1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



561 



At 3 :oO P.M. the meeting adjourned, sub- 

 ject to the call of the Executive Committee. 

 Pittstown, N. J. 



DEATH OF A, J, KING, 



Former Editor of the Bee-keepers' Magazine, Au- 

 thor of " Bee-keepers' Text-book," etc. 



BY W. A. PRYAL. 



Our good old friend, A. J. King, i.s dead. 

 He died at. his home in San Diego, as you 

 have probably learned, June 24, of valvular 

 heart disease. I presume it was really a 

 general breaking-down of his system from 

 the infirmities of age, in his 75th year, that 

 carried him off, as I had heard from him 

 some little time before he died that he had 

 a stroke of paralysis. I first came to know 

 Mr. King at the close of the spring of 1866. 

 About the first of July of that year he 

 opened our new district school in this neigli- 

 borhood. He left here some time in 1868, 

 and never revisited tliis part of California, 

 though he was on his way here two years 

 ago when lie received word to hasten home, 

 as his daughter had died suddenly. It was 

 one of my cherished wishes to visit San 

 Diego this year, and to have again the plea- 

 sure of seeing the schoolmaster of my boy- 

 hood days. Just think ! both are now gone, 

 and I trust they are in a far better world. 



I look upon those notices I had given of 

 Mr. King in Gleanings and the American 

 Bee Journal as the best services I ever ren- 

 dered a friend. I am sure the venerable 

 bee-keeper's closing days must have been 

 made brighter by having some of the bee- 

 l)apers that were cotemporaries of his in the 

 okkn days give place to appreciative no- 

 tices of his labors in the bee-domain, so to 

 speak. Few indeed are the pioneers of 

 American apiculture that are left. It seems 

 to me that some one should write an un- 

 biased history of those pioneer times. It 

 would be history that American bee-keep- 

 ers a quarter of a century from now would 

 delight to look back upon. There will then 

 be no one to tell of those pioneer times, ex- 

 ce])t, i)erhaps, in a traditional sort of way. 

 Oakland, Cal. 



[On page 705 of our issue for Nov. 15, 1909, 

 will be found a life-sketch of Mr. Albert J. 

 King. I had much correspondence and 

 quite a little deal with both the l)rothers, 

 A. J. and H. A. King. From the account 

 above referred to, it seems the Bee-keepers' 

 Magazine and Gleanings were started 

 about the same time; and although we were 

 rival editors for quite a nvimber of years I 

 am glad to state that friendly relations al- 

 ways existed between the two journals. Aft- 

 er A. J. King went to Arizona it was my 

 l)leasure to make him a visit out in tlie 

 desert; and while I was in Cuba I visited a 

 large ai)iary that was for some years man- 

 aged by Mr. A. J. King. He was, during 

 all his life, connected more or less with bee 

 culture and bee literature. As friend Pryal 



has suggested, it must have been a ])leasure 

 for him to see two of the bee jovirnals of 

 America recognize and make mention, not 

 long before his death, of what he had done 

 to give modern apiculture the place it now 

 occvipies. — A. I. R.] 



A MOST REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF 

 SWARMS ENTERING EMPTY HIVES. 



BY CALVIN S. HUNTER. 



One of your correspondents speaks of a 

 swarm of bees that moved over to a better 

 hive. This encourages me to give a little 

 of my experience that was entirely new to 

 me, although I have handled bees for over 

 fifty years, part of the time under the care 

 of Rev. Mr. Langstroth when he was intro- 

 ducing his movable frame. Last fall I had 

 five nice swarms in good hives; but, as was 

 the case witli nearly all the bees in our 

 neighborhood, they all died. One man with 

 35 swarms did save four of them; but I could 

 not buy of him, so I thought I would rest 

 awliile and take a new start later. So this 

 spring the dead bees were carefully swept 

 out, and the hives set to one side. The lot 

 was planted to potatoes, one row within two 

 feet of the front of the empty hives. J t 

 seemed strange to run llie plow against the 

 front of a spot that had been sacred bee- 

 ground so long; but I did not set the hives 

 away, thinking a swarm might come along 

 and I would be like the boy that was not 

 ready when it rained mush and milk. 



The potatoes were laid by, and the very 

 sight of a lone bee would have been a curi- 

 osity when my wife heard the sound of a 

 swarm in our dooryard. As soon as I got 

 home I went straight to look after the emp- 

 ty hives, and found the bees had taken pos- 

 session of the first cap. I thought this a 

 happy incident, and tried to persuade my- 

 self I had heard of the like before. Next 

 day I went to look after them, and found 

 another large swarm occupying the second 

 hive. Well, I thought this a mere coinci- 

 dence; but I asked our folks what kind of 

 people usually had good luck. 



Next day I looked after the two and found 

 a third swarm in the third box. When I 

 told my wife of this you should have seen 

 how she looked at me. She was either anx- 

 ious as to my sanity or else she wanted to 

 see if I had the countenance that George 

 Washington is supposed to have had when 

 he was testifying as star witness in the fa- 

 mous cherry-tree case. But truthis mighty; 

 and, any way, she had to stand back from 

 the third swarm of bees. 



The fourth day I drew a blank; but the 

 fifth day the fourth swarm took possession 

 of the fourth hive, all running the business 

 themselves, and I just "let 'm." I was like 

 the Irishman riding a frisky mule. When 

 the mule got his foot in one stirrup he climb- 

 ed down, saying, "Well, if you are going to 

 ride I'll just walk." These were all Lang- 

 stroth hives, with one super each left on 



