166 



or less of his attention every week in 

 the year. With a business in the 

 largest city in the world, one would 

 hardly expect to find the owner a 

 very extensive beekeeper. While bee- 

 keeping is an exacting business, in 

 that there are a few essential opera- 

 tions which must be attended to at 

 the proper time, it has certainly been 

 demonstrated that the man who has 

 a good working system has more 

 freedom than with any other busi- 

 ness giving as large returns on the 

 capital and labor invested. 



Although Mr. Stringham is en- 

 gaged in business in the city, he lives 

 in a suburban community on Long 

 Island, and goes back and forth to 

 his work daily. One small apiary is 

 kept at his home. Three others are 

 kept on the island within easy reach 

 by automobile. He has three others 

 along the Hudson and two more still 

 farther north. His most distant api- 

 aries in New York state are 210 miles 

 apart. In spite of the long distance 

 from home at which the apiaries are 

 located, four of them are run for 

 comb-honey successfully. Not being 

 content with a string of apiaries 200 

 miles long, the owner has one in 

 South Carolina which is operated 

 with one visit each year. 



Long distance beekeeping is an art. 

 The few visits that are made must be 

 timed so as to reach the apiary just 

 ahead of a crisis. Every operation 

 must be planned to make the most of 

 the short time available for work in 

 each yard, to get a maximum of re- 

 sult with a minimum of labor. Of 

 his ten apiaries Mr. Stringham cares 

 for eight personally, while the other 

 two are operated on shares by the 

 men on whose farms they are lo- 

 . cated. 



The South Carolina apiary which is 

 operated with one visit a year is 

 run for bees as well as for honey. 

 Each colony has three stories of ex- 

 tracting combs to which the bees 

 have access through the entire year. 

 The one visit is made at the begin- 

 ning of the swarming season and 

 most of the bees from every colony 

 are shaken into packages for ship- 

 ping north for the purpose of making 

 increase, strengthening weak colo- 

 nies or for sale in pound packages. 

 In this way several hundred pounds 

 of bees are secured each year. Being 

 so much further south than the New 

 York yards the colonies are strong 

 at a time when bees are just begin- 

 ning to build up in the northern 

 states. After the bees are removed 

 all surplus honey that may have been 

 stored after the visit of the previous 

 year is extracted. When he is ready 

 to leave there is an abundance of 

 room, and since the working force 

 has been removed, there will not be 

 further danger of swarming. The 

 bees usually build up again in time 

 for the fall flow and store a consid- 

 erable quantity of honey which will 

 be extracted at the time of the next 

 spring visit. Even with this let alone 

 plan the bees store enough honey to 

 pay expenses of the long journey 

 SQUth and shipping the bees north 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



May 



again, so that the owner nets about 

 five pounds of bees per colony, which 

 makes it a very profitable apiary. 



Six or seven visits each year are 

 paid to the New York apiaries. A 

 light automobile makes it possible to 

 reach any of these apiaries with a 

 load of supers within a few hours' 

 time. It is only possible to care for 

 so many in this manner, in addition 

 to other business, by having all 

 comb-honey supers ready in advance. 

 Sections are folded and filled with 

 foundation during the winter months. 

 When the comb-honey apiaries are 

 visited during the honey flow, car- 

 riers full of empty sections are taken 

 to the yard, the filled sections taken 

 from the hives and exchanged for the 

 empty ones, and the return trip is 

 made with the carrier full of finished 

 sections. Every possible short cut 

 is practiced. 



Outyards for comb-honey produc- 

 tion are not common, because of the 



ous problem with the extracted 

 honey system. With more than 700 

 colonies managed in this way, the 

 net returns have averaged better 

 than $5 per colony for a series of 

 years. Mr. Stringham is not new at 

 the business, having kept bees on a 

 commercial scale for 25 years. Lo- 

 cust is an important source of sur- 

 plus to the bees on Long Island. The 

 flow usually lasts from five to seven 

 days. Often 30 to 40 pounds of sur- 

 plus per colony is stored from this 

 source alone. The flow can be de- 

 pended upon in this locality four 

 years in five. 



In order to succeed with a system 

 like this, one must be thoroughly fa- 

 miliar with the essentials of honey 

 production, for a novice would al- 

 most certainly fail with such a plan. 

 The returns which Mr. Stringham 

 has secured from so many bees over 

 a long series of years effectually 

 demonstrate that it is not necessary 



TRAILER OF WESLEY FOSTER ATTACHED TO FORD AUTOMOBILE 



great difficulty of controlling swarm- 

 ing under such conditions. When 

 the first signs of preparation for 

 swarming are noticed in the String- 

 ham yards, a queen excluder is 

 placed between the bottom-board 

 and the body of each hive. This pre- 

 vents the escape of the queens dur- 

 ing the absence of the owner. Neigh- 

 bors who have hived swarms issuing 

 from these apiaries have been much 

 mystified because they return to the 

 parent colonies instead of remaining 

 in the new hives or boxes in which 

 they are caught. Two weeks after 

 the excluders are placed, every col- 

 ony which has queencells is shaken 

 and in due time the brood is returned 

 to it. This plan efifectively disposes 

 of the swarming problem in most in- 

 stances. An occasional swarm will be 

 lost, but the number is not large. 



The colonies run for extracted 

 honey are given the usual attention, 

 since swarming 's a much less seri- 



to be forever fooling with the bees 

 in order to get results. If the opera- 

 tor knows what to do and when lo 

 do It, the less fussing the rest of the 

 year the better. 



As a rheans of advertising, Mr 

 Stringham exhibits at tne Madison 

 Square Garden Poultry Show in New 

 York, and at the Boston Poultry 

 Show. These are the two largest 

 poultry shows in America, and thou- 

 sands of people are in daily attend- 

 ance. He tried exhibiting at many 

 of the smaller shows, but finally de- 

 cided to appear at only the two best 

 ones, where he could reach the larg- 

 est possible number of people. Booth 

 space at the New York show costs 

 $75, so he has little competition in 

 the way of rival exhibits. It is an 

 advertising proposition entirely, 

 since no prizes are offered for any- 

 thing aside from poultry. It was at 

 the New York show that I met Mr. 

 Stringham The first time I passed 



