January, 1916. 



American Hee Journal 



BEE-KfiEPiNG ^ For Women 



Conducted bv Miss Emma M. Wilson, Mareneo. III. 



DEATH 



[The following lines, by Grace Allen, the 

 beekeepers' poetess, are so beautiful that 

 the sisters will be glad to read them, even 

 though some of them may already have read 

 them in Gleanings in Bee Culture, from 

 which they were taken J 



So many things I do not understand! 

 My neighbor's house today is strangely still. 

 Insufferably sweet with heaped-up flowers. 

 Friends enter softly, greeting hand to hand; 

 A silence never-ending seems to fill 

 With shadowed hush the long, reluctant 

 hours. 



(Though once across the aching air so tense. 

 Insistent in his love and ignorance. 

 A baby broke the breaking hearts again 

 With Quivered " When she tummin' back ? 

 Oh. when ?") 



Beneath a cloud-veiled sky and shaken trees 

 My slow steps brought me home, and all 



around 

 The withered leaves lay dead on every 



hand. 

 I stood at last among my quiet bees. 

 Stood there and stood, nor made the slight- 

 est sound- 

 So many things I do not understand! 



A Honey-Box 



In a Chicago daily — like enough in 

 several of them — in a full-page adver- 

 tisement of Marshall Field & Co., offer- 

 ing appropriate articles for Christmas 

 presents, appears the following : 



"Honey-boxes, in great variety of 

 patterns. A practical novelty, $2.00 to 

 $6.50 each." 



The likelihood is that beekeeping 

 women who read that advertisement 

 will not be very favorably impressed. 

 Something like this may be said: 

 "That's no honey-box; it's a honey- 

 dish. The idea of paying six dollars 

 for a dish with a cover to hide the 

 beauty of a snow-white section of 

 honey! Why, such a section is one of 

 the finest adornments of a table. I'd 

 rather have a section of honey on a 

 2.5-cent plate, with all its beauty fully 

 displayed, than to have it hidden by the 

 most expensive pottery." 



All the same that advertisement is a 

 thing to rejoice over. Not every table 

 of the well-to-do has honey on it, either 

 in a 25 cent dish or a six dollar one. 

 To those who do not consider honey 

 as a thing necessary for a well ap- 

 pointed table the advertisement will be 

 suggestive. The thought will be: "If 

 a house like Marshall Field's, that 

 knows what's what in table decoration, 

 thinks it worth while to advertise 

 honey-boxes, I've just got to have one." 

 Then, of course, honey must be had for 

 the "box," and whether or not it be 

 discovered that the honey itself is more 

 beautiful than the dish, honey on the 

 table will become the proper thing. 

 Then when honey on the table has be- 

 come fashionable, trust it to hold its 



own by its intrinsic merits as a thing 

 of beauty and the finest of all sweets. 



Now for Winter Quarters 



For those who winter bees in cellar, 

 not many things are cause for so much 

 anxious thought as the matter of de- 

 ciding when to take the bees into the 

 cellar. Theoretically it's easy, take 

 them in the next day after their last 

 flight in the fall, no matter whether 

 that be early in November or late in 

 December. For sometimes it happens 

 that there will be no day warm enough 

 for flight from the first week in No- 

 vember until spring, while again it 

 m'ay happen that a warm day comes 

 near Christmas. But who can tell, 

 when a warm day comes the first week 

 in November, or indeed at any other 

 time, whether a flight-day will come 

 later or not ? And that's where the 

 anxiety comes in. 



This year we had unusually beautiful 

 fall weather in October and up to about 

 Nov. 10. Then it continued good fall 

 weather, but still too cold for the bees 

 to fly. Then the question arose, be- 

 coming a little more insisting each 

 day: "What about taking the bees 

 in ?" The fact that we had had such 

 a long spell of pleasant weather made 

 it rather natural to think that when 

 cold weather did set in it might be for 

 .good, and yet it is not often that the 

 bees have no chance to fly after Nov. 

 10. At any rate, we took the chance of 

 waiting for another flight. Another 

 ten days of November came and went, 

 yet no further chance for a flight. Then 

 the question came: "Is it better to 

 wait still further, or take them in now ? 

 They have had ten days confinement 

 since they flew, and each day during 

 that time their intestines have been 

 getting more and more loaded, making 

 them more and more unfitted for the 

 long confinement that awaits them. If 



they are not to have another flight — 

 and quite often they have no chance 

 for flight after Nov. 20 — then the sooner 

 they come in the better. But if they 

 are not to fly again until spring, and 

 we keep waiting and hoping until late 

 in December, then they will be taken 

 in very unfitted to stand further con- 

 finement, for each day they stay out 

 they are consuming perhaps ten times 

 as much as they would in the cellar, so 

 one day of outdoors is as bad as ten in 

 the cellar, // there is to be no subse- 

 quent flying." Oh, those tenterhooks 

 upon which those t'fs can hang a body! 

 When Thanksgiving day, Nov. 25, 

 came, among the thousand other things 

 for which we were thankful, the flight 

 of the bets was not the least, for on 

 that day they flew. How glad we were. 

 We could then congratulate ourselves 

 that we had not taken them in Nov. 10, 

 for that would have given them two 

 weeks longer confinement. Yet it is a 

 bit doubtful whether we did the wisest 

 thing, for it was taking too much risk. 

 That two weeks in confinement in the 

 cellar would not have been so very 

 hard on the bees, whereas if no day 

 for a fly had come the two weeks con- 

 finement outdoors would have been 

 a very serious thing, and there's no 

 telling just when they would have been 

 taken in if no warm day had come. 



TAKING THE BEES IN. 



For a day or so after their flight it 

 was a bit warm for them to be in best 

 condition to be taken in, and then 

 there was delay in getting Philo, the 

 man that has taken the bees in for a 

 number of years, so they were not 

 taken in until Dec. 4. Fortunately the 

 weather was rather mild during this 

 delay, but on Saturday morning, when 

 they were taken in, it was freezing 

 cold, bright and still, an ideal morn- 

 ing for takiiTg in. Philo had Warren 

 Smith to help him, and the carrying in 

 was the simplest possible. A hive was 

 picked up, carried in the arms, and set 

 down in its place in the cellar, and that 

 was all there was of it. The carrying 

 in the arms was made easy by the fact 

 that instead of depending on the usual 

 hand-holes or even short cleats that 

 dovetailed hives have our hives have Ji- 

 inch cleats at each end running the 

 full width of the hive. 



The men needed neither gloves nor 



JESSE C. COCKRAM, A CRIPPLE UNABLE TO WALK. BUT AN ARDENT 



BEEKEEPER 



