126 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



fier. When a swarm issues, an electric bell 

 placed in some convenient place in the house 

 will ring. It will also register faithfully the 

 the hive from which the swarm issued. 

 With the above features it also makes a first 

 class burglar alarm. I don't know as other 

 parties could make use of such an arrang- 

 ment, but I think the burglar alarm feature 

 would be suitable for this locality. 



Yours, W. E. D. 



Comments on a Beginner's Day-Book. 

 No. 5. 



E. E. HASTY. 



JHE juvenile mind, when contemplat- 

 ing bushels and bushels of apples and 

 peaches and pears going to waste on 

 the ground, often feels sad at being able to 

 eat so few. My own condition in looking 

 over the May record is somewhat similar ; 

 my, space will hold but a fraction of the 

 citations I would like to comment on. 



" May 2nd 1880, Beautiful day. Thermometer 

 57° 79° 65° . Run not appreciable. Loss by 

 night 7 ounces. Bees very busy ; but either they 

 did not get much, or the exhalation of matter 

 retained during the cold spell overbalanced all 

 gains." 



Here's where the value of my scale came 

 in — let me right into the fact that appear- 

 ances are often amazingly misleading. Bees 

 often just, "rally round the flag" when 

 they are really getting very little honey. 

 The opposite is sometimes true also ; they 

 may seem to be doing but little when they 

 are gathering in the sweet quite rapidly. 



"May 4th. Thermometer 52° 83° 66° . First 

 unmistakable gain of the year, 2 ounces. Loss 

 by night seemed to be nothing. Wild plum in 

 bloom. The bright orange red pollen I have 

 been wondering about is from dandelion — fine 

 crop of them on my pasture. Michigan queen 

 all right and laying." 



I was beginning to get desperate for some 

 honey which could at least be weighed on a 

 delicate scale ; so when I got two ounces I 

 felt a bit more "asy" in my mind. The 

 next day there came in almost a pound ; and 

 the next lib 12 ounces. Quite likely there 

 was at least one little run of honey before I 

 got my scale set up. It is no uncommon 

 thing, however, for May to get well started 

 before the first quarter-pound run comes in. 

 The first in 1881 was :} ounces May 30th. The 

 lack of any loss by night shows that the cold 

 spell of two nights and a day April 30th had 

 stopped the brood-rearing. 



Claytonias also yield an orange pollen 

 which can scarcely be told from dandelion, 

 I remember of A. I. Root telling us, in one 



of those delightful talks of his when bees 

 were his hobby, that this pretty spring pollen 

 came from maple. Maple yields a plain 

 yellow pollen I believe. He had followed 

 the bees to a sugar-bush. Had he gone a 

 little further, and looked a little sharper, he 

 would probably have found the ground un- 

 derneath a mat of dandelions or claytonias — 

 possibly both. A little later buckeye gives 

 us the reddest pollen of the year. 



"May 6th. Put Ashtabula queen caged in 

 colony 2-7. She is ordinary colored, short, 

 thick, and very spry. In doors see flew about, 

 fell from the window, rolled in the dust &c. 

 Scissors wouldn't cut wings. She wouldn't 

 stop to eat h mey. Came near cutting her foot 

 off Wet her in my mouth, which I do not 

 think is good for her. Mortised her cage into 

 tlie comb." 



When a bold and agile queen persists in 

 putting a hind foot between the shear blades 

 to push them away, the moment you touch 

 her wing, you have a pretty touErh problem 

 on hand. Spects that multitudes of clippers 

 cut off foot and wing too, and never take 

 pains to find out what they have done. The 

 Doolittle method of using a keen pen-knife 

 on the tough skin of your thumb is doubt- 

 less much safer ; but I went out of the clip- 

 ping business forever before I heard of it. 

 I had advertised for a pure black queen that 

 had led a second swarm the previous season 

 and whose colony had stored surplus honey. 

 The wording of course was to secure a young 

 and superior queen. She was a daisy. Her 

 bees were desirable — except that they were 

 about the worst robbers I ever had to deal 

 with. 



"May 8th Some colonies have begun to 

 lengthen cells with white comb." 



This you see is only three days' time since 

 honey sufficient to effect the wax secretion 

 began to come in. It requires so short a 

 time to entirely change the prospects of an 

 apiary that the bee-keeper needs to keep 

 standing on his tip-toes. And the non-pro- 

 fessional stands nowhere, because he seldom 

 knows what the present condition of his 

 bees is. 



"May 12th. First SWARM. Italians. Hived 

 them at 12-4 on a frame of own brood. Reduced 

 the old colony to about Bees 7, Brood 36, by 

 giving frames of brood to 11-6 and 11-1. Robbers 

 started on 11-6 toward night. Frame of strange 

 brood seems to confuse them, and keep them 

 from resisting." 



Gentle compositor, you just leave those 

 capitals be. A fellows first SWARM, you 

 are to understand, is almost equal to a fel- 

 low's first BABY. It's queer if they can't 

 have five letters out of the upper case. 



