Letter from Missouri.
Mr. Editor:—I send you a sample of something that seems to be troubling my bees very much. It is in small scales resembling the wing of some insect.[3] The bees come in with from three to five sticking to their mouths. It seems to trouble them greatly. I think I could pick up or rather scrape up a pint of it, on the bottom board of some hives.
This section of country is too much subject to extremes for bees. Last year it rained all through May and June, so that the bees could not get out to work; and they did nothing but swarm after that until September. Pollen was plenty, but honey scarce. This spring commenced well, but most of May and up to the 15th of June the weather was too cold for bees to work. Nearly all the fruit blossoms were killed by cold. Wild plums and crab apples did not bloom. We have had no rain for several weeks, and very little since last fall. Everything is parched up, leaving nothing for the bees. I am feeding nearly fifty colonies, and will have to continue doing so until we have rain and flowers begin to bloom again.
I could exchange one little farm here for fifteen hundred acres of mountain land in Pocahontas county, Virginia. Is that a good bee section?[4]
Too much wind here, even if the pasturage were good. My Italians are doing much better than the native bees.
I sowed the strap-leaved turnip last fall for early pasturage, but none came up this spring. Cold killed them. What kind is best to sow, or what is better? Would it do to sow ten acres in turnips, and mix Alsike clover seed with it?
I have watched nearly every movement a bee can make for the last three years, and read all the bee books I could get.
J. K. Metcalfe.
Freedom, Mo., July 5, 1870.
