1872.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
169 
that a practical farmer, whose object is to make good 
manure, need not take into consideration. His only 
question need be, What food contains the greatest amount 
of valuable fertilizing elements ? The animal has, prac¬ 
tically, no more to do with making rich or poor manure, 
than a stove has to do with making rich or poor ashes. 
It depends entirely on the food. 
Bee Notes for May. — By M. Quinby. 
Surplus honey is the first consideration in bee-keeping. 
All boxes intended for use, should be ready now. One 
hive in a hundred may store surplus, in a good season, 
during apple-blossoms. It is not always economy to put 
on the boxes at this time, because Dandelions blossom 
now, and tho abundant pollen that the bees get from 
them, will stain the combs yellow, and give an unpleasant 
flavor to the honey. Notwithstanding a yellow color is 
preferred for cheese and butter, tho honey for market, to 
be nice, must bo purely white. Manage to have the bees 
use all this honey to rear their brood, and get a strong 
force ready for clover-time. 
Those who expect to increase their colonies this season 
should, if they have not already done so, prepare their 
empty hives at once. I am greatly in favor of Averill 
paint for hives; some light tint is preferable to the clear 
dazzling white. Hives of two or three colors, alternated 
with each other, seem to assist the bees to distinguish 
their own from their neighbors’hive. I do not assert 
that this is better than oil-paint, I only say it seems 
better, as there is no smell of tho oil which appears to 
be offensive to the bees. When new swarms are hived 
in oil-painted hives, a greater percentage desert and go 
to the woods than in those unpainted. 
Establish this rule at the beginning of the season, that is, 
to allow no bees to cluster outside for want of room inside. 
Extreme hot weather should be the only excuse hereafter 
for idle bees outside. Any one expecting the best results 
from his farm, garden, orchard, dairy, or apiary, without 
effort or knowledge on his part, will be likely to reap a 
short crop, and soon prefer some other pursuit. To know 
how to obtain the best results from a hive of bees, one 
must either learn by experiment himself, or adopt the ex¬ 
perience of others. It seems now to be pretty well under¬ 
stood that the best results can not bo obtained with the 
old box-hive. Another year’s experience proves that 
transferring from box to movable-comb hives—of the 
right kind, of course—pays forall trouble. For directions 
see Bee Notes for May, 1871. After transferring, the hive 
is in condition to be controlled. Being able to reject all 
drone combs, and thereby preventing a useless horde of 
consumers, is ofitself sufficient to remunerate all trouble. 
Eggs laid in drone cells, hatch out drones; the same eggs, 
if laid in worker cells, produce workers. Swarming is not 
always—may I not say, seldom ?—satisfactory in box 
hives, when the bees manage it themselves. The 
bees have been brought up in ignorance of what we 
can do for them, for the very good reason that 
we did not know ourselves, and they suppose that 
it is necessary to provide a successor for the mother 
to the hive, before taking the old one away. As 
a rule, natural swarming does not take place short of a 
week or ten days' preparation. Quite often, at the com¬ 
mencement, there are abundant bees to spare a swarm— 
bees live but a short time, and often die as fast as they 
hatch out, when the hive is full—but at the time they get 
ready, they have not increased, have been idle during the 
preparation, and a whole swarm has lost several days 
right in harvest-time. Could a swarm have been taken 
out as soon as there were bees enough, and put into 
empty combs, ample winter stores would have been 
secured. Suppose that, just at this time, when they have 
prepared to leave, a change in tho atmosphere pre¬ 
vents the secretion of honey in the flowers, and your 
swarm has an empty hive to fill, and no means to do it 
with. Have no combs in which to rear brood ; the old 
bees are dying every day, and it is possible, before the 
next yield of honey, there are too few bees left to accom¬ 
plish much. This can be avoided, if you understand it. 
When yon have decided to take this matter into your own 
hands, you should become familiar with the appearance 
of the hive that has bees to spare a swarm. The next 
thing is to know when the flowers are secreting honey in 
abundance. When bees and honey are right, then is the 
time to make the swarm, regardless of any preparation 
of theirs. Every day that a colony is without a laying 
queen, in summer-time, reduces the profit of keeping it. 
The old queen goes, or ought to go, with the first swarm, 
whether natural, or artificially made. In natural swarms, 
they usually leave sealed cells with young queens, to 
supply her place in the old hive. It would be profitable 
to have a queen, fully mature, artificially reared, to supply 
her place, whether cells are left or not. At the end of a 
week the hive should be opened, and all queen-cells re¬ 
moved, when the laying queen may be safely introduced. 
If no mature queen is on hand, the next best thing is a 
finished cell, ready to hatch, to introduce the next day. 
If no such cell is to be had, leave one, and but one, of 
the first made by the old hive. You will, of course, see 
that there are drones in some of the hives, at such times. 
As long as good colonies, in the box-hives, can be pur¬ 
chased under ten dollars, it is doubtful if economy would 
dictate making artificial swarms, or having others. I 
would like to have you feel indifferent about it. I would 
suggest that you provide an empty hive for each old 
stock, in case they were disposed to swarm ; but other¬ 
wise do just as if all the bees that hatched in a hive were 
going to stay home the whole season and wanted room 
for stores. Give room inside the hive for surplus boxes 
that will hold from 150 to 200 pounds. The chances are, 
that such hive will make no preparation for swarming. 
If they do not, the extra amount of surplus that they will 
store, will purchase two or three stocks for winter. Should 
they swarm, you will have the new stock and some sur¬ 
plus, and no anxiety in the matter. Give room inside, 
and have the boxes in close proximity to the body of the 
hive, and all will be likely to go well. Before there are 
many bees in the way, early in the month, open the hive, 
find the queen, and clip one wing ; the swarm will not go 
off in such case, if they issue. 
The hive may be so arranged that the room for surplus 
boxes can be occupied with frames; and as soon as 
combs, readymade, can be furnished, and the honey ex¬ 
tracted, the quantity that we are now getting may be 
trebled. Any one having lost a hive of bees this winter, 
will find a great advantage in saving all the combs, un¬ 
less drone-cells, or diseased; put them in frames, as in 
transferring. These are what we want when we come to 
extracting our honey, instead of compelling the bees to 
lose time constructing combs. I will make an estimate 
of the cost of comb, in honey, describe an extractor, and 
give instructions in rearing queens, etc., soon. 
- m i ■ ♦»> i » ■ 
Holstein or Dutch Cattle. 
Holland lias long been famed for its dairy 
products and its milch cows. About twenty 
years ago a Dutch cow was imported into the 
United States, and her excellent qualities led 
to further importations, until the stock has be¬ 
come somewhat distributed, and has achieved a 
good reputation-as heavy milkers and large beef- 
cattle. The cattle which are the subject of the 
illustration on our first page, are the property 
of Mr. J. T. Ellis, Flemington, 1ST. J. Prof. 
Geo. H. Cook, Geologist of the State of New 
Jersey, in a recent visit to Europe was much 
interested in the Dutch cattle, and favorably 
impressed with their excellence as producers of 
both milk and beef. Prof. C. has examined the 
animals from which our engraving is taken, and 
pronounces them very good specimens of the 
breed. It will be seen that their milking 
qualities are largely developed, and that 
their general character stamps them as em¬ 
inently a dairy stock. A cow of this breed 
has yielded 35‘/ a quarts of milk per day, from 
which nearly 3 pounds of butter have been 
made. Heifers of two years old have reached a 
weight of 1,200 pounds. It is not uncommon 
for bulls to attain a weight of 2,400 pounds, and 
working oxen of 4,500 pounds the pair. They 
are large feeders, and need the best pasture 
and care to bring about these results. 
Moles and Mole-Traps. 
Moles are a nuisance. Whatever use they 
may perform in the economy of nature, in gar¬ 
dens and meadows they must be got rid of. 
The traps so far in use, are not efficient. They 
fail in many ways. What is wanted, is a trap 
which will not deter the mole from entering it, 
and which, as soon as the mole goes in, suddenly 
and unfailingly destroys it. The trap figured 
on this page seems well adapted to these joint 
purposes. It is set as follows: The earth over 
the run is pressed down with the foot, which 
closes the passage. The trap, set as in the cut, 
is forced down into the soft earth, until the pan 
(a) is in such a position that the mole, in repair¬ 
ing its burrow, which it will be sure to do, 
presses it upwards as it passes beneath it, and 
THE MERRIMAN RAT AND MOLE TRAP. 
springs the trap. The jaws (b, b) close with 
force enough to instantly kill the mole. 
We have tried this trap for catching rats, 
and have found it to be very efficient. 
How they make Watches at Marion. 
BT GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON. 
Pocket time-pieces were first used about the 
year 1600. They were then known as Nurem¬ 
berg animated eggs, a rather long and clumsy 
designation, that soou gave place to the name 
watch, from the old division of the solar day 
into equal parts known as watches. They were 
made, for about two centuries, wholly by hand, 
each workman manufacturing the entire watch. 
As a matter of course, they were of clumsy 
construction so far as the running apparatus 
was concerned, and exceedingly inaccurate as 
lime-keepers, and for a considerable period the 
inventive faculty of watch-makers was directed 
wholly to the production of queer casings, or 
the devising of ingenious attachments, which 
impaired the value of the watches, and served 
only to make them curious and costly toys, of 
hardly any real use. They were encased in all 
sorts of things. Some were placed in heavy 
gold crosses, to be suspended from the neck. 
Others were made in the form of skulls and 
cross-bones, and watches appeared in all sorts 
of fantastic shapes. Their dials peeped out of 
snuff-boxes, bracelets, shirt-buttons, and finger- 
rings, and some were even set in saddle-pom¬ 
mels. There were some of them as large as 
the crown of a hat, while others were so small 
as to fit in the end of a pencil-case. One of 
these is still preserved in Switzerland, the di¬ 
ameter of which is but three sixteenths of an 
inch, and yet it marked on its little dial the day 
of the month, the hour, the minute, and the 
second. 
But, large or small, plain or curiously wrought, 
the watches of the olden time all failed in the 
one only excellence a watch can have—accurate 
time-keeping. There is nothing better calcu¬ 
lated, however, to make people wish for a per¬ 
fect thing than the possession of a very imper¬ 
fect one; and so after awhile there began to be 
a demand for something more accurate in the 
way of time-pieces, and out of that demand has 
grown the almost perfect watches now made in 
America, whose manufacturers are disposed to 
think them defective if they vary more than a 
few seconds a year from absolute mean time. 
To trace the history of the improvements 
made would be pleasant enough, but the limits 
of an article are altogether too narrow for 
