32 



GLEANINGS' IN BEE CULTURE 



January, 1918 



o 



c 



VEE and 



over again 



we hear 

 the same story, 

 the up-to-date 

 beekeeper leav- 

 ing the slovenly 

 one behind, the 

 bees in modern 

 hives outstrip- 

 ping their cousins in boxes. W. R. Graham, 

 of Bergholz, Ohio, says that it looks as tho 

 his ten hives of bees give as much honey 

 as all the rest in town, and there are about 

 a hundred all told; but, you see, the others 

 are in box hives and left to "dig iu for 

 themselves. ' ' 



Last summer three of his hives gave him 

 $40 worth of honey. Full sheets of founda- 

 tion, over queen-excluders, on Jumbo brood- 

 chambers, gave a wealth of chunk honey, 

 which sells at 20 cts. a pound. (Next year it 

 may sell for more.) 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



1 



Hunting bee-trees is easy when the bees aren't in 

 a tree. 



Fifteen bee-trees did Mr. Graham cut last 

 summer. Once he hunted for three days be- 

 fore finding the elusive bees hidden in a deep 

 hollow, with combs 14 inches long and a 

 foot deep built on a hazelnut bush. Cutting 

 them out, as you see in the picture, he took 

 them home, stood the combs in a box, set 

 the box in a home-made hive, rigged a super 



over the top, and 

 they stoTed sixty 

 pounds of honey 

 in sections. 



It isn 't a good 

 location, M r . 

 Graham says — 

 drouth every 

 summer — yet the 

 bees " pay all 

 expenses and then some. And ' ' — and here 

 is the secret — ' 'it is a pleasure for me to 

 take care of my pets." 



Prof. Baldwin refers, page 784, October; 

 to the National Geographic. If any one 

 thinks it might be dull work studying flow- 

 ers, let him read some of those charming 

 sketches of wild flowers in recent numbers 

 of that magai-ine. They are far more in- 

 teresting than fiction. I should like to 

 quote bits from some of the delicious de- 

 scriptions. I just noticed that of the New 

 liJnglajid a,ster, for instance (Aster Novae- 

 angliae), June, 1916; but I fear the editor 

 would rule me out of meeting, for I should 

 not know where to stop. A Nashville flor- 

 ist advertises " The beauty about our busi- 

 ness is^flowers.'"' Well, one of the beau- 

 ties about our business is flowers too. 



Another is books. What dear old books 

 " Mary " writes of in her last interesting 

 letter! " You would love these musty leath- 

 er-covered volumes," she says, "with their 

 sere brown pages." I love them alroad.v, 

 just from the letter, especially " The Fprnin- 

 in Monarch!." " In a word, thou must be 

 chaste, cleanly, sweet, sober, quiet and 

 familiar so they will love thee and know 

 thee from all others," '•' Mary " quotes, 

 and leaves us all indebted to her for the 

 quotation. Tho quaintness of it, and the 

 simplicity and the flavor! He was more 

 than a beekeeper, that Samuel Butler of 

 the seventeenth century, whose leather- 

 bound book " Hob " has purchased for an 

 unconfessed price. He was a philosopher 

 and a gentleman, and he came d.angerously 

 near to being a poet as well. 



* » * 



Mr. Frank Pellett writes in the Octobfcr 

 American Bee Journal of a method of mak- 

 ing increase for which he claims substantial 

 advantages. Are we going to dismiss it 

 with a shrug? " Prime swarms are good 

 enough for me," some one says. " And 

 division for nie,"' says another. But in 

 reality n.othing is good enough for you ex- 

 cept the very best you can learn to do. It 

 may be prime swaims or it may be Mr. Pel- 

 lett 's method or it may be something quite 

 difPeient from either. The thing that mat- 

 ters is your oper.-mindedness and eagerness, 

 your spirit of unceasing progress--" onward 

 and upward forever." 



Said a man to me last week, 



" Those Hoots are surely bright ; 



They cross their bees with licrhtning bugs 

 And work 'em day and night!" 



