1S80 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



311 



BEES IN GARRETS. 



A "BIG" BEE HIVE. 



M FARMER, by the name of Shadrach Chaffin, 

 Jr$\. living- near Sciotoville, Scioto Co., 0., bought 

 v a hive of bees (blacks) about the year 1845, 

 and put them up in his garret, at the end of the 

 room, 2 feet from the end, and 4 feet from the side 

 wall. Thus they were situated toward one corner of 

 the room, near a window in the centre of the end of 

 the garret. The building is an old style farm house, 

 over two stories high. At the side of the garret, it 

 is about 3 feet from the floor to the roof, and the 

 room is ceiled all over, up the rafters and all. The 

 bees worked out of a broken pane in the window. 

 They have never been known to swarm. After a 

 number of years, the whole pane of glass had to be 

 taken out to give them entrance room. The hive 

 was set on a bench about two feet from the floor. 

 An eye witness tells me that he "robbed" these bees 

 for his uncle about 15 years ago, and they had then 

 built their comb so as to entirely hide the old hive. 

 They had built from near the window from floor to 

 rafters or ceiling, and had about filled the corner of 

 the room from floor to ceiling for twelve feet in 

 length along the side of the room. He took about 

 two barrels of honey from them, and said he could 

 merely miss it from the mass of comb. My inform- 

 ant said, on a nice day the bees streamed out and in 

 at the window just about as fast as tbey could. 

 When they killed their drones in the fall, the ground 

 under the window would be covered with them for 

 yards around. I asked him in reference to the hon- 

 ey plants of Scioto. He said that persimmon, sour- 

 wood, and black gum abound; also basswood and 

 white clover. The main facts in this narrative can 

 be proven by many witnesses, or these bees can be 

 seen by going to Mr. Chaffin?, near Sciotoville, six 

 miles, I think, from town. 



Question: Are there not, of necessity, many 

 queens in such a hive as this? Do you suppose they 

 work in concert? or does each que°n have her own 

 separate work? I don't think this the best way to 

 keep bees, but something of value may be suggested 

 to us by it. P. Bolinger. 



Salem, Richardson Co., Pa., June 4, 1880. 

 The case you mention, friend B.. is by no 

 means an isolated one, unless it be a fact 

 that there are two or more swarms in this 

 same garret, which I think not very proba- 

 ble, although not impossible. Two or more 

 swarms will work through a common open- 

 ing of the size of a pane of glass, and usual- 

 ly without any disagreement. The queen, 

 in this case, is perhaps an unusually prolific 

 one, and the stream of issuing bees, from its 

 elevated position, looks larger than it proba- 

 bly is. As the arrangement has so far pre- 

 vented swarming, at some seasons of the 

 year the number of bees in the one colony 

 would be very great, and with unlimited 

 stores a great amount of brood would often 

 be raised. A similar garret was located near 

 us a few years ago, and the bees had the rep- 

 utation of never swarming, and of robbing 

 all the hives in the vicinity. I told them 

 they were liable to swarm, at any time, and, 

 even though they had been there for years, 

 the colony might become queenless, at any 

 time, and be lost. The very next year after 

 this it sent out several swarms, and finally 



became queenless, and was destroyed by the 

 worms. It is a little singular that we find 

 so many such cases, where the bees have 

 held out so great a number of years, entirely 

 without care, and it seems to suggest that 

 some features of the plan might be of 

 value, if properly worked out ; but, as the 

 house apiary experiments, which are much 

 the same thing, do not seem to result in any 

 permanent adoption, we can not, as yet, very 

 strongly advise garret bee-hives. 



WHEN DID THE HONEY BEE FIRST 

 < O Tl I OVER TO AMERICA? 



SOME FACTS, AS WELL AS SOME SUGGESTIONS IN RE- 

 GARD TO THE MATTER. 



/HpK. ROOT: — By your reply to Mr. Terry, in the 

 /jB|[ May No. of Gleanings, one would suppose 

 — ' that you had the impression that the bees 

 which have inhabited this section of country from 

 time immemorial are a foreign race. The evidence 

 tends strongly to show that we have a geographical 

 race indigenous to this section of the continent, ex- 

 tending as far south as Arkansas and as far north 

 as the Hudson Bay Territory, both included. Hart- 

 wig, in his account of the fur producing animals of 

 Hudson Bay Territory, says: "The black bear feeds 

 chiefly on berries, grain, acorns, roots, eggs, and 

 honey." (See "Polar and Tropical World," page 

 315.) 



In the May No. of the Bee Keepers 1 Magazine for 

 18T9, Mr. Teter, who writes from Minnesota, says 

 that he has learned from the Indians that wild bees 

 were there long before the bosom of the Great Father 

 of Waters was disturbed by the boat of a white man; 

 that it is two hundred years since the falls of St. An- 

 thony were discovered by the whites, and that the 

 traditions of the Indians fix the fact of the presence 

 of the honey bee there long before that date, &c. 

 After the battle of New Orleans, a Frenchman by 

 the name of La Charity, who had been a freebooter 

 but had received a pardon from Gen. Jackson for 

 assistance rendered in defending the place, fled from 

 civilization, and traversed the country from there to 

 the source of the Missouri River. 



He saw wild bees at various places where he went, 

 when the conditions were favorable and timber 

 plenty. In 1830, St. Joseph and Sioux City were trad- 

 ing ports consisting of one hovel and an occupant to 

 each. They bought furs and sometimes honey. In 

 that year, a Canadian by the name of Flory left St. 

 Louis and followed the Missouri River for several 

 hundred miles up from its mouth, dealing in furs; 

 he saw bees at various points along the river, where 

 the conditions were favorable. Tessing, head chief 

 of the Sock Indians, and, for several years, inter- 

 preter for General Kearny, saw wild bees in his 

 travels wherever the conditions were favorable. 

 He says the Indians, as far back as traditions reach, 

 have been in the habit of gathering wild honey, and 

 transporting it on their ponies, in sacks made of 

 buckskin, as they do the various kinds of grease 

 that they accumulate when hunting. Mr. H. A. King, 

 in a back No. of the Bee Keepers 1 Magazine, mentions 

 having received an account of a bee marked with 

 yellow, that is quite common in Arkansas. 



In 1861, 1 purchased bees of this race, and, to my 

 surprise, found many of them with a yellow band, 

 interrupted in the middle, in the place where we 

 find the anterior band on the Italian. I have mated 



