3. How many pounds of extracted honey?
This would bring out a full report of the amount of honey produced in the United States. It would also show the number of colonies of bees kept by the States.
C. H. Pond.
Kasson, Minn.
Value of Bee Papers and Books.
There is little use trying to keep bees, either for pleasure or profit, without at least one live bee-paper to awaken interest and enthusiasm, and keep the apiarist abreast of the times. When we see an apiary that shows neatness, taste and prosperity, we need not be told that the owner or manager has access to bee papers and books; and when we find a bee-yard with hives huddled together regardless of order, distance or taste, with many of the colonies dead and dying, we are sure that the knowledge, skill and enterprise that come from the study of apiarian literature, have never reached that desolate and forlorn spot. Of course the bees are black, but no darker than much of the filthy comb and honey inside the hives. By neglect, much of the worker comb has become unfit for brood-rearing, and hence drones are reared in superabundance, and these deteriorated male bees fill the air for miles in all directions, to vitiate the pure blood of all well-kept apiaries.
But the intelligent, careful, painstaking apiarist will find encouragement in the assurance that all bees kept by such slipshod methods are doomed, and on the principle of "the survival of the fittest" must go, and the sooner the better for all concerned.
Bees in this section did well last season, and went into winter quarters in excellent condition. The recent warm spell gave them a fine airing (those on the summer stands), and now they should winter with but little loss.
S. S. Butts.