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176 



NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



Mr. Miles — There is no need feed- 

 ing at ithis time of the year. If it is 

 necessary to feed them, I would like 

 to suggest putting a little bunch of 

 blue grass down one side of the hive 

 to the feeder, and you can scatter a 

 little syrup on that, and the toees will 

 go down. 



Mr. Ramer — I have used' all kinds of 

 feeders, and I Ihave settled down to 

 this: That I sihall feed out of doors 

 when there are no other bees near, 

 and then equalize. I will do that till 

 I think they have plenty. 



Question — How to prepare bees for 

 outdoor wintering in the West or 

 North? 



Mr. Hall — I have had some experi- 

 ence in that. In the year 1903 or 1904 

 I had 126 colonies to winter. I hadn't 

 roam in my cellar, so I concluded to 

 experiment, and put 63 in.side and 63 

 outside. The 63 I put inside the cellar 

 were all the lighter ones. I was a 

 little afraid to risk outdoors. The re- 

 sult was, 59 colonies wintered indoors, 

 as against 26 colonies outdoors. Now, 

 my method of packing those outdoors 

 was, I placed the hives in two rows, 

 probably about six or eight inches 

 apart. I put a 12 inch board behind 

 the hives, and then cleated twelve 3- 

 inch boards for a roof, and before I 

 iput the roof on I piled all around the 

 back of the hives, down in between 

 them, and up over tihe top of them, 

 probably about a foot of Chaff and 

 straw together, and then I laid these 

 tihree-lnch boards, cleated together, 

 over the top of the straw, and project- 

 ed them down over the board behind, 

 making a shanty roof that sloped 

 backwards. In front of the hive, for a 

 ^ade board, I laid another 12-inch 

 •board; I laid it on pieces of wood to 

 keep it off the ground. At times, w^hen 

 I thought it necessary to )et the bees 

 have a fly, and thougiht it was warm 

 enough, I let this board down. I did 

 thait two or three times through the 

 •wiinter. I "thought I had them per- 

 fect. Tlhe result w^as, I lost 37 colonies 

 out of 63 outside, and only 3 out of 

 63 In tlhe cellar; 45 degrees is about 

 right for cellar wintering, keeping the 

 cellar perfectly dark with sufficient 

 ventilation to give the bees air. 



Question — How often shall we re- 

 queen our colonies for the best re- 

 sults ? 



Mr. Doolittle — Every two years or 



oftener, when any queen shows she 

 is failing. 



Mr. Hall — Two years is long enough 

 for me. 



Dr. Bohrer — Whenever I find a queen 

 not doing good work I supersede her 

 immediately. As a rule, if my queens 

 are doing fairly good work I let them 

 alone. Two years I think is the rule. 

 I got a queen from Mr. Davis of 

 Springfield, Tennessee, and that queen 

 has done good work for three years, 

 and I won't destroy any queen as 

 long as she does good work. In Sep- 

 tember or October if the queen has 

 been doing good work all the season 

 I will let her alone. I very seldom 

 have a queen of that kind die during 

 the winter, but about the fourth sea- 

 son they will supersede. 



Mr. Bernschein — ^I am a clipper; I 

 believe in clipping my queens, and 

 I do that every spring, and I find 

 that at least one half of my clipped 

 queens are superseded every spring. 



Dr. Bohrer — I had a young queen 

 that laid a lot of eggs that never would 

 hatch out. Did anyone of you ever 

 have that? 



Mr. Poppleton — Yes, I have had it. 



On motion of Dr. Bohrer, seconded 

 by Mr. Dadant, the Convention ad- 

 journed to meet 7:30 p. m. 



Evening Session. 



At 7:30 p. m. the President took the 

 chair and said: The Convention will 

 please come to order. The committee 

 on nominations will meet at nine 

 o'clock tomorrow morning, and we hope 

 the entire committee will try to be 

 present at nine o'clock. 



The evening's deliberations seem to 

 be composed entirely of a Question 

 Box. 



The first question I find is — Honey 

 dew honey, what is the color, and how 

 known for a certainty that it is honey- 

 dew? 



Dr. Phillips — There is no uniform 

 color to honey- dew; it varies all the 

 way from a light color to a dark green, 

 and sometimes a brownish tinge. I 

 saw some honey-dew which, after it 

 was granulated, was as white as al- 

 falfa honey when it was granulated. 

 The chief characteristic of it in North- 

 em United States is the fact that it 

 granulates so quickly. We had a good 

 deal of honey-dew in our apiary this 

 year, and it grranulated almost as 



£A>-./-;';ii: Miii^!^:ii.,.:Afi, 



