April, 1915. 



V '—' : .***-*» 



American "Bgc Jonrnal j 



too, a few preliminary observations 

 will be necessary to a proper under- 

 standing of this phase of the nuisance 

 laws. Cities, towns, and villages, as 

 municipal corporations or iiublic bod- 

 ies, receive their powers by express 

 grant from the legislative authority 

 of the State, and with the exception of 

 some unenumerated powers without 

 which the corporate body could not 

 exercise its essential functions as such 

 their powers are limited to those ex- 

 pressly named in the grant. This 

 grant of power is usually contained in 

 the general laws of the State govern- 

 ing cities, towns and villages, and is 

 called the charter power, the law or 

 statute itself being usually known as 

 the charter. Keeping these facts in 

 mind will aid the unprofessional man 

 in understanding the terms to be en- 

 countered in an examination of local 

 laws in regard to the power of a mu- 

 nicipal corporation to legislate upon 

 this subject. 



Every State has its own peculiar 

 policy toward these municipal cor- 

 porations, and no two are exactly the 

 same. They all, however, follow the 

 same general plan, with variations 

 influenced by local conditions. As 

 the power of the State legislature is 

 limited that its acts must be consistent 

 with the constitution, so the power of 

 a municipal corporation to make by- 

 laws, as its ordinances or enactments 

 are commonly known, must be in 

 harmony with its character, with this 

 further distinction, that while the 

 legislature of the State may exercise 

 unlimited discretion in all matters not 

 prohibited by the constitution, a mu- 

 nicipal corporation is restricted in 

 legislative action to those matters in 

 which it is expressly authorized by its 

 charter. 



It is the general rule that cities, 

 towns, and villages have conferred 

 upon their common councils power to 

 declare, abate, and remove nuisances. 

 In the case of nuisances p^r se, 

 whether at common law or by stat- 

 ute, or by ordinance in those cases 

 in which the council may declare such 

 nuisances, the power to abate by 

 summary action is either expressly 

 given or exists by necessary implica- 

 tion. Summary abatement means ar- 

 bitrary removal or destruction without 

 judicial process. Nearly, if not quite. 

 all city charters contain grants of 

 power to license, regulate, and re- 

 strict all businesses, pursuits, and 

 avocations, and also a section known 

 commonly as a general welfare clause, 

 by which the corporate body is em- 

 powered generally to enact such or- 

 dinances, rules and regulati ms as 

 may be necessary to preserve the 

 peace, safety and health of its inhabi- 

 tants and promote their general wel- 

 fare. To undertake to set out the 

 specific provisions of the charter of 

 the municipal corporations of the 

 various States would extend this arti- 

 cle far beyond its intended scope. 



It is a cardinal rule of the courts 

 that all ordinances must be reason- 

 able, and that while a city may de- 



fine, classify, and enact what things 

 or classes of things shall be nuisances 

 and under what conditions and cir- 

 cumstances such things shall be 

 deemed nuisances, this power is sub- 

 ject to the limitation that it is for the 

 courts to determine whether, in a 

 given case, the thing so defined and 

 denounced is a nuisance in fact, and 

 that if the cour shall resolve this 

 point in the negative the ordinance is 

 invalid. Under this rule, in an Arkan- 

 sas case, it was held that the muni- 

 cipal corporation could not prohibit 

 the keeping and rearing of bees with- 

 in its limits as a nuisance regardless 

 Oi whether they were so in fact or not. 

 And this case seems to have been re- 

 ceived as announcing the correct rule 

 in recent text works, though the point 

 has not been raised elsewhere in con- 

 troversy. 

 T'nder the rule just stated, the pow- 



er of summary abatement would not 

 exist, even though the presence of 

 bees in a particular part of the city 

 should be declared objectionable, but 

 the point would rest as has been here- 

 tofore observed in the proof adduced, 

 the burden being upon the party de- 

 claring the affirmative of the issue. 



(The foregoing question of "Bees as 

 a Nuisance" so ably treated in this ar- 

 ticle was settled a number of times 

 in the courts. We will in our next 

 number republish the report upon this 

 subject, made in 1890, by Thos. G. 

 Newman, then General Manager of the 

 National Association and editor of 

 this magazine. It is very concise. 

 There was also published, in 1904, by 

 Mr. N. E. France, the last General 

 Manager of the National, a v sry ex- 

 haustive pamphlet of 3S pages, en- 

 titled: Legal Rights. This might be 

 worthy of a reprint. Editor.) 



Send Questions either to the office of the American Bee Journal or direct to 



Dr. C. C. Miller. Marengo, III. 



He does not answer bee-keeping questions by mail. 



Red Clover Bees—Comb or Extracted Honey ? 



1. What race of bees, if any. works on red 

 clover? 



2. What is the best way to prevent swarm- 

 ing, my bees are in 8-frame hives ? 



3. Can I take a colony and make four or 

 live out of it and put a new queen in each; 

 if so. how ? 



4. On which can I make the most, comb 

 honey at 15 cents a pound or extracted at 11 

 cents ? Ontario. 



Answers.— I. There is no particular race 

 of bees that works on red clover. Some- 

 times the blossoms are shorter than usual, 

 or more full of nectar, and then bees of any 

 race may work on it. At different times 

 bees have appeared with tongues long 

 enough to reach red-clover nectar, but the 

 strain seems to work back pretty soon to 

 shorter tongues. 



2. I'd give a pretty penny to know. Perhaps 

 as good a way as any is to run for extracted 

 honey and use the Demaree plan: as soon 

 as danger of swarming, put all but one 

 frame of brood in an upper story over an 

 excluder, killing any queen-cells, and leave 

 the queen in lowerstory with the one brood. 



J. You may do it in a good season. One 

 way is to wait until the colony is itnuis. then 

 take a little more than half the brood and 

 bees and put in a new hive on a new stand, 

 giving a new queen and leaving the old queen 

 on the old stand. When each of tliese be- 

 comes strong, divide asain the same way. 



4. Likely out of the extracted. 



way so well as by using foundation splints, 

 having the foundation come clear down to 

 the botton-bar. and allowing the bees to 

 have the foundation only when something 

 was coming in from the field The use of 

 these splints has been fully explained in 

 previous numbers of this journal, and also 

 in the book " Fifty Years Among the Bees." 

 The frames may be wired, but it is not nec- 

 essary. 



2. Idon'tknow just what the trouble can 

 be. The queen ought to lay in such combs 

 any time she needs room to lay, unless you 

 put them too much out of her reach. They 

 should be put next to combs already occu- 

 pied with brood. 



The Alley Trap— Mixing Races cl Bees 



1. If I use an Alley trap on a hive and the 

 colony should swarm while I am away for a 

 few days, will they stay around or near the 

 hive any length of time, or will they leave if 

 not hived the same day ? 



2. Would there be any objection to keep- 

 ing one colony each of Italians and Carnio- 

 lans near each other ? Would it harm either 

 one. cause mixing or trouble ? I would like 

 to try both breeds. New York. 



Answers.— The trap holds the queen, and 

 when the swarm finds it has no queen it 

 will return and await your pleasure. 



2, There will be no trouble until a young 

 queen is reared in either hive, and then it 

 may not be purely mated. Likely it will not 

 anyhow, since bees of other breeds are 

 likely within a mile or two. 



Foundation Splints — Inducing Queen to Lay 



1. Next year I wish the bees to draw the 

 foundation into combs and build to the bot- 

 tom-bar a good many wired Langstroth 

 frames: the same combs to be used the 

 same year to make increase. How can I 

 best accomplish it ? 



2, I am bothered to get the queens to lay 

 in combs that have been extracted from. 

 without a honey How and even with one, 

 Under what condition can I induce queens 

 to lay in them? Michigan. 



Answers.— I. I experimented a great deal 

 upon this very thing, and succeded in no 



Bees Restless In Winter 



I have two colonies of bees I moved 14 

 miles last December. I packed them in 

 chaff about i inches thick, and they have 

 plenty of honey. They seem restless and 

 come out of the hive when it is 20 degrees 

 below zero. What is the cause of this ? 

 Are they too warm ? Pennsylvania. 



Answer.— The likelihood is that not very 

 many bees are coming out. and a very few 

 need cause no alarm. If the number is con- 

 siderable it may be that a mouse in the hive 



