142 



SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



have seen with the cat. I don't know 

 whether she dug down, or how she got 

 it, but I have seen it repeatedly. She 

 got them until she exterminated them 

 all. 



Mr. Wheeler — I have done it by dig- 

 ging down in the hole and putting a 

 piece of parsnip or carrot with a little 

 piece of strychnine in it. 



Mr. Kimmey — Do your moles travel 

 the same path? 



Mr. Wheeler — Thy went back and 

 forth. 



Mr. Kimmey — 'Mine did not. 



Mr. Duby — Another good way of de- 

 stroying moles is a common castor-oil 

 bean. You see the track of the mole. 

 It is never deep. Just make a hole with 

 a stick and drop a castor oil bean in it. 



Dr. Miller — Do the moles hurt the 

 bees? 



Mr. Taylor — No, but they dig up the 

 ground and kill the sod. 



Dr. Miller — Then what do we care 

 about moles? 



Mr. Wheeler — Does the castor-oil 

 bean kill the mole or scare him away? 



Mr. Duby — Kills him. The next morn- 

 ing he will be on top of the ground. 



Mr. Wilcox — I want to get rid of the 

 moles. They are eating my wife's flow- 

 ers. They do not hurt the bees, but they 

 are destroj'ing the flowers. 



Pres. York — Here is a question for 

 Dr. Miller to answer. Are you ready? 



Dr. Miller — Ready. 



How TO Succeed with Bees. 



Pres. York — "How can I succeed in 

 bee-culture?" 



Dr. Miller — I had the same question 

 asked me a number of years ago. A 

 lady in the State of Wisconsin wrote to 

 me, "Will you please give me your sys- 

 tem of bee-culture?" When I have it 

 written out for her I will pass it on to 

 you. 



iPres. York — Dr. Miller wants more 

 time, but he has had over 40 years now. 



Distance Between Queen-Breeding 

 Apiaries. 



"How far apart should queen-breed- 

 ing apiaries be situated in order to 

 prevent amalgamation?" 



Mr. HorstmanU' — 6 miles. 



Mr. "Wheeler — According to Mr. 

 France, it should be 12 miles — 6 miles 

 each way. 



Dr. Miller — If I am not mistaken. 

 Father Langstroth said a distance of 



half a mile; and others will make it 6 

 miles. If there is any definite informa- 

 tion on that point it will be important to 

 get it. If not, we would better not 

 spend much time on it. 

 Mr. Hudson — When I started rearing 

 Italian bees for sale there were black 

 bees around me — no Italians — and I 

 commenced to Italianize all the bees, un- 

 til I got all Italians within the 3-mile 

 limit, and that eliminated the trouble. 



Mr. Abbott — When I first started in 

 St. Joseph I had, about % of a mile 

 out, 150 colonies. My brother lived in 

 the city and we had in his yard in the 

 city 10 or 15 colonies of pure Italians. 

 Those out in the large apiary of 150 

 colonies were not all pure Italians, but 

 we kept drone-traps on them and caught 

 all the drones except the Italian drones. 

 We had one of those Cyprian queens, 

 and we wanted to get all the queens 

 mated, if possible, and the colony pro- 

 duced about 100 queen-cells. We saved 

 the virgin queens and put them on the 

 hives according to my method, having 5 

 or 6 on the hive — some of them in the 

 city and some of them out at my place, 

 where the other bees were. More than 

 half of those out where the 150 colonies 

 were, were impurely mated. There 

 were no drones flying in our yard, how- 

 ever, except the Italian ones. Those in 

 my brother's hives were every one of 

 them mated with Italian drones. There 

 was not a single queen mated there 

 except the pure ones. They were yel- 

 low. I concluded the condition of be- 

 ing hemmed in in the city had something 

 to do with that. The apiaries were not 

 to exceed % of a mile apart. We tried 

 that repeatedly, and we had the same 

 experience every time. We could get 

 them purely mated in the city without 

 any trouble, but if we undertook to 

 mate them out where the other colonies 

 were, at least half of them would be 

 impurely mated. 



Dr. 'Bohrer — I wrote that question, be- 

 cause I believe it is one of consider- 

 able interest. I stated, I think, once 

 before here today, that I bred queens 

 as early as 1864, and I made it a point 

 in the years 1864 to 1866 to get control 

 of all the black bees within 6 or 8 miles 

 of me, and of course out beyond that 

 there were hybrid bees, because they 

 were mixing constantly. I dropped out 

 in 1873, moving to Kansas, where the 

 country at that time was not adapted 

 to bee-keeping at all, and since I have 



