September, 1908. 



American liee Journal i 



An 8-Super Colony in Mr. Free's Apiary. 



in good condition, yet without exception 

 this apiary is, all things considered, one 

 of the very finest I have seen. The 

 hives all face the south on a gently 

 sloping, closely mown lawn, and every- 

 thing "has a place and is in its proper 

 place." That their crop of honey was 

 good goes without saying. The picture 

 was taken this year just before extract- 

 ing was started. 



By the way, I sampled the honey, 

 and at the time wished for the presence 

 of some of the bee-keepers who con- 

 tend that honey is just as good if ex- 

 tracted before being ripened on the 

 hives. The product of this yard, this 

 year, is almost water-white, waxy, and 

 honey in the proper sense of the word. 



Mr. J. W. Free is shown at the left, 

 while away to the right can faintly be 

 discerned the figure of his father, Mr. 

 Wm. Free, whose hearty welcome to 

 the writer will not soon be forgotten. 

 Mr. Free is also a farmer as well as a 

 successful bee-keeper, which gives the 

 lie to the oft-expressed opinion that a 

 farmer necessarily keeps his bees in a 

 sloven condition. All the bees are of 

 the leather-colored Italian strain, and I 

 was struck with the uniform condition 

 of the yard. 



Mr. Free has been very successful in 

 queen-rearing and runs some 30-odd nu- 

 clei for this purpose. Three of these 

 nuclei occupy a standard hive, and with 

 a wire-cloth bottom, these nucleus hives 

 are placed right on top of strong colo- 

 nies. While no effort has been made as 

 yet to rear queens in a commercial way, 

 I am greatly mistaken if Mr. Free will 

 not be heard from in that line in the 

 near future. 



While visiting the apiary, the owners 

 were thinking of rcqueening largely with 

 golden stock, i advised strongly against 

 such a course, at least in a wholesale 

 way. I am greatly mistaken if a limited 



trial of the "beauties" will not prove 

 the wisdom of such advice. 



The other picture shows Mr. Free on 



the left, and his Uncle, Mr. Warrington 

 Scott, on the right, as they started 

 operations on the jumbo colony, all the 

 supers full of honey on the hive being 

 the product of that colony. Mr. Scott 

 is an expert bee-keeper and mechanic, 

 all the hives and fixtures having been 

 made by him. If I am correct, I believe 

 Mr. Scott has a share in this apiary, 

 and Mr. Free is free to acknowledge 

 that much of his success has been due 

 to his having had such a very good 

 teacher. A good teacher and an apt 

 scholar is a combination that works 

 wonders in bee-keeping as in anything 

 else. 



These pictures are the work of Mr. 

 Scott, who, by the way, is an enthu- 

 siastic amateur photographer, although 

 his work would put to shame many of 

 the professionals. 



Referring to those hives tiered up so 

 high, speaking to Mr. Scott, I ventured 

 the opinion that perhaps more honey 

 would have been secured if not more 

 than three supers to the hive had been 

 used, and some extracting been done 

 during the flow. He was inclined to 

 agree with me, and while I would soon- 

 er err on the safe side, I feel convinced 

 that the tiering up was a little over- 

 done to secure the very best results. 



But say, after a couple of years of 

 short crops, a yard in the condition like 

 the one shown, goes a long way towards 

 stirring up one's enthusiasm to fever 

 heat again ! 



^f 



--2^- 



RcflcctioHif 



■t«Wi By W. A. PRYAL, Alden Station. Oakland, Calif. 



Ralph lienton on Bees. 



One of the opening lectures given for 

 farmers at the University of California 

 in the middle of July was on "The 

 Honey-Plants of California," by Ralph 

 Benton. While I was at the University 

 botanical grounds on the day of the lec- 

 ture, I did not hear Mr. Benton. I 

 suppose, however, that he covered the 

 subject fairly well considering that he 

 had been but a comparatively short time 

 in the State. He is doing good work 

 for the bee-keepers of California. I 

 notice that the small apiary belonging 

 to the University, which I heretofore 

 mentioned as being in the dense shade 

 of evergreen trees, has been removed 

 elsewhere. 



Oh Where! ()h Where! Can I Get 

 Itee-Ware? 



This is not the title of a new bee- 

 song; it is rather the re.'rain of quite 

 an old one that was sung to a rather 

 doleful tune the past spring and sum- 

 mer in these parts. It comes a-droning 



from hill and vale ever anO anon, for 

 the simple reason that the bottom of the 

 bee-supply business dropped out of San 

 Francisco. One after the other of the 

 places that dealt in apiarian supplies, 

 failed or went out of business, and the 

 honey-crop that might have been was 

 wasted upon the "desert" air. Several 

 correspondents have asked me where 

 they could purchase supplies in the big 

 metropolis. I crossed the bay (or rather 

 went around the bay, as business took 

 me that way) for some, and was dis- 

 appointed to find that tlie firm I pro- 

 cured them from the previous year was 

 out of business. The strange part of 

 it was that less than two hours before 

 I was in San Jose, and could have se- 

 cured what I wanted at a store there, 

 and would have done so if I had known 

 that I could not have made the purchase 

 near home. 



White Clover in California. 



It is generally believed that white 

 clover will not grow in California. It 

 does grow and blooms profusely, but 



