190 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



June 



ble, which had compelled him for 

 years to abstain from all brain work, 

 again stopped this project. The ac- 

 companying manuscript letter ex- 

 plains how, after making arrange- 

 ments for the revision, Mr. Lang- 

 stroth was compelled to leave this 

 work entirely to his revisers. 



The first edition of the Langstroth- 

 Dadant "Hive and Honey Bee" was 

 published in 1888. In 1891, a French 

 translation by Charles Dadant, was 

 published in Geneva, Switzerland, un- 

 der the management of Edouard 

 Bertrand. This has gone through one 



revision and three editions. A Rus- 

 sian translation by Kandratieff, of 

 Petrograd, was published in 1892, of 

 which four editions have appeared. A 

 Spanish translation by Pons-Fabre- 

 gues, of the latest revision, was pub- 

 lished in Barcelona, in 1915. 



In 189S Mr. Dadant lost his loving 

 wife, then aged 7i years. He lived till 

 July 16th, 1902, surrounded by his 

 children and grandchildren, with the 

 satisfaction of seeing the full success 

 of his undertakings and a continua- 

 tion of his work in the younger gen- 

 erations. 



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CHARLES DADANTS MOTHER, IN 1865 



An Amusing Incident in Con- 

 nection With Bee Escapes 



BY G. C. GREINER. 



WHEN taking off supers bymeans 

 of the bee-escape it sometimes 

 happens that for one reason or 

 another bees have not made use of the 

 escape as the beekeeper expected they 

 would. As a rule, I apply the escapes 

 during the latter part of the day, and 

 find my supers generally free from bees 

 the next morning. But if they have not 

 left their supers by that time, we can 

 be quite sure that there is something 

 wrong, either with the escape or with 

 the bees. A few scattering bees in a 

 super does not matter. There are 

 always a few stray ones. But when I 

 find a super full of them, when I see at 

 first glance that there is trouble of 

 some kind, I simply cover such supers 

 up again and leave them until the next 

 day. That most always clears them, 

 unless the escape has become clogged 

 or there is brood in some of the sec- 

 tions. 



Last fall, when sorting the contents 

 of some of my last supers, I found one 

 super from which, it seemed, hardly 

 any bees had passed through the es- 

 cape. Some of the sections were com- 

 pletely covered with bees, while others 

 had only scattering ones. To gather 

 up my supers I run the wheelbarrow 

 along the back of the hive rows, where 

 on the previous night the escapes have 

 been placed and load them one after 

 another onto the rig. When the load 

 is completed— I generally take four or 

 five at a time — I take them to the honey 

 house and set them endwise on the 

 floor near the screen-door. The few 

 bees that are left in the supers usually 

 take wing and go to the screen-door 

 by the time I am ready to look their 

 super over. 



When I gathered up one of my loads 

 I had not noticed that one of the supers 

 contained so many bees until I was 

 about to empty it. Under similar cir- 

 cumstances I had often taken sections 

 to the door and with a feather brushed 

 the bees outdoors. The same I in- 

 tended to do with these; but being so 

 many more to handle I took the whole 

 super outdoors and used the first hive 

 as a table on which to set the section 

 holders during the operation. As the 

 brushing ofT proceeded I noticed that 

 the bees, as they took wing, did not 

 immediately take a line towards their 

 hive, but kept hovering around me a 

 little more than natural. However, I 

 did not consider that very strange as 

 bees under similar conditions always 

 act somewhat bewildered before they 

 get straightened up. 



Just then I was called to dinner. 

 When I entered the house my daughter 

 met me at the door, and looking me 

 over wonderingly said : " Father, what 

 is the matter with you, you are all cov- 

 ered with bees." "Well," I replied, "what 

 of it, sweep 'em off." So, she taking a 

 wing, we both stepped onto the ver- 

 anda to proceed with the sweeping off. 

 She had hardly begun her task when 

 again she remarked: "Yes, and the 

 bees are all under your sweater." 

 These words had hardly left her mouth 

 when in greatest wonderment she ex- 

 claimed: "Well! I declare, your hip- 

 pocket is full of bees." And, sure 

 enough, I could hear them buzz. 



