1879.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
127 
by a button or hook. This hive is shown in fig. 1, with 
the door opened and the top and cap removed. If it be 
desired to watch the bees from above, a frame with glass 
may be fitted to the top of the hive. 
Beginners should bear in mind that promptness is one 
Fig. 5.—SECTION BOX. 
of the prime essentials to success in bee-culture. It 
will be necessary to prepare boxes before they are need¬ 
ed, that they may be put on at once whenever wanted. 
Many prefer a two-comb box holding about 4£ lbs. To 
fit the hanging-frame hive (shown at fig. 2, in February 
last.) or the Observatory hive, here given, fig. 1, these 
boxes should bo made 6£ in. long, and 4£ in. wide, of 
pine or basswood lumber, 1£ in. thick. The posts 
should be 5 in. long, and £ in. square. These will take 
glass 5x6 nnd 4x5, which is fastened in place at the cor¬ 
ners with tin points, fig. 2. Honey-boards, £ in. thick, 
to place under the boxes, when upon the hives, should 
be prepared as shown in fig. 3. The bottom of the box 
has holes to correspond with those in the honey-board. 
The box complete is shown in fig. 4... .A popular box at 
the present time is a Single-comb or Section-box. These 
Fig. 6.—CLAMP. 
may be made as shown in figure 5. The ends are 5 in. 
long, 1J in. wide, and £ in. thick. Top and bottom are 
5£ in. long. 2 in. wide, and £ in. thick.—These are 
to be placed upon the hive in what is called a clamp, 
Which is shown in figure 6. It is a simple box, 5£ in. 
Fig. 7.— SEPARATOR. 
high, 17 in. long, and 11£ in. wide; these are the 
measurements if it is to be used for the standing-frame 
hive. If designed 
fora hanging-f ram e 
hive, it should be 
12£ in. wide, in¬ 
stead of 11£. A 
part of one end of 
the clamp should 
be movable, and 
made to fasten in 
place with hooks, 
in order to put in and take out boxes with ease. A 
piece of £-in. band iron should extend lengthwise the 
clamp at the center. 
A strip of wood, or 
hoop-iron, should 
be nailed on the 
edges parallel to 
this, projecting in¬ 
ward £ in., to sup¬ 
port the ends of 
pjg_ 9 _ the boxes, of which 
there are two rows 
in the clamp. A separator, as shown in figure 7, should 
be prepared of proper size, and f in. thick, to place be¬ 
tween the boxes, to secure straight combs, and at the 
same time allow the bees to pass from one box to another. 
STARCH NOTES. 
Van Deusen Fastener.— Mr. Howarth. of Illinois, 
aBks: “ Can you not illustrate and describe the Fastener 
for.holding the hive to the bottom board in your next 
‘Notes?'” . . . This is known as the “ Van Deusen 
Fastener,” and is a very ingenious and valuable inven¬ 
tion. Figure 8 gives an accurate idea of it when adjusted, 
and figure 9 whei>»mirned back and not in use. It 
holds the hive firmly 1 'no place when it may be desir¬ 
able or necessary to move it for any purpose, and when 
it is not in use it is entirely out of the way. 
Material for Producing Smoke.— Mr. Mason, of 
Michigan, asks: “ What shall we use for smoke to quiet 
bees ?—What do you think of puff-ball ?” . . . The 
question of producing smoke, and manner of using it, 
has been one of our particular hobbies. We have ex¬ 
perimented with every substance that has been suggest¬ 
ed for the purpose. Puff-ball is objectionable, as it 
stupefies the bees too much. Nothing is more desirable 
than half-decayed wood. If it is very dry, it need be but 
very slightly decayed. It is applied to most perfect sat¬ 
isfaction by the use of the “ Quinby Bellows Smoker.” 
Soured Honey. —Charles M. North, Delaware Co., N. 
Y., asks: “Will it answer in wintering a weak swarm 
to feed them on soured honey ?” . . . I would not 
recommend it as a general rule, but have known it to be 
done without injury. This query has been accidentally 
overlooked, else it would have been answered before. 
A Talk about Fertilizers. 
Editor’s Plain Talk with Plain Elen. 
This subject is one of rapidly increasing import¬ 
ance to nine-tenths of the cultivators of arable lands 
in New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl¬ 
vania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Caro¬ 
lina, and considerable portions of South Carolina 
and Georgia; to three-fourths of those in Ohio, In¬ 
diana, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, and por¬ 
tions of Alabama and Ontario; to more than half 
of those in Illinois, Wisconsin, Eastern Iowa, Eas¬ 
tern Missouri and Eastern Minnesota; and to a 
considerable number in the comparatively newer 
regions still further West. It is of importance 
wherever the richer stores of natural fertility in the 
virgin soils have been partially diminished or ex¬ 
hausted by some years of tillage. 
Better Crops and Barger Profits. 
The great truth we have so frequently enforced 
and urged upon the readers of the American Agri¬ 
culturist, is coming to be better understood, viz., 
that the profits of soil culture depend far more upon 
the yield per acre , than upon the number of acres 
gone over. Thus : If 50 acres require $500 expense 
of one’s own or others’ labor, for teams, imple¬ 
ments and seed—to work, harvest and market crops 
equivalent to 12 bushels of wheat per acre, worth 
81 per bushel, there is a profit of only 8100, to pay 
interest on land, taxes, etc. On 100 acres the 
gross profits are $200. If now, by the use of fertil¬ 
izers, or otherwise, we can raise the products to an 
equivalent of 20 bushels of wheat per acre, with the 
same expense of labor, teams, seed, harvesting, 
interest and taxes, the 50 acres will yield a gross 
profit of $500, or $1,000 on 100 acres. Or 25 bushels 
per acre would give a gross profit , less cost of fer¬ 
tilizers, of $750 on 50 acres and $1,500 on 100 acres. 
As to Fertilizers and their Action. 
Omitting the question of drainage, and of green 
manures, and supposing the land in proper dry¬ 
ness and tilth, there is no doubt that a sufficient 
amount of the right kind of manures or fertilizers 
will secure this 8 to 13 bushels per acre increase. 
To fertilize, means to make fertile —to increase 
the crop-producing power. The crop feeds on what 
it finds in the soil. Any thing is a fertilizer that 
adds to the supply of plant-food in the soil, or 
which by its action decomposes, unlocks, or changes 
to an available form, some food which is already 
in the soil hut is in a form that the crops can not 
use. If, for example, plant-food was bound up 
in little sacs or coverings in the soil, and potash or 
lime would eat off these coverings and let it out so 
that the roots could get at it and feed upon 
it, the potash or lime would act indirectly as a fer¬ 
tilizer. Plant-food is actually locked up in bits of 
soil, and potash and lime soften and break up 
these bits ; they thus help feed the plants. 
Illustration. —pearl-ash is composed of potash and 
carbonic acid. If mixed with dough, and baked, it 
merely browns it. A little cream of tartar put in will 
attack the saleratns, take away its potash, and the 
carbonic acid will spring out as gas all through the 
dough, filling it with holes and making it light and 
agreeable. Just so some substances when mixed with 
the soil attack and decompose certain materials and 
set portions of them free for the plants to feed upon. 
Recent observations, careful experiments, and 
extensive chemical investigations, show that our 
cultivated crops need for their best growth the 
presence of several substances. Three or four are 
seldom abundant in soils, or are largely available 
in but few, and are rapidly exhausted by the 
removal of crops. Two of these, for example, 
Phosphoric Acid and Nitrogen*, are indispensa¬ 
ble as plant-food. Potash is also needed as food, 
and to develop and prepare other food. Lime acts 
like potash in feeding or preparing food for plants. 
The most Valuable Constituents of Soils and 
Manure. 
Of these four substances, Mtrogen, Potash, Lime, 
and Phosphoric Acid, some soils and crops want 
one, some want two, and some want three, if not all 
of them. Good Barn-yard Manure invariably con¬ 
tains all of them. So long as one can get enough 
of good barn-yard manure, cheaply enough, and 
near enough to the fields, that is all that is needed. 
With it, if the other conditions of the soil, its dry¬ 
ness and tilth or mechanical condition, be right, we 
can raise our crops from an equivalent of 12 bush¬ 
els of wheat to 20, or 25, or more bushels per acre. 
But unless it be on farms mainly used in stock- 
raising, there is far from enough good yard-manure 
to secure the higher profits. And just here another 
question comes in. If a soil lacks potash only, a 
small quantity of this in the form of potash salts, 
or of ashes, may be as useful as thousands of pounds 
of yard-manure containing only the same amount 
of potash. In that case we could buy and apply 
the potash more cheaply than we could haul and 
apply the manure to a field distant from the yard, 
allowing the manure to cost nothing. If the soil 
lacks only phosphoric acid for a certain crop, a bag 
of superphosphate or dissolved hones will supply 
more of it than several tons of yard-manure. If, 
then, we can ascertain just what a field lacks, we 
may find it very profitable to buy the special fertil¬ 
izer the soil wants, and use the yard-manure on 
such fields as need all it contains, or on those heavy 
soils where its loosening effect will be most useful, 
and where little hauling is required. Now we are 
at the pith of the subject. 
Quack Fertilizers, and Good Ones. 
What fertilizers shall I use to increase my crop— 
my corn, my wheat, my oats, etc. ? Thousands of 
such questions come to us every year. We would 
rather be able to answer these questions definitely 
and satisfactorily in every case, than to own half the 
farms in a State. But we can not, as will be seen. 
The quack doctor, or quack medicine-man, com¬ 
mends a particular medicine for a hundred ailments. 
The quack manure-man who commends one kind of 
manure for all soils and crops is little better—unless 
his fertilizer contains all the materials needed by 
any soil or crop. “ His gun is then loaded to kill 
if it is a deer, or miss if it is a calf.” This is the 
case with the best “Complete Fertilizers ” and with 
a mixture of potash salts with Peruvian guano, or 
with good superphosphates from unburned bones. 
Some prepare special fertilizers, as “Wheat 
Fertilizers,” “ Corn Fertilizers,” “ Potato Fertiliz¬ 
ers,” etc.—the chief ingredients being those which 
the makers claim to be most useful to these sev¬ 
eral crops, and in many cases they just hit the want. 
But such fertilizers are similar to concentrated 
barn-yard manure, and the question is, will they 
* Phosphoric Acid, united with Lime, makes the solid 
parts of the bones of all animals. It. must come from the 
food eaten.and the grain,hay,etc.,mustof course get it from 
tlie soil. But it. is rare to find land containing 1 pound of 
available phosphoric acid in 1.000 lbs. of the soil. This ex¬ 
plains why it is so soon exhausted by growing crops, and 
why it is so important as a fertilizer. (Chemists take 
away the lime from burned hones and get the phosphorus 
so much used for friction matches)... Nitrogen abounds 
in lean meat (muscles), cheese, etc., which come from 
plants. It is scarce in most soils, hence ils usefulness as 
a fertilizer to supply crops Potash abounds in the ash¬ 
es of wood and of all plants. We wash it ( leach it.) ontof 
ashes, evaporate the water and get the solid potash. This, 
too, is seldom abundant in soils, though important to 
the growing plant, and hence it is valuable as a fertilizer. 
