634 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



enough to do so, I had another case of chills, for while carrying out the 

 second and third hives the other bees took special delight in settling on 

 me as the most likely object and place in the whole back yard to rest; 

 and they actually turned my hat and clothes into a brown spring suit. It 

 made me somewhat disgusted, but my wife wisely remarked that "you 

 can't expect much else from bees." She knew so much about it, of 

 course. Well, there were less than one million bees in those three hives 

 after all had died in the cellar that wanted to die there. 



This proved to be the beginning of the worst year in bee history. I 

 always have had the knack of biting off my piece at the wrong time. Not 

 a swarm issued from those three hives that whole summer. I know, 

 because I watched them unceasingly. My wife said: "You just ain't 

 got any sense left. You put those bees to bed every night and wake 

 them up in the morning. You're getting to be a regular old fool." I said: 

 "I don't care, it's grand to be foolish, and I am going to learn all about 

 those bees." 



We harvested, or rather stole, sixteen pounds of bulk honey from one 

 of these colonies that fall, but had to feed two colonies all winter. The 

 other colony fell dead on the hive bottom three days before I put the 

 others out the following spring. Starved, of course. "Fool trick," my 

 wife said. "I know it," was my response. I pined for thirty days. Never 

 felt more uncomfortable in all my life, for I really thought they had 

 enough to live on until it was time to put them out. 



Things began to get better. I had six strong colonies in the fall, took 

 out one hundred and fifty-nine sections of honey, ate honey all winter 

 and sold the balance at twenty-five cents a section. 



I wintered ttie six colonies perfectly, had a thermometer in the cellar 

 and kept the cellar window open nearly all the time, but darkened the 

 opening with a long heavy curtain, and discovered that everything else 

 also kept better in the cellar with the temperature around 45 degrees. 



During the past summer I increased to eleven colonies. Lost two of 

 my queens and then consolidated three stands into one leaving me — 

 I'll tell you how it was. The colony that had, up to the time, made me 

 108 sections of fine honey, did not swarm until the last day of June. I 

 was lounging in the yard swing, watching a half a bushel or so of the 

 tenants hanging on the front of the hive, when all at once they came out 

 of that hive like a cloud, rose in the air and left like a roaring tornado. 

 I was mad. I never before had had nerve enough to clip a queen. My 

 wife was excited also. More advice was given me as to how I could have 

 prevented such a blunder. I got out my tools, jerked the supers off from 

 that hive and found the queen — I think now she was a virgin — slipped 

 the scissors under her wing and clipped her. Also clipped the queen of 

 another colony that had just swarmed. After it was all finished I re- 

 pented what I had done, as my book knowledge had then had time 

 enough to soak through and leak out and I realized what I probably 

 had done. The next day I found one of those clipped queens balled on 

 the front steps of the next door hive. I sprinkled water on the ball, she 

 emerged and ran into that hive before I had time to stop her. Something 

 happened to that colony as it became queenless. So did the other hive 



