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AMERICAN BEE lOUENAL 



March 21, 1901. 



igtiis-fa/uus. If you wish to see a bee-keeper draw up the 

 corners of his mouth, mention this subject. When this 

 subject was first brought up it was lookt upon in all seri- 

 ousness. Of late it is mentioned only with ridicule. The 

 man who would propose to accomplish anything practical 

 in this line would be clast with the man who is trying to 

 invent perpetual motion. 



Seriously, is it wise to discourage attempts in this direc- 

 tion ? There is no doubt that there is as much difference 

 in bees as there is in other domestic animals ; and the one 

 thing needful to enable us to develop strains of bees superior 

 to those that we now possess, is control of the mating of 

 the queens. Where would our short-horns. Jerseys, Merinos, 

 Poland Chinas and Plymouth Rocks be now if the mating 

 of these animals had been no more under our control than 

 is the mating or our queen-bees ? The next great step that 

 we ought to take in apiculture is that of securing control 

 of the mating of the queens. It is of sufficient importance 

 to deserve much careful experimentation. 



A Mr. LaVake, of Florida, wrote me that he thought 

 queen-breeders might do away with the sending out of so 

 many mismated queens if they would have them mated in 

 confinement. I replied in the usual strain that it had been 

 tried and abandoned as a hopeless task. I askt him to let 

 me know who had ever tried it, and made a practical success 

 of it. He gave me the name of Mr. J. S. Davitte, of Geor- 

 gia. I entered into correspondence with him, and from 

 this correspondence I have gathered, arranged and condenst 

 his article. The reading of the letters from Mr. Davitte 

 aroused my interest to the highest point. He writes in such 

 a way, and gives details so thoroly, that he has con- 

 vinced me of his success. 



I have spent considerable time in looking up and read- 

 ing everything that I could find upon this subject. As I 

 look at it now, the principal trouble has been that the 

 drones have not been brought under control. When a 

 drone has been accustomed to soar away thru the blue ether 

 for miles and miles, he is not going to be shut up in a 

 little 30-foot tent and be contented. For a long time, at 

 least, he is going to spend all of his time in trying to get 

 out. He is in no mood to pay his addresses to a queen. 

 Catch two wild birds at mating-season, and shut them in a 

 cage. Do you suppose they would mate ? Canaries have 

 been kept in captivity for many years, and they readily 

 mate in a cage. Mr. Davitte had his drones flying for days 

 in his tent before any queens were releast in the tent. 

 Perhaps many of those drones had never flown in the out- 

 side air — knew nothing of it. Having flown for several 

 days in the tent they became accustomed to that kind of 

 flight, were in a normal condition, and ready to mate with 

 a queen should one appear. 



Suppose we could make a cage two miles wide and half 

 a mile high. Is there any doubt that a queen would be 

 mated inside such a tent ? Suppose it were reduced to one 

 mile in width, and one-fourth of a mile high. Don't you 

 suppose it would be a success? The question then is: 

 How small can it be and still be a success? My opinion is 

 that the size is not so very material as it is to get the drones 

 to fly and feel at home. One large enough for that is, in 

 my opinion, large enough. Mr. Davitte, who has had 

 experience, puts it at about SO feet in width and 30 to 40 feet 

 in height. 



There is still one more point ; Not all drones, at all 

 ages, are capable of fertilizing a queen. Many have failed 

 from not understanding this point. They have put nuclei, 

 with young queens, into a tent, then caught drones at hap- 

 hazard and put them into the tent. Some of them may 

 have been youngsters, just out of their cradles, so to speak. 

 Others may have been "old greybeards." All of them 

 would certainly have been frightened out of their wits to be 

 caught and shut up in a tent away from their home. I 

 think that Mr. Davitte has found the key that will unlock 

 the problem, viz : That of getting drones from a normal 

 colony, that is, working undisturbed in the open air, to fly 

 univorricd inside an enclosure. 



If I had the time, money, bees and opportunity, I should 

 certainly build a mating-tent another season and test the 

 matter to my own satisfaction. By the way, this is the 

 work for an experiment station. To be sure. Prof. McLain 

 did try this experiment, but the conditions were such as to 

 make it of small value. The queen-breeder who will build 

 such a tent, and succeed with it, will certainly have one of 

 the biggest advertisements that could possibly be secured 

 for a queen-breeder. I wish that some one who is in posi- 

 tion to make the experiment would build such a tent and 

 give the matter a fair trial. Even if it should not prove to 

 be the brilliant success that is reported by Mr. Davitte, it 



might be a start, or a beginning of something that would 

 eventually lead to success. 



Don't let us lose our heads with enthusiasm, nor toss 

 the matter aside with contempt and ridicule. With the new 

 light that we now have on the subject, let us give it careful, 

 thoro trial, standing ready to meet either failure or success. 



Can Almost Any One Keep Bees ? 



BY A. C. SANFORD. 



WHO may keep bees ? The professional certainly may 

 because he knows all the ups and downs, the crooks 

 and turns, the successes and losses, and knows how to 

 make the best of them. But the many who would like to 

 keep a few colonies in order to get a family supply of the 

 delicious and wholesome God-given sweet, lack the experi- 

 ence that often costs much, and is therefore valuable. 

 Almost any one can learn how to manage the swarming, 

 and how and when to put on supers ; and, last but not least 

 comes the wintering problem. Most Northern bee-keepers 

 prefer to winter their bees in the cellar or a cave, as it takes 

 far less honey and is generally the most successful plan — 

 at least in Wisconsin. In these days we have text-books on 

 bee-culture and all the science and mysteries of the honey- 

 bee may be learned, but the actual practice and experience 

 is another thing. 



I well remember my experience with the first colony of 

 bees I ever had. It swarmed only once, then the parent 

 colony became destitute of a queen. I told a neighbor that 

 I thought something was wrong, but he thought not because 

 the bees were carrying in pollen. Later I found that the 

 queen had an imperfect wing, had never met a drone, and 

 produced only drone-eggs, so I lost the colony. The follow- 

 ing spring I purchast a few colonies in box-hives, and 

 transferred them into movable-frame hives. It was then I 

 first attempted to make a swarm by dividing, and the bees 

 swarmed out ; but I soon learned a great many things and 

 made the bees pay. 



Many people would keep bees if they were not afraid of 

 the stings. Of course there are some to whom the sting 

 of a bee is poisonous, and they will do well to let bees alone. 

 But such people are few, and if one intends to keep bees he 

 must make up his mind that he is going to endure the 

 stings, and in due time his system will get used to them. 

 The pain may be relieved with wet salt, hartshorn, mud, 

 etc., or by quickly pulling out the sting. If one is careful 

 he is not likely to get very many stings, but if he thinks 

 that he never will be stung he is very much mistaken. 



Two very essential things in handling bees are a bee- 

 veil and a first-class smoker, with an ample supply of 

 smoke-making material. Smoke is a great protection, and 

 if the bees fly about you angrily give them a generous dose. 



Women-folks can learn to care for bees as easily as 

 they do for chickens, if they only have the courage and the 

 pluck. It is much easier to learn to keep bees than it is to 

 learn to play the piano. And then think of the delicious 

 honey you will have to sell and to eat I 



Pierce Co., Wis. 



A South Dakota Bee-Keeper and His Little Apiary. 



MR. EDITOR :— Being a reader of The American Bee 

 Journal, I presume you would like to hear something 

 about how one of its pupils is getting along. I was 

 just on the meridian line (in age) when the bee-fever struck 

 me, having spent most of my life in Chicago, and other 

 cities. I am sorry now that I did not start keeping bees 25 

 years earlier. When I came out here I told my neighbor (an 

 old bee-master) that I intended to keep bees, and he told me 

 that they might live all right providing I would feed them 

 all summer and give them enough in the fall to last them 

 all winter. Happy the man who thus expects but little, for 

 he will never be disappointed. 



I found out that this is a very poor country in which to 

 keep bees, for we have little timber, no clover, or any other 

 honey-plants that amount to anything. We have dwarf 

 sunflowers in abundance, and they furnish a little honey of 

 an inferior grade. Sweet clover grows tall if irrigated, but 

 on waste land or on the roadsides it doesn't thrive. I tried 

 buckwheat, but the bees did not work on it, and, besides all 

 this, the wind blows here sometimes so furiously that if the 

 hive-entrances were the size of a stovepipe the bees would 

 hardly be able to reach them. 



