) 
f 
On Collamer ridge. Dr. Dun¬ 
ham said, the Catawba Buffered 
no material injury by rot, and in 
most of the vineyards the fruit 
ripened ho aa to sell at fair prices, 
though not as sweet, and rich as 
the previous year; and some of 
the fruit left to ripen more on 
the vines, was damaged by the 
frost in October. Has but few 
vines of other varieties. Dela¬ 
ware and Iona bad not done 
well with him. 
At Mr. Lkick’b vineyard, on 
the same ridge, it was reported. 
Concord, Ives, Norton, Dela¬ 
ware and Iona had done well. 
The Norton and Delaware were 
much prized by Mr. L. for wine. 
Mr. Saxton gathered a very 
satisfactory crop of Catawhas; 
fruit sold well and kept well. 
He presented a basket of fruit 
at the meeting, which was well 
relished by all present. 
At Euclid, on the same ridge 
as Collamer, the reports were 
much the same. In some young 
vineyards, Hartford Prolific and 
Delaware, as well as Concord 
and Catawba,had produced line 
crops ; grow Hi of vines good. 
At Willoughby, Mr. WILLIAMS said, all 
the variet ies had done quite well, excepting 
Catawhas did not ripen fully, though in 
some localit ies l lie fruit w as fair and saleable. 
He had a little vineyard of Concord that 
yielded a splendid crop; nearly three tons 
of fruit from half an acre of land, and selling 
for $400 beside cost of transportation. Dela¬ 
ware and Iona did well where well cultivated 
and not allowed to overbear. Mr. Tuyon’b 
young vineyard, near Kirtland, on elevated 
clay soil, ripened a very fair crop of Cataw- 
bas, the best in that region. 
At Mentor, Mr. Kino’s vineyard of Dela¬ 
wares ripened a full crop quite well, though 
the vines were overloaded the year previous. 
Catawhas did not ripen well. 
At Paitiesville, Mr. Bateuam said, there 
were no good Catawhas, and Isabellas did 
not ripen well; but the earlier kinds were 
quite satisfactory. lie had sonic mildew on 
one or two varieties of Roger's and Allen’s 
hybrids, but Delaware and Iona had done 
finely, also Concord, Hartford, Creveling, etc. 
He could say about the same thing of Madi¬ 
son, Geneva, and other localities between 
Euclid and Erie. 
Mr. Chevalier said there were some 
promising young vineyards in the vicinity 
of Geneva, and all kinds excepting Catawba 
ripened very well the past, season. The same 
was reported from Ashtabula and Oonneaut. 
At Northeast, Pa., Mr. S. Griffith said, 
the older vineyards were all Catawba and 
Isabella. There had been no considerable 
rot or mildew the past season, but the fruit 
did not ripen as well as usual, much of the 
crop being injured hy the frost of October 
17th, though some of the earliest Catawhas, 
gathered previously, were quite good. Their 
young bearing vineyards of Delaware, Iona 
and Israella had done finely, foliage and 
fruit quite free from disease. But, they made 
a mistake in allowing too much wood to re¬ 
main last spring, and too much fruit in the 
summer, consequently it did not ripen as 
early and fully as it would otherwise have 
done; still the result was such as to confirm 
the high expectations they had formed re¬ 
specting those varieties. 
Mr. Mottiek of Northeast, said the earliest 
Catawba fruit, gathered just before the frost, 
was so well ripened that the must weighed 
eighty-five degrees. Delaware ripened fine¬ 
ly, must weighing ninety to ninety-two de¬ 
grees. Tves also ripened well. Iona, on three 
years old vines, very good; must weighed 
ninety-four. Approves it very highly; never 
tasted better wine. 
At BroctOn and Portland, N. Y., the Cataw¬ 
ba is not grown to any considerable extent 
The oldest vineyards are mostly Isabella,— 
then Clinton, Diana, Delaware, etc. These 
generally' gave fair crops the past season, 
though the fruit was not us good for wine as 
usual, especially the Clinton, w hich needed 
a longer season to give it richness. 
Mr. J. J. Dunham spoke of the very fine 
growth and health of the thirty acres of 
Salem vines, at Salcm-on-Erie, one and two 
years planted. Never saw better growth; 
no mildew or injury from any cause. He 
felt great confidence in the Salem grape and 
the Salem-on-Erie vineyard. Others who 
had visited the place, and had elsewhere 
seen the Salem grape, spoke very favorably 
of the vines and fruit, and referred to the 
fine show of that variety at the exhibition 
at Puinesville last fall, where it gained the 
first premium, “quality to rule.” 
At Fredonia, Mr. Hubbard said, the grape 
Crop was a fair one generally iu that vicinity, 
and in some localities very good. Hartford, 
Isabella, Concord, and Delaware colored 
well and sold well. Catawba did not ripen. 
Adirondac ripened before Hartford; Iona 
later than Delaware. 
At Lockport, N. Y.,Mr. Hoac: said grapes 
had done ns well as usual the past season. 
Catawba was not grown there. Delaware 
and Iona first rate. His Jonas, third and 
fourth crop, yielded ten pounds of fruit to the 
vine. Thinks highly of Sulem and of Roger’s 
No. 4, 80, and 84, also believes that. Martha 
will prove valuable as a market variety. The 
vine is very thrifty, hardy, and productive; 
he had sixteen bunches of fruit on a vine the 
second season. 
POTATOES—VARIETIES. 
Discussing the merits of the different va¬ 
rieties of potato for planting, a correspond¬ 
ent says:—“The Peach Blow sometimes 
rots badly, so that from one to fifty per cent, 
of the crop is lost. The Harison. is untried 
as a market, potato, while the Cuzco brings 
the lowest price of any potato raised. The 
Peach Blow has some other faults, being 
rather late where it is intended to sow with 
winter grain, after it; and the tubers grow 
so scattered in the ground as to make it very 
hard to dig. On the other hand, it has sold 
higher in the New York market for a year 
past than any other potato. If the Ilarison 
will sell as well as second class potatoes have 
done for a year past it will pay to plant it 
extensively, if you do have to pay a dollar 
and a half per bushel for the seed; for the 
same, treatment, that will give one hundred 
bushels of Mercers or two hundred bushels 
of Peach Blows per acre an ill not fail to 
produce four hundred bushels of Hansons. 
It is, however, untried as a market potato, 
and planting it on a large scale is necessarily 
specula two. People may get the idea into 
their brains that it is a coarse potato, fit only 
for the hogs to cat; though there is not 
much danger. 
The Cuzco yields nearly as well ns the 
Ilarison and was sold in this vicinity last, 
season as high as sixty-five cents per bushel, 
al: hough most of the crop was disposed of 
at forty-five and fifty cents. Even at these 
prices it will pay to raise four hundred bush¬ 
els of them per acre,— better than raising 
one hundred bushels of the highest priced 
varieties. 
IIonv many of each variety is it advisable 
to plant in a ten acre field? First, then, one 
half an acre of Dykeman’s—not more, 
unless they are free from disease in your 
neighborhood — planted early, in the warm¬ 
est part of the field; next, from one to three 
acres of Early Goodrich, according to your 
situation and ability to market early; then 
two acres of Peach Blows, two of Cuzcos, 
and from one and a half to four of Ilarison. 
This is intended merely as a suggestion; 
those who have sufficient faith in the last 
two kinds will of course plant them to the 
exclusion of all others.” 
-- 
ILLINOIS CORN CULTURE. 
An experienced Winnebago county, Til. ? 
former writes the Countryman as follows 
concerning his method of preparing his corn 
ground and planting the seed:—“ Plow the 
ground deep and thoroughly pulverize it, with 
the harrow. Then have a good hand and 
team. With a common plow lay off tlic 
ground hy making furrows just one rod 
apart. Then make a furrow equally distant 
between those two, and another equally dis¬ 
tant between the last t wo. An experienced 
hand will, in this way, make the furrows 
very equal in distance, and very straight. 
The droppers would go across the furrows 
following stakes, or else following marks I 
made with a set of buggy wheels, making 
four marks each time going across the field. 
rows apart, and the small ones the width of 
one row' apart The corn was covered with 
harrows, following immediately after the 
droppers. 
“ in those days I calculated that when the. 
ground was leveled with the harrow my seed 
was covered from four to five inches deep. I 
will state my success one. season,—that of 
1834, w hich was very dry,—in thus covering 
my seed corn. 1 put out in the above man¬ 
ner sixty acres, and took especial pains to 
ascertain the exact yield per acre, which was 
seventy-two bushels,—full three times the 
quantity that the same number of acres 
yielded on any farm within ten miles of 
mine. 
“ My plan has been, not only to rover deep, 
but hi plow deep, and not to plant too early, 
—not till the season was so far advanced as 
to cause the plants to appear iu seven or 
eight days at the furthest.” 
--— 
POTATOES AND THE POTATO BUGS. 
1 find that the old and worn out varieties 
of potatoes suffer the most from the attacks 
of the potato bags, while new and vigorous 
kinds are comparatively exempt, and some 
are wholly exempt from their depredations. 
Although the bugs have nearly all left us in 
this locality, the experience of the last, five 
years lias shown me that I cannot raise the 
old Pink-eyes nor Neshannocks unless the 
bugs are picked daily, while the California’s 
(almost a new variety here,) are raised with¬ 
out the trouble of picking. A new variety 
of Peach Blow, brought here in 1865, and 
planted alongside of another kind w hich 
was overrun with bugs, w as wholly exempt. 
Therefore I would say plant those that are 
new and healthy; avoid planting twice in 
succession on the same piece of ground, as 
Nve always plow up more or less bugs in the 
spring after their presence the previous sea¬ 
son. Also plant kite, in the season ; the po¬ 
tatoes will then grow 7 so last that, the little 
enemies cannot easily master them. In this 
way I have been successful as far as bugs 
are concerned, although 1 have partially 
failed, t wice for want of rain, and once from 
too much of it. William M. Young. 
Harrison Co., Iowa, 1809. 
-<*--*-♦- 
POTATO CULTURE. 
“ Rural,” in Chicago Tribune, says:—In 
answer to some inquiries on this head, it may 
lie stated that to grow potatoes under straw' 
the ground should be in fine condition and 
the potatoes covered one or two inches deep 
with earth, and the surface rolled. Many 
experiments have been made in regard to the 
size of the seed used, but none of these have 
been altogether satisfactory and conclusive, 
and tlic most common practice is to plant in 
drills t hree feet apart, and eight to ten inches 
in the drill—one eye on the piece. A good 
practice is to drop the seed in every third 
furrow, and use a gauge wheel on the plow, 
so that it Nvill not run over two to two and a 
half inches deep. Leave tire land in that 
condition until the plants are nearly up, when 
the whole surface should he thoroughly har¬ 
rowed and rolled. When two or t hree inches 
high, work with a two-horse cultivator, hav¬ 
ing on a shield, and turning the furrows 
towards the row’s. A top dressing of manure, 
will be found useful. In this mode of apply¬ 
ing the manure we need fear no bad effects 
from tin* rot. Repeated workings with the 
cultivator until in bloom are indispensable. 
After that period keep down the weeds with 
a double shovel-plow. 
-- 
Proving Parrot Seed.—A correspondent of tho 
Country Gentleman, talking of carrot cult ure, 
says“ Previous to sowing, the seed should be 
proved, by counting out one hundred and plant¬ 
ing them in a box of eart h set in a warm place; 
if tliree-fourths come up the seed will do.” 
I 
c Atnnnm. 
w 1 
WINTERING BEES. 
We extract the following from the discus¬ 
sion upon the best method of w intering bees 
had at the Michigan Bee Keepers’ Convention. 
The President of the Convention said:—I 
winter my bees in a building above the 
ground. The building is twelve feet wide and 
twenty feet long—which is large enough to 
hold 100 hives three tiers deep. Have winter¬ 
ed bees in this way twelve years and with 
g-)Od success. Do not want the mercury to 
fall below thirty-two degrees, nor rise above 
forty-flve degrors. Should my bees get un¬ 
easy and desire to fly, to evacuate, I set them 
out in a warm day; after they have flown 
they are put bark, there to remain until 
moved out permanently in spring. The tem¬ 
perature in the bee-house is kept down con¬ 
siderably by throwing snow inside after dark. 
I do not allow mvsolf nor my help to visit the 
bees iu winter in the day time. It is much 
better to use a light after dark. The cost of 
putting bees into my bee-honse is but a trifle. 
I hire a couple of boys to do it. It takes 
them about half a day to move 100 hives into 
the cellar and as long to take them out. The 
cost does not, exceed $8. The saving of 
honey per hive by wintering in the cellar is 
not less than five pounds, which is worth $1 
at least; after paying $8 to the boys I am $07 
better off than I would be to leave ray bees 
out of doors. A house large enough to win¬ 
ter 100 hives need not cost to exceed $50. 
These figures would indicate a saving suffi¬ 
cient the first v inter with 100 hives of bees 
to pay for the house and boy help, and $47 
besides, to say nothing of the risk incurred in 
out- door wintering. 
M. M. Baldridge, St. Charles, Ill., said 
that in Ids neighborhood the most successful 
bee keepers place their bees in cellars. The 
cellar should be dry, dark, ancl even in tem¬ 
perature, ranging from thirty-five degrees to 
forty-five degrees. Cellars having a clay 
bottom are generally too damp ; the. best and 
driest cellars have sand) - or gravelly bottoms. 
When there is ample room it is better to set 
the hives about, two feet above the ground; 
the combs are less liable to mold, and the 
honey will keep its consistency better—will 
not be so liable to get thin or watery. Give 
plenty of upward ventilation, so as to rid t he 
hives of the moisture thrown off by the bees. 
In general, it is a good plan to turn box hives 
bottom up; this will let off the moisture 
freely. 
Mr. Otis named as three essentials on 
wintering bees:—1st, Plenty of bees and 
honey; 2d, Some empty combs to cluster on 
—combs solid with honey are loo cold ; 3d, 
Dry temperature, and above the freezing 
point. These points we secure, in good 
cellars. When the combs are too full of 
honey, he would empty some of the honey 
out of the central combs with the honey- 
extracting machine, if all the cells seal¬ 
ed, would first uncap them with a krtife. He 
w ould also take out one comb from the hive 
and put away for spring use. Then take the 
remaining frames find space tiic distance be¬ 
tween them, so they would fill the hive. In 
other words, lie would use but nine frames of 
comb in winter in the frame hive. This 
arrangement would give the bees better 
chance for packing between the combs, and, 
in consequence, they will winter better. The 
top of the hive lie would cover with com 
cobs, which is the best absorbent and non¬ 
conductor that lie knows of. Corn cobs will 
hold nearly their bulk of water. He visited 
Mr. Sprague, of Fulton, Ill., not long ago, 
when the temperature was twenty-four de¬ 
grees below zero. Mr. Sprague lias a large 
apiary in the shallow form of the frame hive. 
Since the corn cob discovery, he winters Ids 
bees on their summer stands. At tlic time of 
the above visit, Mr O. had examined quite a 
number of ids hives having a covering of two 
thicknesses of cobs and found tlic bees in fine 
order, corahs dry and healthy, and the bees 
close to the cobs. He has great faith in the 
value of the cob covering in cellars that arc 
somewhat damp; they Will aid very much in 
keeping the bees and combs dry. 
Mr. Moon said :—For the past thirty yearn 
I have w intered bees in Michigan, on an ex¬ 
tensive scale, and have tried quite a number 
of plans. The past few years I have winter¬ 
ed all ray bees out, of doors with good success. 
Whether in doors or in the open air the sun 
should not strike the hives, during winter. 
Bees should have the natural air. They are 
more healthy the season after. Tho past 
winter i started with one hundred and seven¬ 
teen on their summer stands and have lost 
none. My swarms come out nearly two 
Nveeks sooner than my neighbor’s who prac¬ 
ticed the indoor w intering. I get my swarms, 
generally, hy the last of May. Two years 
ago my apiary gave me an average of eighty- 
three and one-quarter pounds of honey per 
swarm. A house above ground, made so as 
to exclude the sunshine, and to admit plenty 
of fresh ah - , is what we most need for winter¬ 
ing bees. I have tried cellars but they gath¬ 
er too much dampness. More attention 
should be paid to the .quality of honey used 
in the wintering of bees. Honey gathered iu 
June, and July, is of better quality, of better 
consistency, than that gathered in the foil 
from buckwheat and other flowers. 
---- 
THE LOSS OF THE QUEEN. 
I find in the Rural of March 13 that 
my friend Wilson is still in the land of the 
living. I suppose that I am the individual 
referred to in his communication, although 
my name is not “ Ross.” I believe he also 
stated in his former communication that be 
had managed bees without the aid of books, 
<fcc. I should presume he had. I am not 
aware that I ever said that, the Italian bees 
were not executed at the same time the 
black ones w'ere. I simply stated that if 
the first, swarm w r as our common black bee 
that I thought there had been a decided im¬ 
provement, and if Mr. Wilson did not think 
so, to let him get a few swarms of Italians 
and try them, I say so still, as I should in¬ 
fer from his communication that he never 
has experimented with them. 
His comparison between black and Italian 
bees, as far as practical information is con¬ 
cerned, does not amount to shucks, because 
ho knows nothing about, the condition 
of any of the Italian stocks; and any bee 
keeper knows, who knows anything, that a 
stock that conics out strong and vigorous iii 
spring is almost, equivalent to three weak 
ones. Let him state facts that lie knows, not 
hearsay. And in this connection let me add 
that it is a positive fact that any stock that 
contains a young and healthy queen will in¬ 
variably do better than one that contains an 
old and feeble one, under precisely the same 
circumstances. Hence the necessity again 
of adopting for use a hive that enables you 
to remove an old and feeble queen and sup¬ 
ply her place with a young and healthy one, 
thereby increasing the accumulative power 
of the stock from one-third to one-half, and 
often saving the entire loss of the colony. 
Mr. Wilson says, If I have not a wife and 
children to watch my bees during haying 
time, I can divide them. This is very gen¬ 
erous indeed ! If 1 had fifty w ives and five 
hundred children 1 would not encumber 
them with the useless and foolish labor of 
watching a few boxes of insects, three, four, 
or five weeks to see when they were going 
to swarm, without any surety that they were 
going to at all; and if they did that they 
were going to be kind and condescending 
enough to cluster where I could hive them, 
and even after I succeeded in getting them 
hived that they would adhere to it, 
I have no desire to throw stones, as Mr. 
WrLRON terms it. I simply read his article 
of November 14, and the swarming part 
thereof struck me very forcibly that if a 
man had a hundred or two stocks and 
adopted his system of hiving, Ac., that he 
would have a very laborious business in¬ 
deed. lie would necessarily want a lemon 
plantation to raise lemons to make bee balm, 
and also one of Mr. Wood’s Portable Steam 
Engines to throw it, together with cold 
water to keep the atmosphere cool, Ac. 
As I have stated what I would not do, I’ll 
state what 1 would do. Tf 1 had bees in a 
common box or In Mr. Wilson’s celebrated 
moth proof hive, I would transfer them as 
early in April as the weather would admit, 
into a good moveable comb hive, together 
with all of their good worker c omb ; and by 
tho middle of June, or as soon thereafter as 
they began to cluster out, I would take a 
swarm away from them and put it into an 
empty hive, together with the queen, set them 
to work and in a few days give the stock 
from which it was taken a fertile queen. 
In this way by devoting a half-hour to my 
bees every day, in less time than you would 
spend watching yours I would do the whole 
swarming of fifty or a hundred stocks for 
the season, without losing a single swarm; 
because bees will adhere to a hive that eon- 
tams considerable brood and starve to death, 
where, without it, destitute colonies will 
desert ninety-nine times out of a hundred. 
And tills is precisely what Mr. Wilson 
will do when lie gets over his old fogyism. 
Hampden, Wis., March, 1861). F. S. Roys. 
This article was overlooked or it would 
have appeared at an earlier date.—E ds. 
Rural. 
-- 
Iinlinn Bees.—A correspondent of the North¬ 
ern FUrmersays:— 1 “Adam Green of Jefferson. 
NVis., who now boasts of six hundred stocks of 
bees, tells me that he has not been troubled by 
tho moth since he Italianized tiis apiary. And 
further, that on visiting Italy to procure queens 
he there found the miller more numerous than 
it is here found, there being no cold winters 
there to destroy them, and yet ho there found 
the Italian bees well protect in# and defending- 
I heir stores against its ravages.” 
*-- 
Bees in Box Hives.— Mrs. Tupper says: “When 
my bees were in box Lives, 1 never omitted look¬ 
ing- on the bottom board of each one every morn¬ 
ing, and destroying tho worms. Every one left 
soon becomes a miller, capable of laying many 
eggs, that become worms very soon — every one 
destroyed puts an end to four possible genera¬ 
tions in a single season. Destroy evcru u'orm in 
spring, and you can have no millers hatched in 
your hives that season.” 
