South Bend, Ont., March 11, 1881.
[Your question is a stunner; we have no data on which to base
an intelligent opinion.—ED.]
=Wintered Without Loss.=—My 27 colonies came through the winter
without the loss of a single one, for which I can thank 4 or 5 colonies
of Italians, for without them I should not have had honey enough to
have kept them through, even a moderate winter, to say nothing of
such a stinger as we have had. I have withheld my opinion in regard
to the change in the JOURNAL from a monthly to a weekly till I had
tried it a couple of months, and will now say that it would be a great
disappointment if you were to go back to a monthly. I am glad that you
have so often devoted your first page in each number to the subject of
bee-pasturage, for that is, or should be, our leading study now, till
we are on surer ground. The best way to make bee-keeping popular is to
make it pay; and it will pay if we can get the pasturage every year.
I would rather have a tip-top honey plant than an Apis dorsata, if it
had a tongue long enough to lick the molasses out of the bottom of a 5
gallon keg. We shall have plenty of white clover this year.