CORRESPONDENCE OF THE BEE JOURNAL.
Trenton, Ills., Sept. 12, 1870.—The forepart of this season I think was the poorest I ever saw in this neighborhood. Last winter was a very warm and open one, and the bees dwindled down very much, so that nearly all stocks were quite weak before spring. Then we had a severe snow storm on the 17th of April, with two or three freezing nights, that killed nearly all the peach blossoms; and this was followed by a period of cold high winds through May. The first two weeks of June there was cloudy, drizzling, chilly weather, so that bees could not fly more than about half the time. The consequence of all this was, late swarms and very few of them. Not more than one-sixth of the stocks swarmed, and many of the latest of them starved. It was very dry from the middle of June to the 13th of August. Then, for a week, it rained nearly every day; at the end of which some of my hives had not more than a pound of honey remaining. Since that time they have been doing very well. Most of my hives were filled up, so that they commenced working in the surplus boxes about the middle of last week, and some of them have now as much as fifteen pounds in the boxes.
I would like Novice to tell us how he gets his board and frame into the top of his hive, if his hives are all of one size. I have a few of the two-story hives made by the National Bee-hive Company at St. Charles, Illinois, and I cannot get a frame into the top story in any other way than perpendicular, as the top bar of the frame is longer than the inside of the hive. I have tried one to see how it would work.—C. T. Smith.
Dowagiac, Mich., Sept. 12—We have had just half a surplus honey harvest, here, this season. Since I have been in the bee business, I have learned that the surplus harvest depends entirely upon the clover and basswood blossoms, in this vicinity; which is probably the case all over the State. When we have a wet season clover fails, but basswood produces well; and when a dry season, vice versa. Reverses from abundance to starvation take place within a few miles of each other. I am located now in the midst of clover and basswood, together with the best spring and fall pasturage I have ever seen. After losing seven-eighths of my bees last winter, you can easily guess the condition of the remaining six colonies. Four of them were merely skeletons, and the other two very inferior stocks. Yet, with the aid of a three cent feeder of my own invention, (which works to perfection,) and one and a fourth dollar’s worth of sugar, I have succeeded in marketing five hundred and twenty-three (523) pounds of box honey; and with the aid of old combs have increased my stock to twenty-two (22) colonies, all strong and heavy—too heavy I fear, for their own good; and I have as yet no emptying machine. This, I think, is doing very well (see Langstroth’s “Hive and Honey Bee,” page 177) for a bee-keeper of only two years’ experience.—I came near forgetting to mention that I have Italianized all my new stocks. I use top-bar hives mostly. Am using four or five frame hives on the sly!—J. Heddon.
Winchester, Iowa, Sept. 13.—The season of 1870 has not been any of the best here, nor of the poorest either, as swarming and honey gathering has been moderately good. The American Bee Journal well deserves the support of bee-keepers.—I. N. Walter.
Rochelle, Ills., Sept. 17.—This has been the poorest season that we have had here for some years. I got only five new swarms from forty stands, and merely one hundred pounds of honey. Since the buckwheat came into blossom the bees have done well. They will average about fifty pounds to the stand; and that is doing very well, in such a year as this has been. Alsike clover is now in blossom, and the bees are working very busily on it.—R. Miller.
Breesport, N. Y., Sept. 20.—My bees have done well in gathering honey, this season; but gave me no swarms during swarming time.—J. H. Hadsell.
Oskaloosa, Iowa, Sept. 28.—I have one hundred and ninety colonies of bees that have done well this year, and are in fine condition for winter. I stored away one hundred and twenty-nine colonies in my cellar last fall, and the same number came out in good order in the spring. I sold them off to about one hundred, from which I came on to winter with the above number (190), principally Italians.
Enclosed please find specimen of a bee plant. What is it? It blooms from first of July to last of August profusely and is visited by bees thrice as much as buckwheat. I have tried borage, melilot, alsike, mustard, and find nothing to equal it. I calculate to cultivate it, in order to give it a fair and full trial. I have secured about a peck of seed. The great advantage is that it blooms at a time when most needed in this country. I grew it this year alongside of buckwheat that bloomed at the same time.—S. Ingels.
[The plant enclosed is the Cassia chamæcrista or Partridge Pea. It is an annual, growing in most sandy soil, and is common in the south. It grows here on the eastern branch of the Potomac (the Anacostia), and bees derive plentiful supplies of forage from it during eight or ten weeks in summer, and it is then almost their only resource. They gather pollen from the blossoms, but the honey is secreted by a small cupshaped gland situated below the lowest pair of leaflets, and is supplied abundantly for a long period.—Some of the farmer’s here-abouts affect to consider it a pernicious and ineradicable weed; but as it is an annual and known to be an excellent fertilizer when plowed under, it would seem to indicate slovenly management not to be able to subdue it readily where not wanted.—Ed.]
Vervilla, Tenn., Sept. 24.—I consider the Journal cheap at any price for the bee-keeper, and wish it could be published oftener.—Dr. J. M. Bell.
Warsaw, Minn., Oct. 3.—This has been a poor season for bees here, except in basswood time.—L. B. Aldrich.
Cedarville, Ills., Oct. 5.—My bees have done well this season.—Robert Jones.
Meredith, Pa., Oct. 4.—Bees did very well on white clover in this section this season, but very poorly on buckwheat. My sixty stocks did not give me sixty pounds of buckwheat honey surplus, all told; although they are all in good condition for wintering.
I do not think that alsike clover has been over-estimated for bee pasturage. I had three-quarters of an acre of it this season, and I never saw a piece of land so covered with bees as that was while it was in bloom, and they gathered honey from it very fast.—M. Wilson.
Orchard, Iowa, Oct. 6.—It is raining heavily to-day, yet the weather is warm and we have not had a particle of frost yet. Bees have done storing surplus honey for the season.—I shall give the result of the season’s operations as soon as I can get the time. At present I am up 4 A. M., and do not get home till 8 and sometimes 9 o’clock P. M. I must have a little relaxation from such excessive hard labor, before I can confine or control my thoughts sufficiently to write for publication. From the past season’s operations with the honey extractor, I can endorse all that Novice claims over and above the old mode of getting surplus in the comb—E. Gallup.
New Bedford, Mass., Oct. 6.—The season for bees has been remarkable. Commencing well, the dry weather soon made forage very scarce during the blooming of clover and basswood, so that by the first of September there was little or no surplus stored, and all the colonies were very light. But during that month, mostly after the fifteenth, the bees gathered honey as fast or faster than they ever do in this locality in June. It was obtained from the wild aster; and the stocks are now heavy and in fine condition for winter. Even now there seems to be no cessation of their labors. This is true of all the neighboring towns; nearly every hive in them having been examined by me during my professional drives.—E. P. Abbe.
[For The American Bee Journal.]