This is the leisure season, and people gather around the warm stove to “cuss” and discuss the merits and demerits of different sections of our great country, some favoring one State and some another, some favoring South, some East and West—any place but cold Minnesota. I spoke of Texas. One of our townsmen spoke in regard to Texas, something after this style: You don’t know what you (as a Northerner) are talking about. Just after the War closed, there were eleven families that left Osakis for Sherman, Tex., and all came back that could. I tell you a person from the North has no business down there. I left here in January, and got back in June, and I have located on a farm here for life.
The cemetery at Sherman has three little graves marking the resting-place of our three little children, all being taken from us in three weeks. My wife being sick, she thought it advisable to go North again; she barely survived to get back, but soon recovered, and three more children blessed our home, which are with us, plump and healthy; while children in the extreme South resemble calves reared on “skim-milk.”
W. T.
Osakis, Minn., Nov. 29, 1893.
Extracted Honey for Farmers, Etc.
The past year has been one of the poorest of all the poor years of the past, in my locality. The bees were so weak from poor wintering, and the cold, wet, backward spring made it impossible to get them ready for the harvest from clover. The flow from clover was very good; basswood was only fair, the bloom not being very profuse. At the close of the basswood season a long and protracted drouth set in, which “done up” everything brown. Bees here are very light in stores.
I worked a part of my colonies for extracted honey the past season. I used up all my empty combs that were vacated the past winter and spring. It was my first experience with extracted honey. I think it is just the way when the bees are not up to the required pressure for comb honey. If the farmers who keep bees would use the extractor, and give their bees plenty of combs at the right time, they would get more from their bees than they do. It requires a specialist to make a success at comb honey.
My best colony gave me 150 pounds of extracted honey, and my average of comb and extracted was about 20 pounds per colony, spring count. The increase was about 25 per cent.
I have some of the extra-light colored bees, and I like them. My queens are prolific, their colonies are just as populous as any of my dark ones—they are rustlers to work. If honey is left exposed, they will find it first, and get the lion’s share, too. I think they are just a little inclined to steal from the blacks. They are very easy to handle, stick right to the combs, and protect them from robbers. If they prove to be hardy to winter, I will requeen all my colonies in the spring.