52 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



February 



worker on the other must be defec- 

 tive in wall outline and the bees must 

 be very desirous to have drone comb, 

 when they overlook the shape of the 

 base to produce such irregular combs. 

 The only redeeming feature to this 

 disagreeable performance is the very 

 small proportion of such combs 

 built, about 6 per thousand in the 

 Crane experience. Yet, in the manu- 

 facture of foundation we ought to be 

 able to forestall this entirely. When 

 it happens, the only way is to remelt 

 such combs and replace them with 

 perfect ones. 



At the Manchester home, that 

 evening, I saw a sample of success 

 with very large hives. Mr. Manches- 

 ter uses 11-frame Langstroth hives, 

 with supers holding 40 sections and 

 he had a tremendous crop of clover 

 honey, both alsike and white clover. 

 In many sections of the East, alsike 

 clover grows wild in the meadows 

 and the pastures. 



At this place I also tasted pure 

 dandelion honey for the first time. 

 We often see the bees on dandelion 

 blossoms, but with us they never 

 harvest enough to make a surplus. 

 I was skeptical on this subject. 

 However, when Mr. Manchester put 

 a section of dark yellow honey upon 



£^te^,*l^i 



Monument Marking Spot Where Stood 

 Old Fort. Edwards 



the table and I took a mouthful of it, 

 I recognized without doubt the flavor 

 of dandelion, not bitter, but strong, 

 with a very positive scent of the 

 bloom. 



That evening we visited Messrs 

 Larrabee and Holmes, apiarists liv- 

 ing some 12 miles away. The weath- 

 er was delightful and a clear full 

 moon gave us almost as fine a light 

 as daylight. We drove clear down to 

 Lake Champlain, at Larrabee's Point. 



The next day, I called on our old 

 friend G. W. Fassett and afterwards 

 on the Cranes with whom I stayed 

 for lunch. We took a ride in one of 

 their autos to an outapiary located 



at the foot of the Green Mountains, 

 in the shade of the pines. 



Mr. Crane has a very nice method 

 of inducing the bees to finish the 

 outer sections of a crate, at the same 

 time preventing them from staining 

 the sealed central sections by ti'avel- 

 ing upon them. When all but the 

 outer rows are filled he uses under 

 the crate a honey-board, which is 

 closed in the center and open on 

 both edges. This compels the bees 

 to pass first to the open unfinished 

 sections, which they fill more readily 

 in consequence. Mr. Crane is the 

 originator of the corrugated-paper 

 shipping case in which each section 

 is isolated. They were preparing 

 the crop for market and had a half 

 dozen men scraping and packing sec- 

 tions. They have numerous swarms. 

 but have a great demand for bees 

 every year from the cucumber grow- 

 ers, for hot houses. They get rid of 

 their extra colonies in this manner. 



Mr. Crane is foulbrood inspector. 

 He reports great improvement in 

 cotiditions over former years, but 

 much work still remains to be done. 

 In his opinion the movable-frame 

 hive, with combs built crooked in the 

 frames, is the greatest hindrance to 

 the cleaning up of the disease. Bet- 

 ter have box hives than frame hives 

 with immovable frames, owing to 

 crooked combs. 



A Vermont beekeeper, Mr. C. H. 

 Crofut, of Arlington, who was like 

 me invited to lunch at the Crane 

 home, quoted to me a popular rime 

 descriptive of the things in which 

 Vermont excels: 



"Horses, maple sugar and beauti- 

 ful women. 

 The first are fleet. 

 The others sweet. 

 And all exceeding hard to beat." 



Fleet horses and pretty girls are 

 also a claim of Kentucky. But then 

 aren't the girls pretty everywhere? 

 And isn't honey a product of bnth 



Vermont and Kentucky, and sweet 

 too? In my opinion, the rime must 

 be rewritten, including honey in the 

 desirable products of Vermont. 



I was pleasantly disappointed with 

 the part of Vermont which I visited. 

 I was looking for rough hillsides, 

 stone fences and other evidences of 

 a mountainous country. I saw beau- 

 tiful fields and pretty cities. But 

 the mountains were not far away and 

 I am told there is plenty of rough 

 country. 



I next went back to Amherst, where 

 I was to meet Mr. Bocock, the Eng- 

 lishman sent to the United States by 

 the British Beekeepers Association 

 to study our bee paralysis and com- 

 pare it with Isle-Of-Wight disease. 

 This will be the subject of my next 

 letter. 



Shipping Full Colonies and 

 Nuclei 



BY H. D. MURRY. 



A CORRESPONDENT noting my 

 uniform success in shipping full 

 colonies and nuclei, never hav- 

 ing a single loss, desires that I tell 

 through the columns of the American 

 Bee Journal just how I " do the trick." 

 It had never occurred to me that there 

 was any trick about it. 



The first experience I had along that 

 line was in the latter part of January, 

 J906, when I shipped 18 full colonies 

 from Jackson, Miss., to Alice, Tex., in 

 a car of household goods. The bees 

 were in Sframe dovetailed hives with 

 Hoffman self-spacing frames, the combs 

 built from full sheets of medium brood 

 foundation in wired frames. The en- 

 trances were the usual jsinch and full 

 width of the hive. 



I had observed that in moving bees 

 from one apiary to another, the bees 

 have a tendency to cluster on top of 

 the framts. As these colonies had a 

 strong force of bees, I reasoned that it 



MR. CRANE'S BOARD FOR FINISHING SECTIONS ON THE EDGES OF SUPERS 



