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.