Part 1

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ESTABLISHED IN OLDEST BEE-PAPER 1861 IN AMERICA

The American BEE JOURNAL

Weekly, $1 a Year. } DEVOTED EXCLUSIVELY--TO { Sample Copy Free. BEE-CULTURE.

VOL. XXXIII. CHICAGO, ILL., JAN. 11, 1894. NO. 2.

=The Weather=, up to Jan. 5th, here in Chicago, has been more like fall than winter. Reports seem to indicate that bees are wintering well, so far.

=Mr. John Hager, Jr.=, of Arabi, La., has sent us a box of specimens of honey-plants now in bloom in his locality, among them white clover and golden-rod. We wish to thank Bro. Hager for his kindness, as it is something unusual for us to see blossoms of honey-plants in the month of January. Louisiana, as well as the other States in our Sunny Southland, ought to be a Paradise for the bee-keeper and his bees. Doubtless it only needs a little more push and energy to wonderfully develop the bee-industry in that region of almost perpetual sunshine and blossoms.

=Gleanings in Bee-Culture= for Jan. 1st, 1894, appeared with a few very nice improvements. The principal one is the proposed “leading” of the reading matter--that is, putting strips of lead or metal between the lines, so that they will be further apart. This paragraph is “leaded,” while “The Stinger’s” department in the BEE JOURNAL is “solid,” as printer’s say.

This “leading,” Bro. Root says, will _reduce_ the amount of reading in _Gleanings_ about _one-fifth_, and as Bro. Hasty, in the _Review_ for March, 1893, figured that the BEE JOURNAL then contained over 16.000 more words of bee-reading per month than _Gleanings_, hereafter the BEE JOURNAL will be more than ever at the head of the list in _quantity_ of bee-matter published; and as to _quality_ of contents--well, we can safely leave that to our subscribers, whether or not it is up to standard.

Bro. Root has also put in some nice new departmental headings, which, with the “leading” of the type, give to _Gleanings_ an exceedingly neat and tasty appearance.

☞ It is hardly necessary for me to say that the Italians are my choice among all the bees that I have ever seen, either for comb honey or for extracted.--_Doolittle._

=Bro. Pringle=, of Canada, who had in charge the Ontario honey exhibit at the World’s Fair last summer, left for home on Dec. 21st. He had been in Chicago ever since April 6th, being the first apiarian superintendent to reach the Fair grounds, and the last to leave.

The day before departing for his Canadian home, Bro. Pringle kindly called to bid us “good-bye,” at the same time bringing with him, for “ye editor,” a quart jar of fine clear extracted honey, as a memento from Bro. McEvoy, Ontario’s popular Foul Brood Inspector; also a pound jar of honey from Mr. D. Chalmers, of Poole, Ont.; and, besides, a beautiful one-pound section of honey as a slight remembrance from Bro. P. himself. We want to thank all these friends for their “sweet” expressions of good-will, and assure them that we very gratefully appreciate their kindness and thoughtfulness.

We expect soon to give our readers a picture of Ontario’s magnificent honey exhibit at the Fair, with full description of the same.

=The Wisconsin Honey Exhibit.=--At the annual meeting of the Wisconsin State Bee-Keepers’ Association, in February, 1893, Mr. Franklin Wilcox, of Mauston, Wis., was chosen to collect, prepare and arrange an exhibit of honey and wax at the World’s Columbian Exposition. The sum of $500 was allotted by the State Board with which to make the exhibit.

The months of February and March did not prove to be the most favorable time for collecting comb honey that should fairly represent the State. After considerable correspondence, and some travel, Mr. Wilcox succeeded in obtaining about 800 pounds of comb honey, 500 pounds of extracted, and 200 pounds of beeswax, of the crop of 1892. Damages from freezing and rough handling reduced the quantity somewhat before it was finally installed at Chicago.

The rules of the Exposition Company sent out at that time limited the amount from each exhibitor to 50 pounds of extracted, and 100 pounds of comb honey, which prevented filling up the exhibit with a large quantity of fancy honey from two or three exhibitors, as might have been done with less cost.

Among those who furnished honey from the crop of 1892, were J. J. Ochsner, of Prairie du Sac, who sent some of the finest comb and extracted honey, also some choice beeswax; but the most attractive exhibit by Mr. O. was his name and post-office address built of comb honey by the bees in letters formed for them as a guide.

Mr. C. A. Hatch, of Ithaca, and E. C. Priest, of Henrietta, furnished extracted honey and beeswax. Messrs. Frank McNay, Franklin Wilcox, and A. E. Wilcox, of Mauston, each furnished comb and extracted honey and beeswax. Messrs. Gustav Gross, of Milford, and Adolph Vandereicke, of Lake Mills, contributed their best.

The extracted honey was nicely put up in glass jars, of different sizes and styles, designed to show those commonly used in the retail trade. It nearly all appeared on exhibition in the granulated form. This was partly because Mr. Wilcox believed that people should learn to know that pure extracted honey will granulate, and partly because he could not give it time enough to melt it so often as necessary to keep it in the liquid form.

After completing the installation of the crop of 1892, Mr. Wilcox applied to the State Board for funds to replace the old crop with the new, when it should be ready. This was promptly refused, and Mr. W. abandoned the exhibit for a time. About the middle of August, finding a good crop of choice honey, and that other States had greatly improved their exhibits, he again appealed to the Board for funds with which to pay transportation and installation charges on the new crop, and succeeded in getting the promise of $100 for that purpose.

As the time was short, he called for immediate contributions, and obtained over 50 pounds from J. W. Kleeber, of Reedsburg, 300 pounds from J. J. Ochsner, and 200 pounds from himself and son, with which he replaced a portion of the old crop of comb honey.

This was arranged on five large arches, as shown in the illustration herewith, with pyramids of honey underneath. Those columns with a square base and two balls on the top are beeswax. The remainder of the wax is in fancy balls, bells, hearts, etc., and may be seen on top of the sections, glass and jars of honey. Mr. Ochsner’s letters do not show very well in the picture. They were in the front end of the showcase under one of the large arches.

The Wisconsin exhibit was entered as a State exhibit, and of course individual exhibitors were unknown to the judges, consequently the award was to the State as a whole.

As in the case of the Michigan exhibit, the success of the Wisconsin display was mainly due to the untiring efforts and wisdom of one man--in the former to Bro. Cutting, and in the latter to Bro. Wilcox, whose picture is shown on another page. Both of these good men worked faithfully and hard in securing and placing their respective exhibits, and of course each won worthy and lasting honor, if not financial reward. We trust that neither Wisconsin nor Michigan bee-keepers will soon forget the two men who did so much to win new laurels to these already much-crowned States.

=The Vermont= Bee-Keepers’ Association will meet in the Van Ness House at Burlington, Vt., on Jan. 24 and 25, 1894. Among the topics to receive attention are these:

President W. G. Larrabee’s address, including a report of the North American Bee-Keepers’ Association meeting in Chicago.

Experimental work: What has been done at the State Farm--O. J. Lowrey and T. H. Wheatley.

Upward and entrance ventilation: How much for winter?--H. P. Langdon.

Is spring protection necessary after bees are put out of the cellar?--M. F. Cram.

Discussion: Advantages and disadvantages of shallow frames.

Why is honey so much better flavored in some years than in others?--R. H. Holmes.

How shall we manage our bees so as to secure the most honey?--E. J. Smith.

In the Secretary’s announcement we find the following paragraphs:

The Van Ness House kindly donates the use of a hall for the convention, and reduces their rates to $2.00 per day, to those attending the convention.

If you have any new or useful invention or article, please bring the same to the convention.

If you live within reach of Burlington, don’t fail to attend the meeting, and bring your lady friends with you. All interested in apiculture are expected to come without further invitation. Bring your badges.

The C. V. R. R. Co. have reduced their rates as follows: Return tickets--From stations within 33 miles of Burlington, 2 cents per mile each way, with minimum rate of 25 cents, and maximum rate of $1.00; 34 miles and over, fare one way. Tickets are good going Jan. 23rd, 24th, and 25th, and good returning the 25th and 26th, between the following named places to Burlington: Malone and Ticonderoga, N. Y., Richford, Cambridge Junction, Rutland, and White River Junction.

H. W. SCOTT, _Sec. & Treas._

Barre, Vt.

ANSWERED BY DR. C. C. MILLER, MARENGO, ILL.

In this department will be answered those questions needing IMMEDIATE attention, and such as are not of sufficient special interest to require replies from the 20 or more apiarists who help to make “Queries and Replies” so interesting on another page. In the main, it will contain questions and answers upon matters that particularly interest beginners.--ED.

Contraction--Improvement in Bees.

I tried contracting the brood-chamber of four colonies during basswood honey-flow, and three of them would persist in building comb on the vacant side of the dummy. One even got so far as to have quite a comb there, (mostly drone-comb) with the queen laying in that side.

The combs in the brood-chamber were very nearly all worker, and instead of the queen using them, and the bees storing above, they capped them over half full of honey. They worked in the super some, but not like bees ought to when there is a good honey-flow. They had, I think, five Langstroth frames, maybe six.

I fitted a thin piece of board over the vacant part of the brood-chamber. One of the four stayed “contracted” all right. It had six frames. This one was a new swarm, and worked all right in the super, but re-swarmed in August.

1. I would like advice on contracting, and how to do it. Ought I to contract all summer, where the bees get enough honey to breed strong all the time? Also, there is lots of pollen here all summer.

2. In Mr. Simmins’ essay on page 689 of the BEE JOURNAL for 1893, he gives as one of his means of preventing swarming, the withdrawal of the two outer combs, and inserting near the center of the brood-nest two empty frames. Are not these empty frames apt to be filled with drone-comb?

3. On the same page he speaks of rearing young queens in the fall to requeen with, also as a means of preventing swarming. What is the object of rearing them in the fall?

4. Would not cells saved at the swarming season do as well?

5. Where the bees of a neighborhood are about half blacks and half Italian, or a good share hybrid, would you advise a person to try to Italianize, suppose his bees were about half and half?

6. Where the bees of a neighborhood are two-thirds black, and you want to produce comb honey mostly, would it be best to breed from your best black queens, rather than to try to Italianize?

7. Don’t you think (of course the big queen-breeders don’t read this department) that if the black bees had been bred as scientifically, and as much care and study given them as has been bestowed on the Italians, in the last 20 or 30 years, they would have been to-day as good, if not better than the Italian?

E. S. M.

Denison, Iowa.

ANSWERS.--1. I have contracted down to five, four, three, and in some cases down to only one or two combs, having no combs built in the brood-chamber. A division-board or a dummy was next to the comb or combs left, and the space partly filled with dummies. One or two years I filled in the vacant space with hay. If two dummies were put in next the brood-comb, with half an inch space between them, there was no trouble about combs being built in the vacant space left. But please notice that there was no queen in the hive. Without a queen, bees don’t seem so intent on building comb, but with a queen you would likely find them clustering in the open space left beyond the two dummies, there to build combs.

With the queen left in the hive, as in your case, you should have filled up the vacant space in some way, so the bees couldn’t occupy it. If the space for the brood-nest is limited, the tendency of the bees is to build additional combs at the side, even if one or two dummies are in the way. Perhaps it is not necessary to have the dummies so close to each other as you get farther away from the brood-nest. At the farther side, next the wall of the hive, the bees are not so likely to commence building, even if the space is an inch or more.

I doubt if any one would advise you to contract all summer. I think contractionists would tell you to hive a swarm on five frames, then after those five are well occupied, and the bees working well in the supers, to add the other frames. Some of them might perhaps tell you to take out part of the frames from an old colony, but I rather think that now-a-days contraction is mostly confined to swarms. I don’t, however, count myself the highest authority on contraction, for after having done a good deal in that line I have gone back to the plan of allowing same number of combs summer and winter.

2. Yes, put an empty frame into the middle of a brood-nest at a time when there was any likelihood of swarming, and I should expect a good share of the comb built to be drone, especially if there was no drone-comb in the other frames.

3. Bees having a young queen are not so likely to swarm as those having an old one, and rearing a queen in a hive in the fall would not interfere with the harvest as would rearing one before the harvest.

4. There might not be much difference, only the later a queen is reared this year, the younger she will be next, and the less likely to swarm.

5. Yes, I’ve done that very thing, and I would keep on trying, for you will not get through with the trying for a good many years.

6. No, I would do my best to work in Italian blood.

7. No, I hardly think so. Between you and me, I don’t think there has been such an immense amount of science squandered on the breeding of Italian bees. They are what they are, because of the surroundings in their native habitat. While some have taken great pains in breeding, I think a large number to-day would say that an Italian queen imported from Italy 30 years ago was just as good as the average queen in America to-day, and every year many queens are imported from Italy and sold at a high price, which would hardly be, if there was no advantage in it. And I don’t know that any one claims that any improvement has been made in Italy, in the past 30 years.

No. 64.--Franklin Wilcox.

One of the prominent figures on the wonderful gallery of the Agricultural Building at the recent World’s Fair, where were found the more wonderful and beautiful exhibits of the apiary, was Mr. Franklin Wilcox, of Mauston, Wis. We had never had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with him before the past summer, but now we feel that in Bro. Wilcox, as in many other nice bee-folks whom we first met the past year, we have indeed a good and true friend. So we are glad to have this opportunity to also present to our readers another leading bee-keeper--one who has done so much for advanced apiculture in the State where he lives, and who takes such a deep interest in the prosperity of all.

Like a great many of the famous men of the United States, Bro. Wilcox had the good fortune to be born in the State of Ohio. We are not sure that this fact has anything to do with his success as a bee-keeper, but somehow we imagine there must be something encouraging in the feeling that one hails from a certain locality where have come many who have won deserved distinction, even to filling the highest position of honor in the gift of the Nation. However that may be, at any rate Franklin Wilcox was born in Hardin county, Ohio, in 1840. He moved to Wisconsin in 1851, and settled in Juneau county, near where he now resides. There being no school to occupy his mind, for a few years he spent much of his time in the summer season hunting his father’s cows--for pastures were bounded only by the horizon, and the cows seemed anxious to find the outer edge; in the fall he frequently went with his father bee-hunting, and there learned from observation some practical lessons in bee-keeping, and we think he would spend a little time each fall yet, in the woods, “lining up” the wild bees, if time would permit.

At the commencement of the late War, he went into the army and served to the close, being wounded at South Mountain, Md., in September, 1862, which disabled him from active service for one year.

At the close of the War he married, and settled on a farm where he still lives. He thinks himself quite content with his comfortable home, a good wife, and four children.

In connection with his farming summers and teaching a country school winters, he kept a few colonies of bees, as some farmers do now, until about the year 1877 or 1878, when he subscribed for the AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, and soon after added _Gleanings_, “Cook’s Manual,” and several other bee-works. After a few months’ reading, he chose a hive, and commenced bee-keeping in a new way, that astonished his parents and some of his neighbors.

He now commences each season with from 200 to 300 colonies of bees, and realizes as much profit from them as any farmer with the same amount of capital and labor.

Mr. Wilcox has been the Secretary of a farmers’ mutual insurance company for the past 15 years, which does business in four towns only, and carries a capital stock of $500,000.

On a previous page is found a description and illustration of the Wisconsin State apiarian exhibit at the World’s Fair, which Bro. Wilcox superintended in such a pleasing and satisfactory manner.

CONDUCTED BY MRS. JENNIE ATCHLEY, BEEVILLE, TEXAS.

Everything Booming in Texas.

I will now tell you about the weather up to date (Dec. 28th). We are having summer weather, and the bees are just booming on wild currant, which began to bloom about a week ago. The boys are to-day transferring bees from 16 box-hives that they brought in last evening, and they say that the robber-bees are not bad at all, as the bees are busy on the currant bloom. To-day the thermometer registers 75° in the shade; at sunrise this morning it was 66°, and at sundown last night 70° above zero.

On Christmas day husband rode out some, and plucked an orange out of Major DeGan’s orchard, where he saw trees bending with fruit of many varieties of oranges; also the Japan plums were in bloom. The Major’s fish-pond was partly covered with water-lilies, and stocked with the finest perch he ever saw, and they were very gentle; they would come right up to him for food. Then he went out to some of the many gardens in Beeville, and found vegetables in great profusion--radishes, white head cabbages, lettuce, mustard, English peas, new Irish potatoes, and a great many other things too numerous to mention.

The lowest the mercury has been here up to date is 33° above zero, and we are now having lovely weather, and everything shows a springlike appearance. I will keep close watch of all the honey-plants, and at the end of next season I will be prepared to tell all about them, etc. If we have fine weather ten days longer, our strong colonies will fill their hives with new currant honey, as it is very plentiful here.

We have drones hatching, and our swarming will begin about Feb. 15th, or 45 days from now.

JENNIE ATCHLEY.

Sending Queens by Mail.

I think Mr. Faylor is a little “off” when he says, on page 697 of the BEE JOURNAL for November, 1893, that _no_ queens are any good after being transported through the mails. The best laying queen, or one of the best, I ever had, came clear across the ocean, by mail, from Italy. She lived fully three years; and, in fact, I have received thousands of queens by mail from different parts of the country, and do not remember ever having a queen damaged in the mails in good weather. I have received them nearly dead, and they turn up O. K. Still I believe some queens are injured in transit, both by mail or in nuclei by express, as I have received such reports.

But my opinion is, that nine-tenths of all the queens that arrive in good condition by mail (that is, lively) are just as good as those not so transported. There are hundreds, yes, I will say thousands, of bee-keepers that can testify in this case, if they will. Please let let us hear some of the evidences; the court is ready. This is a very important question.

JENNIE ATCHLEY.

Fruits and Vegetables.

As some friends have not yet gotten enough about southwest Texas, I’ll tell them about the fruits and vegetables. Grapes grow and fruit the heaviest here of any place I ever saw; some bunches of ripe grapes weighing 2½ pounds, and very rich in flavor, and they always fruit--no failures.

Oranges do well here, but have to be irrigated during the dry seasons. I drove by any orchard yesterday that was loaded with ripe oranges, and I tell you it was a pretty sight.

Bananas do only moderately well, but I do not believe the people here understand their culture. There is hardly ever any ice here thicker than a knife-blade, but I see the people wrap up and protect the banana-trees.

Pears do excellently, and young trees grow into bearing very quickly, compared to some countries. Blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, dewberries, currants, and all small fruits do well here. Peaches do well if the varieties are chosen that are acclimated to this latitude. Apples only bear sparingly--it is too warm for them, and the trees do not live long. The whole country here is covered or strewn with wild currants, and they bear every year, and are very fine.

JENNIE ATCHLEY.

Hints that May be Valuable.

If you wish nice yellow beeswax everytime, do not use any iron vessel in rendering it. Use tin, brass or copper, as iron will make it dark.

Don’t rest too long, as you may lose considerable, and the “Stitch in time saves nine” adage holds good in bee-keeping, surely. Have you got your sections, frames, and the supplies all ready for next season? If not, you had better see about it, as no bee-keeper in the world can reap a full harvest, and be behind with his supers, hives, frames, etc. It is always best to be ready, whether the harvest comes or not. But should it come, and find the tub bottom up, but little is caught.

It is not best to ask too many questions when you start out in apiculture. Remember that one idea learned yourself, is worth more than if two were told you.

Remember that you may read agricultural papers for years, and without any practice you are no farmer. It is the same with bees. It is right and proper to learn all you can from others, but to be real successful you must learn some yourself.

JENNIE ATCHLEY.

Many Vegetables and Few Neighbors.