280 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



customer lives, the bill of lading^ to be 

 delivered to your customer when he 

 calls and pays the draft, but not other- 

 wise. Write to 5 our customer and tell 

 him what you have done; that, when 

 the honey arrives, he can go and exam- 

 ine it, and if it is satisfactorj', entirely 

 as represented, he can ^^o to his bank 

 and pay the draft, and get the bill ot 

 lading- that will enaple him to yet the 

 hone}'. When he pays the draft, the 

 bank will forward the money to your 

 bank, and there it will be placed to 

 your credit and you can draw it out at 

 any time. 



This plan enables a customer to ex- 

 amine goods before paying for them, 

 to be satisfied that he has not been 

 fooled with a special sample, and it 

 protects the seller from loss from some 

 dishonest man. 



Of course if a customer should refuse 

 to accept and pay for the honey, you 

 would be out your freight, but that 

 would be a small item compared with 

 the worth of the honey; and, if the 

 honey is what it was expected to be, 

 ihere are very few men who would re- 

 fuse to accept it after they had ordered 



It. 



**^ ■ rf»^i(»»«-« 



Getting Combs Cleaned Up After Extract- 

 ing is Over. 



I have no honey house at the apiary 

 here in Flint. The apiary is four or 

 five blocks away from the house. This 

 is a disadvantage in some respects. 

 When the honey had been taken off 

 with the use of bee escapes it had to be 

 hauled home in the evenin;;, in order 

 to avoid the attentions of robber bees. 

 After it was extracted came the prob- 

 lem of getting the combs cleaned up be- 

 fore stacking them away for the 

 winter. There were over 100 ten-frame 

 supers, iind it seemed like quite a task 

 to cart them back to the apiary at 

 night and put them on the hives, then 

 take them ol¥ again and bring them 

 to the house for storing. It was not 

 entirely without misgivings that I 



stacked them up, one evening, out in a 

 vacant lot, a few rods from the house. 

 The hives were set squarely over one 

 another, in piles about six hives high, 

 and a cover put on each pile. A small 

 entrance, perhaps 14 x 2 inches, al- 

 lowed each pile. I was up early the 

 next morning and kept close watch of 

 the proceedings. It was not long be- 

 fore the bees found them, and the air 

 around them was soon black with bees. 

 Not only this, but they gathered in 

 perfect swarms around nearly every 

 house in the neighborhood. One neigh- 

 bor came and told me where there was 

 a swarm of bees around his house, but 

 they acted as though they had lost 

 their queen. I went around to all of 

 the houses and explained the matter to 

 the inmates; told them that there was 

 not much danger of the bees stinging 

 them, that they were simply hunting- for 

 honey, and that as soon as they found 

 that that I had put out, they would 

 leave the houses Within two or three 

 hours the bees had de^ertetl the houses; 

 but it was amusing to see how foolish 

 and frantic the bees acted in some 

 cases. At one house there was a 

 portico having a post that came up 

 against the siding, leaving wedge- 

 shaped cracks between the post and 

 siding. There were at least three or 

 four quarts of bees, all up and down 

 this post, all fighting like mad to get 

 into those openings between the post 

 and the siding. At my own home, on 

 the floor of the back porch, in a corner 

 where the floor joined the wall of the 

 building, the bees gathered in a hunch 

 several inches deep. I went up to the 

 bee yard, and all of the fronts of the 

 hives were black with bees, in more or 

 less of a squabble. These things all 

 quieted down during the day, and I 

 don't know of any one being stung, 

 although, it is likel}'^ that some of the 

 neighbors felt more or less annoyed. 



The bees cleaned up the combs all 

 right, but they did mutilate a few of 

 the new combs — not seriously, but 



