THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW- 



153 



The influence of soil on the secretion of 

 honey by the same flower, and within range 

 of the same apiary, is one of the wonderful 

 things in connection wit h our vocation which 

 has never been very fully looked up, I tliink. 

 It may be that there is uothing practically 

 valuable to be found out in that direction ; 

 but in nature it is never quite safe to say 

 that in advance of investigation, 



"June2lBt. Hot (lay. Thermometer 61° 89° 

 70° . Kun 1.') oz. Loss by night, 5 oz. Swarm 

 from 9— t) First trial of swarm -arrester. Bees 

 made frantic efforts to ^et out — long continued, 

 until their keeper conliin't stand it any longer. 

 And when given their liberty they didn't want it, 

 and got together at last in the upper part of the 

 machine. More trouble tlian the let alone pol- 

 icy is when the swarm lights in a good place. 



Swarm from 2 — 1. Used the arrester again. 

 Those that got out clustered. Those within, 

 many of them, went back into the hive. AiTest- 

 er a poor tool." 



And the arrester that I was trying was, I 

 think, an unusually good one, too. It was 

 so large and light that it could be readily 

 set right over the whole hive. A little pok- 

 ing up of earth around the bottom with the 

 foot makes it bee tight. Its outer walls are 

 partly of thin wood, partly of wire netting 

 and partly of cotton cloth. It went to the 

 lumber room — and in that final limbo of 

 misdirected genius, I fear all swarm arrest- 

 ers belong. No one who realizes how few 

 minutes an insect requires to worry itself to 

 death, when there is nothing the matter 

 with it except mental distress, can feel com- 

 fortable to stand idly by and see a noble, 

 prime swarm dissipate its life - energy by 

 worrying. Of course, an inventive mind 

 likes to invent ; and to see one's invention 

 work, even partially, is more or less of a 

 pleasure ; but when the same amount of in- 

 genuity is devoted to reducing natural 

 swarming to a system, and getting it under 

 easy control, the results are more satisfac- 

 tory, if I may be allowed to judge. In say- 

 ing this I do not wish to cast any reproach 

 on those who are working so hard to get a 

 practical self-hiver for out-apiaries. The 

 need of preventing the waste of swarms in 

 colonies so situated is real and great. 



"June 23rd. Thermometer 6.5° 93° 72° . Run 3 

 fi)8. Vi ozs. 12—2, wliicli swarmed 10 days ago, 

 swarmed again. Small cluster, hived in a box to 

 return tomorrow morn, or to use elsewhere. 

 Saw a fine queen, which looked as if fertile, 

 take wing. She ran about the board awhile, 

 then ran in, then came outside again, and after 

 awhile rose." 



When a virgin queen looks like a fertile one 

 it is a sign she has (piite lately emerged 

 from the cell. Queens are like what is some- 



times alleged of Christians, born of goodly 

 dimensions, but growing smaller until they 

 (jet to doing sunietlnnij. To return a swarm 

 the next day is too soon. And this method 

 of dealing with undesirable swarms is, I be- 

 lieve, really valuable in some localities, but 

 often worse than worthless to me. The rea- 

 son is this. In most localities bees are not 

 expected to swarm unless some honey is 

 coming in (or would it be getting the truth 

 more accurately to say that in these localities 

 some honey is nearly always to be had in 

 swarming time ? ) but bees here often swarm 

 in times of nearly absolute honey dearth. If 

 boxed to return in two or three days they 

 just hang in their box doing nothing until so 

 hungry they are not willing to stand it any 

 longer, and then leave for parts unknown. 

 What else ought to be expected ? 



" .June 26th. Lively times (with seven swarms, 

 some of them on the wing more than once.) 

 Made trouble for myself by smoking out some 

 snatchers from the combs just before hiving a 

 swarm. The bees would not go in but took 

 wing. Afterwards they came back." 



It was an unusually happy turn to a bad 

 blunder for a swarm to return and go in it- 

 self under such circumstances. We must 

 must keep in mind the fact that the more 

 effective an agent is the greater the liability 

 of doing mischief with it. Drive no smoke 

 inside a hive into which you expect bees to 

 run voluntarily. 



" 26th Keflectiou on the troublesome amount 

 of drone comb my new swarms build. Two 

 things lead to drone comb, queenlessness and un- 

 usual prosperity. The comb, honey and founda- 

 tion I give my swarms stimulate the evil. When 

 helping swarms at all it would seem desirable to 

 leave no room for them to build." 



Here is a splendid example of immature 

 reasoning fine-spun. Subject exhaustively 

 treated, and conclusions drawn, and with 

 considerable exactness too, and yet the 

 grand cause of the mischief entirely left out. 

 (Treatise on the causes of human poverty, 

 and not a word about drunkeness. ) The 

 real trouble in this case was that I had been 

 all the spring very diligently destroying all 

 drone brood in most of my hives. The re- 

 sult was that the bees were half frantic on 

 that subject — the determination to have 

 some drone brood. It seemed to me that 

 they would even cling together and hug a 

 solitary drone pupa they had succeeded in 

 saving — in effect hiding it from me, as I 

 hunted over the combs slaughter knife in 

 hand. Just as I ought to have expected, 

 this abnormal state of feeling affected them 



