Volume 6 — Around among Apiaries.

Mr. Editor:—As I have been visiting among bee-keeping friends, I will give you a few lines that may interest some of your readers. The season here has been very variable in the yield of honey from the clover blossoms and also from honey dew.

I made a short visit to Hess & Co.’s apiary, some ten miles from Fulton, on the Iowa side of the Mississippi, who have about one hundred and eighty colonies. Their bees did not yield much white clover or basswood honey, but did well on honey dew. The honey from the latter is very dark and sticky, and to most persons is of poor flavor. Their bees did not swarm much this season, though they are surrounded with all the early flowering trees, such as soft maple and hard elm, willow, and all other kinds natural to our soil, alike on the islands, bottoms, and uplands.

I next visited Marvin & Bros., of St. Charles, Ill. Their apiary numbers one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred stocks. Their bees have not done anything to speak of, and from appearance and prospects, they will have to be fed to go through the winter. There was hardly any rain here from the last of March to the last of June. White clover blossomed very little, and Alsike was almost a failure from the drouth. It did not grow tall enough to be cut for seed, where it did come into bloom. But Messrs. Marvin are not discouraged. They think there is a good time coming yet for bees, though it be not this season. They have some of the great Rocky Mountain bee plant growing, but it has not done anything for them since they have had it. It is now in full bloom, yet very seldom a bee lights on it.

I also made a brief call on M. M. Baldridge, the secretary of the great National Bee Hive Company, at St. Charles. His bees will likewise have to be fed, to go safely through the winter, if fall pasturage do not supply sufficient honey for their need. Mr. Baldridge is doing a considerable business in manufacturing honey emptying machines, now that the demand for beehives is over for this year.

I next visited Mr. Thompson, of Geneva. He is young in the bee business, but quite enthusiastic. Although he lost all his bees last winter, he was not discouraged, but tried again this season. Like most new beginners, he increased his stock rather too rapidly, especially in so poor a season as this has proved to be in that section generally. Bees, however, did somewhat better at Geneva than at St. Charles, only two miles away. At Batavia, the same distance below, the bees have done moderately well. Let me remark here that the rains, throughout the West, for the most part went in narrow streaks this season, especially in June, sometimes not over half a mile wide. This accounts for the difference in the condition of colonies in apiaries only a few miles apart.

I called on Mr. Way, at Batavia, and took a look at his bees and honey. He has a good supply of surplus white clover honey on hand, having been fortunate enough to be within the range of one of the seasonable rain streaks. The most of his colonies have honey enough to pass the winter safely, if they should not be able to gather any more. I was told that the good people of Batavia tried to get friend Way’s bees expelled from the city limits, as a nuisance, for fear they might possibly sting somebody!

AMONG THE HONEY DEALERS OF CHICAGO.

I do not think that the largest honey dealer in Chicago is doing the fair thing by his patrons—that is, if he wishes to do a permanent business and retain his best customers. He would rather buy honey in large boxes and frames, and then cut it into three or four small strips, put it in glass jars, and fill up the jars with inferior strained or Cuba honey. At the same time he discourages the bee-keepers from taking their honey from the combs with the melextractor, for the simple reason, I suppose, that he can make more money by straining the honey himself, as I was told he had a nice steam apparatus for fixing over strained honey.

As to the commission men, there are not many of them to be trusted, as it is seldom that honey is handled with the care it ought to receive; and when it gets to leaking, they sell it for any price they can get, in order to be rid of it.

There is a great fault, too, in the manner of shipping it, to have it go through in good shape, as the railroad men do not handle things very carefully. To get the best price from honest dealers, the box honey must be put up in neat, small boxes, weighing not over seven pounds gross; and to get a market established for extracted honey, it should be shipped to some reliable man; and the jars must be labelled with the quality of the honey and the name of the producer. Then the agent can recommend it to his customers, and warrant it pure; and all you have should be shipped exclusively to him. When properly put up, I do not think there is much to be feared from adulteration.

X.

Fulton, Ill., Sept. 5, 1870.

A good swarm of bees, put in a diminutive hive, in a good season, may be compared to a powerful team of horses harnessed to a baby wagon, or a noble fall of water wasted in turning a petty water-wheel.—Langstroth.

Narrow minds think nothing right that is above their own capacity.

[For the American Bee Journal.]