234 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 



from outside atmospheric influence, 

 and endeavored to eliminate all errors 

 so far as possible, we realized, as our 

 final report indicated, that further in- 

 vestigation was needed before accept- 

 ing the results of our experiments as 

 final. They were conducted under dif- 

 ferent conditions, with porous mats 

 over the frames, and the latter hermeti- 

 cally sealed to prevent the slightest 

 upward ventilation, and with wide and 

 contracted entrances. 



There was one feature as the result 

 of our investigation in which there 

 could be no error, and that was, under 

 all conditions, the indraft of fresh 

 air and the expulsion of contaminated 

 air was through the entrance, as abso- 

 lutely proven in all our experiments by 

 the difference in the temperature shown 

 by two thermometers inserted within 

 the hive, one at each side of the en- 

 trance. Since that time I have inva- 

 riably kept a wide (large) entrance to 

 hives containing normal colonies both 

 in summer and winter, and never re- 

 member having a moldy comb, soured 

 food, or bee diarrhea during the inter- 

 vening period. 



Other features in which there were 

 few chances of mistake were, that in 

 most cases the center of the hive was 

 warmer than just beneath the mats, and 

 frequently on the back part of the 

 bottom-board the temperature was 

 higher than in any other part of the 

 hive. Mr. Kramer's conclusions re- 

 garding the advantages of a big en- 

 trance exactly fit ours. 



Doctor Phillips' experiments as de- 

 tailed in his Bulletin No. 93, are ex- 

 tremely interesting, but they have littl ; 

 or no practical application in this part 

 of the world, where our bees are flying 

 all the year around. 



Auckland, New Zealand. 



Five Minutes Among the Bees 



BY R. L. RINCKWITZ. 



(t T-jEES !" I exclaimed, with perhaps 

 |~S unnecessary vehemence, as I 



-*-^ sat up in bed, and " Where ?" 

 exclaimed my wife, in an alarmed man- 

 ner. 



"In the upper story at present — in 

 the garret," I answered, peevishly I ad- 

 mit, since it always annoyed me to have 

 mv flights of inspiration misinterpreted 

 by my practical wife. But again she 

 misunderstood. 



" I knew a woman once who read 

 that money could be made with bees in 

 an attic," she said, dubiously, however. 



"No! No!" I told her. "I merely 

 used a slang term; I meant bees in my 

 bonnet, in the upper story of my gray 

 matter. Practical men always keep 

 their bees in an apiary." 



" What kind of an ape— er— what did 

 you call it?" Adelaide now wanted to 

 know, " What do you know about bees, 

 anyway?" 



Feeling somewhat as if I had received 

 a foul blow under the belt or between 

 the joints of my armor, I nevertheless 

 gathered the remnants of that self con- 

 trol, which is the pride of all male ani- 

 mals, and patiently explained, first 

 waiting for the clock to finish striking 

 twelve, though as I counted it seemed 

 to continue to seventeen or eighteen. 

 I also waited for three roosters to stop 

 crowing, and explained that it was only 

 a board falling over, due to wind in the 

 woodshed, and not a burglar trying to 



carry off the big grinstone or the hun- 

 dred pound keg of nails. 



" What do I know about bees ?" I 

 questioned testily, possibly a trifle 

 haughtily. "I have been reading bee 

 journals ever since yesterday morning. 

 What I don't know about bees certainly 

 wasn't written in any book or maga- 

 zine." 



" A bee is an insect with a crustaceous 

 formation, and armed with a business- 

 like antenna at one end, and a sting at 

 the other — the latter is seldom or never 

 used, however," I added hastily, to fore- 

 stall objections in that locality. "Much 

 depends upon the end or direction in 

 which you approach a bee." 



" But do bees always advance with 

 the front or harmless end toward the 

 ape — what was it you called the bee- 

 keeper ?" 



" A p-i-ar-i-st— Apiarist," I replied 

 with a Job-like inflection. "Bees dwell 



' With Smoker. Veil, and Swarm Basket 

 I Went Gaily Forth to My Doom. " 



in a hive in perfect peace and harmony, 

 and without asking foolish questions, 

 go about their duties of gathering 

 propolis and nectar. They consist of 

 a queen, drones, and workers; the lat- 

 ter are mostly imperfect females," I 

 added maliciously. 



Entirely ignoring my masterly attack, 

 and with a cool exterior which I 

 dreaded, since it generally heralded 

 some base and underhanded sally— in 

 the manner of advanced suffragism, 

 when I least expected it, my wife now 

 wanted to know, " What is a drone, 

 and what are they good for ?" 



"What is a drone good for ? You, 

 with your education, still ask such a 

 question ?" I parleyed, to gain time. 

 " Why drones — drones are good for 

 feeding chickens. They — " 



" Well, I am glad that they attend to 

 somelkinff — you usually ask me to feed 

 them." This from the wife of my bosom 

 — but what can a man expect in this 

 age of enlightened feminism. 



" I mean they are sometimes fed to 

 poultry when in the brood form, in the 

 more tender years of their growth — ; 

 but time spent in the hive soon palls 

 heavily upon them, and before they 

 reach that mature stage of what with 

 us is known as the voting age, in the 

 flavor of their youth and innocence, 

 they are literally worried to death by 

 the females." (This was not just as I 

 had read it, but I thought it would do, 

 since it was so near the truth.) 



" Yes, I shall surely get a bee — rather 

 a pair of them," I went on hurriedly, to 

 head off any more questions. " Come 

 to think of it, I shall get several pairs, 

 perhaps half a dozen couples." I hate a 

 piker, always preferring to do the 

 thing in style; but my wife views these 

 reckless and expensive moods with 

 alarm, and this was no exception. 



" I should think one pair would do," 

 she told me, severely, " until you learn 

 to feed them and water them properly. 

 Better yet, why not write to Mr. O. O. 

 Poppleton, the man whom you so often 

 wrote up in the Metropolis of the Flor- 

 ida Bee King. I am sure he would tell 

 you all about it in one or two letters." 



Oscar O. Poppleton, a real personage 

 who carried out the scheme of moving 

 bees by water successfully northward, 

 so as to get the successive blooms, I 

 had known well in Miami, Fla., one of 

 the largest winter resorts in the United 

 States, and south of Palm Beach. 



His plan, which consisted of moving 

 the hives by means of a large launch 

 from key to key, sometimes from as 

 far south as Cuba to the vicinity of 

 Stuart, Fla., had been tried once by a 

 syndicate on the Mississippi, where it 

 failed, according to Mr. Poppleton, be- 

 cause the hives were left on the boat, a 

 method said to have been employed 

 with good results by the early Egyp- 

 tians. In the former case the bees 

 were lost in the water by the thousands, 

 though some state that the constant 

 dwindling of stock was due to lack of 

 knowledge and good management. 



To the Bee King, as I had termed 

 him in innumerable write-ups, I ac- 

 cordingly wrote, for I certainly had 

 acquired a " bee in my bonnet" since 

 malaria drove me from the semi-tropics 

 and newspaper work into the valleys 

 and mountains. That there was money 

 in bees I vaguely knew, from observa- 

 tion, though I scarcely hoped to emu- 

 late Poppleton's scheme and " do what 

 I cannot accomplish ", as t'^e late 

 Grover Cleveland once said to the 

 former while on a fishing trip at Stuart 

 —"make the busy insects work the 

 year around." 



t;,The reply was a long one, but the 

 following extract is the gist of it : 



" — the questions you ask are the 

 usual ones a beginner must have an- 

 swered, but it is impossible for any one 

 person to do this nearly as well as a 



good text book A beginner 



in, say arithmetic, doesn't want to be- 

 gin his studies with compound numbers 

 instead of numeration, and on the same 

 principle you want to begin your bee 



