American Hee Journal 



were dissected, queens poked for, and 

 frames with swarming hundreds passed 

 from hand to hand without a sting. 

 Many crosses have been made also be- 

 tween ItaUan and the other gentle va- 

 rieties with good result?. 1 here is but 

 one drawback to the Italians. They are 

 a little less hardy than either of the 

 other later introductions, requiring 

 more careful protection during winter. 



"Swarms" Now no C.^use for Hys- 

 teria. 



A time of great excitement for the be- 

 ginner is when his colony first swarms. 

 If he is wise he will be expecting this 

 and will be prepared with a bee-veil and 

 a hive in which to put the swarm when 

 captured. Good advice in this matter 

 is not to hurry. The bees will settle 

 near the hive for a while and can usually 

 readily be shaken or brushed into the 

 new home. The once picturesque cus- 

 tom of ringing dinner bells and beating 

 tomtoms is now declared useless as 

 far as the bees are concerned. If it 

 ever had any effect it was merely in 

 occupying the attention and soothing 

 the nerves of the bee-keeper and the 

 neighbors. By more modern methods 

 now adopted bees kept for honey are 

 allowed so much space for the storing 

 of it and the manipulation of queens 

 that are new born in the hive is such 

 that the colony grows strong and re- 

 swarm. On the other hand, the wing 

 of the ruling queen is clipped, then, 

 when the young queen is ready to take 

 up the duties of the hive and the dow- 

 ager departs with her retinue she is 

 unable to fly, but drops near the hive 

 entrance whence she and her followers 

 are easily taken by the owner. 



Bees have been watched and studied 

 since tiine almost immemorial, and the 

 sum of knowledge thus obtained is such 

 that the skillful keeper manipulates 

 them and directs their work in a hun- 

 dred ways, to their good and his own 

 profit. Modern invention has made of 

 the hive an architectural masterpiece of 

 use and desirability, and greatly les- 

 sened the labors and disappointments of 

 the old-time bee-keeper. Among the 

 ancients Pliny relates that Aristomach- 

 us contemplated bees for years, doing 

 nothing else during this long period, 

 end no doubt laying a foundation for 

 the vast stores of wisdom which the 

 modern bee-keeper can command con- 

 cerning the insects. Pliny also men- 

 tions another pioner bee-student, one 

 Philiscus, who retired to a life in the 

 forest that he might better have op- 

 portunities for his favorite study. From 

 that day to this wisdom in these mat- 

 ters has been steadily accumulating, 

 and books on how to do it have been 

 piling up. 



The Department of Agriculture at 

 Washington, among its multifarious in- 

 dustries, is still busily at work on latter- 

 day problems concerning bees. To 

 them the bee-beginner should apply for 

 full information as to the tlctails of his 

 pursuit. They introduced the Italian 

 bees in i860, twenty-five years later the 

 Carniolans, and since then other vari- 

 eties have been imported. Our own 

 State at the .'\gricultural Callcge at 

 Amherst has a large sum of useful in- 

 formation ready for the asking, and 



more than this, under a new law Mr, 

 Burton X. Gates, Ph. D., has been ap- 

 pointed inspector of apiaries within a 

 few months, his duty being to inspect 

 all colonies, and find and stamp out 

 disease wherever present. 



Bee-Diseases. 



This is one of the most important 

 moves that the State has ever made for 

 the good of bee-keeping, either as a 

 business or an avocation, for without 

 doubt this inspection will end in the 

 eradication of otte of the most serious 

 troubles which bee-keepers meet. This 

 is known as "foul brood." There are 

 two forms of this malady, one 

 known as European foul brood, which 

 seems to prevail most in the western 

 part of the Stale, the other .American 

 foul brood which is more common in 

 the eastern counties. Like typhoid 

 fever in man and cholera ainong swine, 

 "foul brood" is due to a bacillus which 

 affects the brood, and diminishes and 

 soon stops the productivity of the hive. 

 When a bee-keeper begins to have "bad 

 luck," fmds that his bees diminish in 

 number instead of increasing, finds that 

 moths get among his bees and that tliey 

 do not make honey — in fact, when any- 

 thing goes wrong and he does not quite 

 see why, he has reason to suspect foul 

 brood, and should write immediately 

 to Mr. Gates at .'Kmherst and state his 

 trouble. Such a letter will bring at 

 least a prescription and probably the 

 <loctor himself. This does not mean 

 that the bees must be destroyed, though 

 the disease will inevitably do that if 

 not taken in hand. Both honey and bees 

 may be saved by a little intelligent work 

 and the right kind of care, and not 



only that, but the contagion may be 

 prevented from spreading to other, heal- 

 thy colonies in other parts of the State. 

 It is for this reason that an inspector 

 has been appointed, and for this and 

 other reasons the bee-keeping industry 

 looked brighter in Massachusetts. 



Of course, other things than foul 

 brood may be the cause of a light yield 

 of honey in the hive. During many 

 weeks of the last spring the bees found 

 no nectar in the flowers and could not 

 make honey. Cold and windy dry 

 weather seemed to be the cause of this. 

 Either the blossoms failed to secrete 

 the nectar, or the dry winds dried it up 

 before the bees could get at it. On 

 the other hand, the advent of still, hot, 

 humid weather is always favorable to 

 the secretion and gathering of nectar, 

 and since that set in the bees have been 

 doing famously. 



Bee-keeping is not laborious. For 

 one who loves nature and light out- 

 door occupation, together with the com- 

 panionship of busy, kindly creatures, 

 it ofifers a fascinating avocation with 

 modest but fairly sure returns for the 

 labor and capital invested. There is 

 room for a million more colonies of 

 bees in Massachusetts and plenty of 

 pasturage on which they may profitably 

 work. There are always many people 

 present at the bee-keepers' meetings who 

 are beeless when they come. I suspect 

 more than one of going away from the 

 hearty hilarity, good fellowship and 

 earnest discussion of the assembly, with 

 at least one of the winged workers in 

 his bonnet, to be later materialized in a 

 thronging hive beneath the apple-tree, 

 and perhaps later still into a whole 

 string of them. — Boston Transciif't. 



Our Bee-Keeping Sisters 



Conducted by Emma M. Wilson. Marengo. III. 



Bulk-Comb vs. Section Honey 



Mr. Scholl, in the September number, 

 shows us some pictures of comb honey, 

 saying it is impossible to describe how 

 beautiful it looks, and then says: 



" But if you can imagine how your fancy 

 section-honey lootts, you can t'et an idea of 

 ■vviiat we are tryingr to show in tlie pictures." 



It is easy for those of us who have 

 handled sections by the hundreds or 

 thousands to imagine just how beauti- 

 ful such sections look, and it is easy to 

 imagine that those frames of Mr. Scholl 

 look just as beautiful. But imagination 

 doesn't stop at that ; and one imagines, 

 not so much how they look when in 

 Mr. SchoH's possession, as how they 

 look when brought to the view of the 

 purchaser, or brought on the table of 

 the consumer. A section, when put on 

 the table, looks just as inviting as when 

 first taken from the bees. But when 

 those beautiful frames of comb honey 

 that Mr. Scholl produces are brought 

 on the table they have sadly deterio- 

 rated from their pristine neatness and 

 beauty. At least that is the way imagi- 

 nation represents them, from the de- 

 scription given as to how they are 

 treated. 



One would imagine that the women- 

 folk of Texas would be ve.xed in their 

 innermost housewifely souls to see the 

 once immaculate combs come on the 

 table a drippy, sticky mess. There are 

 undeniable advantages in the produc- 

 tion of bulk honey, but when it comes 

 to the matter of something to make a 

 beautiful dish on the table, the section 

 of honey will always hold a place that 

 nothing else can fill. 



Bee-Dress for Women 



For the benefit ni my bee-sisters I will try 

 to describe the dress I wear while caring for 

 the bees. Bee-stints do not seem to poison 

 me very much; and when I am stung I do 

 not suffer from the sting, but am very angry 

 at the bees, for I am very careful not to hurt 

 them in any way. So when they sting me it 

 makes my temper rise. 



Kirst. an old sailor hat, then cloth the 

 width of the brim and as long in length; 

 make a shirr string and draw close to the 

 crown of the hat on the outside of the brim. 

 Then a piece of wire-screening the size of 

 the hat-brim, and sew it to the cloth, sewing 

 the wire-screen on the side, or let the seam 

 come on the shoulder. Next a good grain- 

 sack, with a hole cut in the middle the 

 length of the sack, the same size as the net- 

 ting, about one inch deep and one foot long. 

 Sew the netting Hrniiy to this and cut i>ut 

 the under part iif t^rain-sack like for the 

 sleeves. Sew a welt on the bottom of the 



