he then 

 having the oidy foundation machine in the 

 world) and talking over his chances. I ad- 

 vised him not to undertake it. I told hini I 

 did not thing he could compete with the fel- 

 low who stayed in one place and ran on the 

 cheapjbasis. He lost over .$1.'),0(K) and met 

 witii nearly all the mishaps that I predicted, 

 and some that I did not think of. But that 

 is not here nor there with the kind of migra- 

 tory bee-keeping you refer to, and I will say 

 that I believe that if hives are made right 

 and things otherwise fitted for the moving 

 of bees to certain pasture fields that do not 

 exist near them, that there are many 

 locations wherein it will pay, and pay largely. 

 So far as I know, I was the first to adopt 

 the hay-rack with the one-fourth load of hay 



on, upon which you can place thirty or 

 forty hives with a rope around the whole 

 and then over all, fastening tiiem in position. 

 < )f course the readily movable iiive such as 

 you mention, and, let me add, witli fixed 

 frames, is almost a necessity. Perhajjs 

 when this system is fairly inaugurated, it 

 would pay to have colonies on scales in dif- 

 ferent pai-ts of the adjoining country with 

 so7ne one to let us know when a shower had 

 struck. 



Yes, you are riglit, this is a more promis- 

 ing field for experiment than planting for 

 honey. I feel like cautioning all l)ee-keepers 

 against planting for honey except under the 

 following conditions : First, that they be 

 sure to plant something tougli and self sus- 

 taining, oidy recpiiring a few seeds scattered 

 here and thei-e to give it foothold, when they 

 can let it run and it will run in instead of 

 out. At the same time it must not be a nox- 

 ious weed like a thistle or anything that 

 will injure cultivated fields. 



Now, another important matter is that yon 

 do your planting very secretly. Not be- 

 cause the plants are going to hurt anybody, 

 but they will almost surely stimulate some 

 " critter " near you to go to keeping bees, 

 for he will fancy that all the honey you get 

 comes fi'om these sown seeds. 



Well, you see I have given my opinion 

 but cannot make much of an article because 

 I cannot speak from experience. Before I 

 close, however. I wish to say a few words 

 about the subject you touch in your first ed- 

 itorial of last issue. I have had precisely 

 the same experience as has •' Th.at Pittsfield 

 Smith." I have found that very many of 

 my customers are readers of the Review, 

 and they are of a different class from many 

 who see my advertisement in other papers. 

 We have a class of customers which we call 

 the "baby" class. They do not seem to 

 comprehend rational commerce, but want 

 everything, and that too without giving any- 

 thing like an equivalent. We have never 

 had one of this class from the Review that 

 we know of. As young bee-keepers grow 

 older, the Review list will become larger. 



DowAGiAc, Mich., July Ih, 188!). 



Moving Bees to Basswood and Fall Flowers- 

 It Pays in Good Seasons. 

 L. o. whiting. 



Roving bees to new pastures to 

 V) take advantage of the flow of honey 

 has been i)racticed here to some ex- 

 tent. It has in it many points of 

 success, and some exactly the reverse. We 

 have about this town a large yield of white 

 clover honey tluit is much in excess of that 

 l^roduced on lately cleared land. Bass- 

 wood trees have disappeared, and the fall 

 flow is of small account. If we take off' all 

 sections and extract the clover honey from 

 the body of the hive, then take bees to the 

 basswood forest cat the right time, our hives 

 will be as full in eight or ten days as before, 

 and about as much comb honey secured as 

 we could have had witliout extracting. 



