THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



179 



would be quite handy to give one to each 

 uuprosperous stock he might have, and see 

 them booming; but my fust season's experi- 

 ence at it is boiled down as above. Perhaps I 

 was too hurried in my judtrment. With a suf- 

 ficient amount of caro and fuss it can be 

 made to work, and probalily it is sometimes 

 worth the doing. 



July 13th. The Italians at 10—9 gave a swarm 

 with fertile <jaeen. Hived them in a box to re- 

 turn. Tills is the second round of swarming 

 from this stand. " 



Second round of swarming is still more vex- 

 atious than the kind of repeating referred to 

 a little while ago. We think it rather a 

 hard fate if a young queen of the current 

 year, at the head of a colony that has been 

 through the regular swarming excitement, 

 will not keep sober and attend to business; 

 but in this swarmy locality sometimes they 

 won't. In this particular case however they 

 sobered down on being returned, and went 

 to work and stored 35 pounds of section 

 honey. Their first round of swarming begun 

 May 12th, one day over two months previous. 



" July 17th. Found the c. .lony 2—1 almost ex- 

 tinct from swarming (t5 times) no brood, and 

 only four counts of bees They must have either 

 brood or a swarm given them. Later I put in a 

 little virgin swarm from 10—8, Could not see 

 that any resistance was made. " 



Two days later I put in another. So here 

 already is a case where the tactics of using 

 little swarms to support old colonies was not 

 a failure. The stock got on its feet and 

 made a trifle of surplu.s— some four pounds. 

 The original colony did not part with six lots 

 of bees in their six times swarming, but only 

 four. 



"July21s;. Cool day, partly clear. Thermom- 

 eter .52"" 73 t)0° . Ilun nut appreciable. Loss 

 7<iz. .vlade som>^ temporary hives holding tlie 

 ( jallup frame out of some old condemned hives. " 



This was a good stroke of policy, and it 

 is capable of being played elsewhere some- 

 times. Those unapproachable, howling 

 humbug hives which the smooth-tongued 

 agent persuaded you to invest in — to leave 

 them in a pile under the drip of the shed, 

 until they rot down, is more consonant with 

 one's feelings, but to make them "catch 

 mice" is more profitable unto you. Get 

 your hammer and saw, and rattle trap the 

 interiors until they will hold the regular 

 fr'ame of the apiary. Good enough for late 

 swarms that are to be plundered of whatever 

 they have at the end of the season. This 

 sort of plundering does not necessarily mean 

 slaughter. The bees can still be saved by a 

 wholesale arrangement of putting ten colo- 

 nies or so together. 



■' J uly 30tli. Hogan the policy of covering up 

 my champion robbers at 2—7 and 9—3 when 

 opening hives " 



Here is a hint, not entirely destitute of 

 plausibility, but which probably will not be 

 very widely useful. It is rather seldom that 

 any two or three colonies in an apiary are 

 enough worse than their neighbors at med- 

 dling where the apiarist is at work to make 

 it worth while to proceed against them by 

 writ of bed-blanket injunction. 



"July 31st. Made the first hive-shade by 

 tacking a cloth to two strips and driving them 

 into the ground. " 



This is a cheap and practical shade; and 

 by driving them at the proper slant they do 

 not need to be moved when oi^ening the hive 

 as the shade-boards in current use do. Later 

 on I found it better to use a larger piece of 

 muslin and three strips. My present cloth 

 shades — not so good, but more handy — are 

 tacked directly to the projecting edges of the 

 hive roof. To complete a satisfactory shade 

 these need to be supplemented by a small 

 board on the roof in addition to the curtain 

 of muslin. 



RicHAKDs, < )hio. June 29th, 1892. 



Bingham Smoker the Best, but it is a "Tum- 

 ble Heels."— Burlap and Excelsior for 

 Fuel.— Dear old "Uncle John." 



K.\MBLEE. 



' T7HE June Re- 

 I VIEW was re- 

 ciived while in 

 ti>wn to day, and I 

 will try and get in 

 li word on that 



^I^HH ^SfflH^tey Bingham for sev- 

 ^M^^K ^i^^llEI ^'^^^ years, and al- 

 «HB%1^|||U|^^ ways have given it 



dorsement. It is a 

 verj duralile siii.jker, and, in my hands, will 

 out-last a Clark >moker three to one. How- 

 ever, I have one fault to find with it, and to 

 remedy that fault I have been thinking that 

 my next purchase would be a Hill smoker, 

 but I don't know as I would be any better 

 off with that. The Bingham smoker is an 

 everlasting " tumble heels." You may set it 

 down upon an apparently level place, and, 

 with the least joggle, away it goes to the 

 ground, the nozzle flies off and the fuel 

 spills. Perhaps I am careless about jog- 



