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.
I don't wish Mrs. Atchley to feed her bees on sorghum, nor any one
else, unless you want to lose your bees, for that you will do if they
are fed on pure sorghum.
Some Northern bee-keepers may think there is a disease among my bees,
but such is not the case. There never was any disease among bees in
this country, that I know of.