Good Season in 1893, Etc.
A queer winter we are having thus far. The forepart of December was cold, the mercury reaching zero a number of times, with very little snow. The middle of December it warmed up, the snow all disappeared, and on the 22nd it was 70 degrees in the shade; on the 25th it was 60 degrees, and I let my bees have a flight. They were not as thick as in June.
The last season was a good one in this locality. I never saw white clover so thick before. We had a heavy wind and hail storm in buckwheat bloom, which was a complete stop to the buckwheat flow, which started in well. Golden-rod and asters did not yield much. There were a good many runaway swarms the past season, quite a number being found on the lake shore. I got four. The lake takes off one-half, or nearly that, of my pasture (being situated on the shore). We have about 8 inches of ice now, and have had very good ice-boating so far.
S. H. Eastwood.
Cicero Centre, N. Y., Jan. 8, 1894.
Won't Winter on Sorghum.
On page 559, of the Bee Journal for 1893, there is an item concerning sorghum for wintering bees. Mrs. Atchley suggests that I try it and report, which I will do with pleasure.
I can only report failure. Mrs. Atchley reports that she could not get her bees to take hold of sorghum. I had 5 colonies which I fed on it last October, sufficient to carry them through the winter. They are now all dead but one colony, and that one is reduced in numbers to a mere handful of bees. They all had plenty of sealed stores when they died, and fell down on the bottom-board. All of my other colonies are wintering well, that have honey stores.
Now, if Mrs. Atchley wants to try sorghum next winter, I think if she will go to some of her colonies of bees in warm, dry weather in October—some that have plenty of bees and not much honey—and raise the front end of the hive a little higher than the back, and pour in the pure sorghum just a little for one or two evenings, to get them started to eating it, then increase a little more, feeding every evening, I think in a week or so her bees will have plenty of sealed stores to last them through the winter—if they should live that long. But I don't think they would.