Vol. LVIL— No. 3 



HAMILTON, ILL, MARCH, 1917, 



MONTHLY, $1.00 A YEAR 



HOUSE APIARIES 



Advantages and Disadvantages of the System as Seen by Frank 

 C. Pellett on a Visit With F. J. Strittmatter 



FOR years I have been interested in 

 house apiaries. The idea at- 

 tracted me although I never had 

 experience with one. Whenever I 

 have raised the question of the pos- 

 sibilities of the house apiary all the 

 argument has been against it. To 

 quote Doctor Phillips, "The principal 

 argument against house apiaries Is 

 that nobody uses them." One champion 

 of the house apiary in this country 

 is F. J. Strittmatter of Ebensburg, 

 Pa., and it was to him I went for 

 first hand information about this 

 system. 



When asked how he came to use the 

 house apiary in the beginning, Mr. 

 Strittmatter said that it was because 

 he could see advantages which over- 

 balanced the objections raised against 

 them. He could find no encourage- 

 ment in any quarter. He was told 

 that nobody used them In this coun- 

 try and was advised to experiment 

 carefully, with the expectation that 

 the plan would not prove satisfactory. 

 He built his first house apiary In the 

 spring of 1910, and at the same time 

 started an outyard in chaff hives. The 

 first three years the bees in the 

 house apiary made a little better 

 showing and were much nicer to 

 handle, since in the building he was 

 Independent of unfavorable weather. 

 After three year's trial with one house 

 apiary and two outyards he decided 

 to put all the bees in house apiaries, 

 and now after four years with all in 

 house apiaries, he is fully convinced 

 that for his climate the house apiary 

 is much to be preferred. 



OBJECTIONS TO HOUSE APIARIES. 



That this is not a new subject In 

 this country will soon become ap- 

 parent upon referring to the old bee 

 journals. In the American Bee Jour- 

 nal for March 1861, in a report of the 

 first American Beekeepers' conven- 

 tion, there is a discussion of this same 

 question. 



"Mr. Langstroth considered that 

 bee houses were not the best for the 

 apiarist, principally from the loss of 

 young queens when they leave the 

 hive for the purpose of meeting the 

 drones, as they are apt on their re- 

 turn to enter the wrong hive, and 

 be there killed, and the consequent 

 decay of the queenless swarm; giving 

 a great number of instances of this. 

 He would say to all, scatter your bees; 

 place one hive under this tree and 

 another under that, but scatter the 

 hives." 



The above quotation from Lang- 

 stroth presents the most serious and 

 most persistent objection to house 

 apiaries. A friend of mine who lives 

 In Minnesota tried a house apiary and 

 abandoned It because the bees were 

 too slow to get out in the morning. 

 However, his building was situated 

 among the trees instead of in the 

 open sun as it should be. 



With the entrances as close as they 

 must be in a house apiary, there Is 



some mixing of bees and some drifting 

 from hive to hive after a long con- 

 finement. Another objection is that 

 where so many hives are placed on 

 the same floor there will be some 

 tendency to irritate the bees In other 

 hives while one is working In any 

 part of the building, because of the 

 jar. In a well made building such 

 as Strittmatter uses, there would be 

 very little apparent jarring from the 

 ordinary operations necessary. 



ADVANTAGES OF THE SYSTEM. 



Several advantages will at once be 

 apparent. In the first place since 

 there are no bees flying about the 

 operator except from the single hive 

 which is open, necessary work may 

 be attended to at any time without 

 danger of robbing, and with greatly 

 reduced annoyance from stings. The 

 bees which fly out of the open hive 

 usually fly to the windows and seek 

 to escape to the open air, so that 

 even the colony manipulated offers 



THE STRITTMATTER BUILDINGS-HOUSE APIARY AT THE LEFT 



