CORRESPONDENCE OF THE BEE JOURNAL.
Tyrone, Ontario, July 16.—Bees are doing very well here this year. I have got forty pounds surplus honey from some of my hives already.—J. McLaughlin.
Washington Harbor, Wis., July 16.—This has been the best honey season, thus far, seen by me. A second swarm hived on Tuesday June 21st, on Wednesday night the 29th, weighed twenty-five pounds, besides having yielded thirty-eight pounds ten ounces taken by honey machine in eight days. I had given the swarm seven old combs and one empty frame, placed it on the old stand, and removed the old stock to a new place. On the 25th and 26th, it gained twenty-one pounds six ounces in two days, on raspberry and clover blossoms. This is the best day’s work and week’s work I have noticed. The queen began to lay on Monday the 27th, so they had no brood to nurse.
The next fourteen days they lost four pounds each. Basswood began to bloom July 13th. One hive gained fifteen pounds in four days; and in the next ten days I expect my five hives to gain thirty to forty pounds each, which closes the honey season here. The last two years the hives lost more in weight from the 1st of August to the 1st of November, than in five months in the cellar to 1st of April.—H. D. Miner.
Borodino, N. Y., July 16.—I think that you publish by far the best Bee Journal.
Gansevoort, N. Y., July 20.—I think the American Bee Journal worthy of every bee-keeper’s attention, whether he keeps one stand or a hundred.
I would like to learn from some more experienced bee-keepers than myself, the best way to set bees for summer; whether exposed to the sun, in the shade of trees, or under a shelter made of boards.
It has been very dry here all summer, and flowers have nearly all dried up. Bees have swarmed but little and have not stored much cap honey. Box hives are mostly used here, though there are some others of different kinds.—Thomas Pierce.
Rich Valley, Minn., July 20.—The season for bees has been fair thus far; but I do not think this location so well adapted to the business as most of the States south.—L. M. Lindley.
Ridgeway, Mich., July 21.—I have one hundred and thirty colonies in box hives, somewhat like T. B. Miner’s equilateral hive. I shall have about twenty hundred pounds of honey for sale this season.
I cannot learn that it would be wise for me to adopt the movable comb hive, as I have five hundred dollars invested in box hives, and have been successful with them. So far as I can learn I have the largest apiary in Michigan, and have perhaps, in the last thirteen years sold more surplus honey than any apiarian using box hives, or perhaps any other kind of hive. Honey sells for twenty to twenty-five cents per pound.—J. F. Temple.
Augusta, Me., July 22.—This is a very dry season with us. Bees will not give much surplus honey; and in some cases old stocks will not get honey enough to winter.—H. B. Coney.
Gebhartsburg, Pa., July 22.—This has been a remarkable honey season, and also for swarming. I practice artificial swarming, yet in spite of all precautions I got two natural swarms, and that too without the least preparation by the bees, for no queen cells had been started. This is contrary to the books and my previous experience.—W. Baker.
Hamilton, Ill., July 24.—No Bee Journal either on the old continent or the new, can vie with the American Bee Journal.—C. Dadant.
Niagara, Ontario, July 30.—We have had a good honey season, through June and part of July, from white clover; but I do not think bees are doing much now. I lost some honey for want of shade. The combs melted, though in double boxes.—F. G. Nash.
Excelsior, Minn., July 30.—Bees have done very well here, until the middle of this month, the season having been an unusually fine one, up to that time. Since then, we have had a change of weather and bees are doing nothing. The season has been a very dry and hot one, thus indicating—not for the first time—that dry warm seasons are the best for honey in this latitude.—J. W. Murray.
East Fairfield, Ohio.—Bees are doing very nicely here this year. I should like to see your valuable Journal have a wide circulation, and if it were carefully read, I think bee-keepers would generally do well.—J. Heustis.
Springfield, Ill., August 4.—Our pets have done nothing since 20th of June, but eat up what they saved before. The “heated term” has been unusually severe and long. We look for better things, now that the weather has changed and vegetation begins to revive. This morning one of my early June swarms (Italian) threw off a very large swarm. On examining the hive, I was not a little interested and surprised to find five beautiful young queens, evidently stretching their legs (my queens have legs) for the first time. Three went “where the woodbine twineth.” I had use for the other two. Is not the simultaneous hatching of so great a number unusual?—W. L. Gross.
North Tunbridge, Vt., August 7.—We have had a very great season here for honey, but not as much swarming as usual. My bees have given me a profit of twenty-four dollars per swarm, in box honey.—D. C. Hunt.
Cleveland, Ohio, August 8.—I think we have a very poor locality for bees—the land being too flat, wet, and cold. No honey in the white clover blossoms this year.—R. Honey.
Virden, Ills., August 8.—We never had so good a season of white clover, in my recollection, as the past has been; but it has been so dry since that the bees have done nothing since the 1st of July. Our fall pasturage too will be short, on account of the drouth. Last year I got all my surplus honey after this time, mostly from Spanish needles and red clover. There will be very little of either this fall, consequently I do not expect much more surplus honey. I have increased my bees from twenty-five colonies to sixty-five.—J. L. Peabody.
Paw Paw, Mich., August 8.—The ever welcome American Bee Journal was received as usual. It contains a variety of reading matter from all sources, and it sounds like glad tidings unto all people. I have only one fault to find—it should come on the first and fifteenth of each month. How can that desirable end be accomplished? Will not our brother bee-keepers co-operate to bring it about? Bees have done finely here, this season.—A. F. Moon.
Ripon, Wis., August 8.—The Journal comes to hand promptly every mouth, accept my thanks for the effort you make to furnish us with a first class paper.—R. Dart.
Towanda, Ills., August 9.—The season for honey in this section of the country has not been the best or the poorest. Bees on the prairies did not swarm much, and there was great complaint of their leaving for the timber. One man here found fourteen (14) bee trees in one grove. But in the timbered portion of the country, the bees swarmed wide and gathered the usual amount of honey, namely fifteen to twenty-five pounds per stand.
Increased attention is being given to the culture of bees here, and I hope I shall be able to send you a much larger list of subscribers for your excellent Journal.
An accident occurred in the apiary of Mr. Cyrus Jones, in this township, that would probably come under the head of “Anger of Bees.” While his hired man with the team, was hauling some old lumber from the yard, the horses became frightened and ran directly among the bees, knocking over seven stands and becoming fastened for a short time in a cherry tree. The bees swarmed out not only from those stands that were run over; but from most of the others (there being some twenty stands in all) stinging the horses terribly. The horses became frantic, rearing and plunging, broke loose from the tree, and ran into the next lot, breaking the wagon badly. One of them died in about three hours, and the other in the course of the day. While they were fastened in the tree, one of the men in throwing water on the horses, to cool I suppose the anger of the bees, lost his hat. The bees lighting on him stung his head and face so badly that his life was in danger. The horses were stung in their ears, nostrils, and bodies so badly that by taking a corn knife and scraping their sides, you could draw out thousands of stings. Mr. Jones estimates his loss at about five hundred (500) dollars. This accident occurred last spring. What would have been the best to do, in such a case?—S. C. Ware.
Wenham, Mass., August 11.—The weather has been very dry and hot all summer; but during the last few days we have had plenty of rain, though the air is not cooler.—H. Alley.
Lexington, Ky., August 12.—The July number of the Journal failed to come. I began to fear you had ceased to publish the Journal, as I did not receive one for so long. That I hope will never happen, as long as it is doing the good to the bee-keeping public, that it now is. Long life to you and it.—Dr. J. Dillard.
Lisle, N. Y., August 12.—As your correspondents commenced boasting early, I should like to hear from them again, to learn whether the drouth affected them as much as it has us, in this part of the country. I think bees never did better than they did during raspberry time. It then became so dry that they have not got much since, till now that they are working on buckwheat freely. From one double Langstroth hive we have taken seventeen full six pound boxes, and the bees are working in six more. They filled both hives themselves, except six frames that were transferred. I think this is doing very well, as it will make eighty pounds in frames more than they need to winter on. We are sure of thirty-six pounds more. We have a good many young swarms that have already over one hundred pounds of box honey taken off. I will give you, this fall, the total result. I think it will convince people that bee-keeping pays.—H. S. Wells.
Campbell’s Cross, Ontario, August 12.—I have the first four volumes of American Bee Journal bound in two, and would not take five times their cost if I could not get them again. I would freely pay double to get them twice a month. It would pay to get them, if a person has only one hive, or no bees at all.
Bees have done well, in this section, this season. They swarmed two weeks earlier than usual. We have plenty of swarms and surplus honey. Second and even some third swarms will gather honey enough to winter on. My bees are all in frame hives. The Thomas hive is all the go in Ontario. My bees are nearly all Italians, bred from the stocks of J. H. Thomas, Brooklin, Ontario, and Henry Alley, Wenham, Mass.,—both of whom I could recommend, their stock of Italians being very pure and well marked.—H. Lipsett.
Gnadenhutten, Ohio, August 15.—We have had a prosperous season, this summer, both for honey and swarms. The weather was good from the time the fruit trees blossomed until the close of the white clover blossoms. It is refreshing to the drooping spirit to have a season of plenty after such poor seasons as the previous two were. Our success would be better if we had some reliable plants to supply honey, after the white clover is past. That is now our main dependance, and when it is a partial failure our late swarms cannot gather sufficient store to last them over winter; and buckwheat is at best an uncertain source for honey.
As there is considerable rivalry among inventors about patent hives, and divers contrivances are recommended to bee-keepers as the ne plus ultra of perfection, I will state that some years ago I invented a side-opening leaf hive, with a sliding bottom board. Either front or rear side is a door, through which the bottom board slides. At the opposite end of the hive from the door, in the side of the hive, is a frame or yoke, fastened to the sides of the bottom-board and reaching half way up the side of the hive. On top of said yoke are clasps fastened loosely to the yoke with wire rivets. These clasps hold the frames by means of wire hooks driven into the frames and hooking over a shoulder on top of the clasps. The clasps move sideways, and allow the frames to be moved sideways, like the leaves of a book, and also to be taken off. The part of the hive with a hook in, has a piece of wire driven in at the bottom, to serve as a pivot, and works in a gimlet hole in the bottom board. In operating with the bees in, the door is opened and the fastenings made by the bees are to be cut loose; then the bottom board with the frames is drawn out of the hive. It is perhaps as good a side-opening hive as any, with the additional good quality that there is no patent on it. Any one is at liberty to use the invention. For myself, I prefer top opening hives, as more convenient.—S. Luethi.
[For the American Bee Journal.]