June, 11115. 



199 



American Vae Joornal 



even then, at the close of the honey 

 harvest, we would lind more or less 

 broken cappings and more or less 

 honey removed. 



Then \isions arise of taking off 

 honey at our out-yards, and out of the 

 boxes and into the house, and scrap- 

 ing the bits of wa.x off the supers, and 

 the oft-repeated circus of loading the 

 honey and hitching the horse to the 

 wagon and getting started for home. 

 The bees having taken a load of honey 

 as they left the supers and carried it to 

 their hives are " stirred up," and come 

 back determined to leave no stone un- 

 turned or crack unnoticed that prom- 

 ised another load, and because they 

 did not find it they did not fail to give 

 us their opinion of sbch doings. 



With a good supply of bee-escapes all 

 this is changed. When our honey is 

 readv to come off, we may now take a 

 lot of escapes, go to the yard and slip 

 them under as many supers as needed 

 to make a good load, and perhaps on 

 our way home do the same in another 

 yard. In a day or two we can take 

 these supers off, slip the escapes under 

 another lot of supers, load up our 

 honey after scraping off any wax from 

 the underside, and leave without the 

 bees hardly knowing what has hap- 

 pened. 



What a change! And the old dry 

 goods boxes lie unused, and it is as 

 easy now to go to an out-yard and get 

 a load of honey as to go into the fields 

 to get a load of hay, and not much 

 more danger of getting stung if we are 

 careful; and all comes from the use of 

 " bee-escapes." But not all improve- 

 ments are perfect at first. The first 

 steam locomotive was a plaything com- 

 pared to our modern engines. We had 

 bee-escapes before the " Porter" was 

 brought out, but they were crude corn- 

 pared to this popular escape. That it 

 is not quite perfect seems evident 

 since we often find the bees slow in 

 leaving the super. 



Mr. Geo. A. Boyum, in the American 

 Bee Journal for August, 1914, suggests 

 an improvement that is supposed to 

 hasten the pace of the bees leaving the 

 super, which may prove of some value. 

 Permit me to introduce to the readers 

 of the American Bee Journal another 

 bee-escape, gotten up by a friend of 

 mine, that is even simpler and cheaper, 

 and I believe will work more satis- 

 factorily. I enclose a draft of it that it 

 may be more easily understood. It is 

 little more than a specially constructed 

 honey-board and can be used as a 

 honey-board or escape at the will of 

 the bee-master. In fact, my friend uses 

 it on his hives nearly the year around 

 as a honey-board. 



It is a board with a rim one inch 

 deep and IJs inches thick, forming a 

 a shallow box one inch deep, the size 

 of the top of the brood chamber. 

 Through one end of this rim a ^s-inch 

 hole is bored with a bit, and a piece of 

 wire-cloth that has been rolled around 

 a lead pencil or other '4-inch roll, in- 

 serted into the hole, and we have a 

 complete bee-escape. The wire-cloth 

 roll should be -S-inches long. When 

 used as a honey-board pull out the wire 

 tube and insert in its place a little wad 

 of paper or cotton, or a cork, and you 

 have the best kind of a honey-board. 

 When covered by a telescopic cover, 

 which all single-walled hives should 



have, it forms a dead-air space on top 

 of the brood-chamber, protecting it 

 from the cold of winter and early 

 spring, or the excessive heat of mid- 

 summer. There are other uses to 

 which it can be put, but I will not men- 

 tion them at this time. 



As an escape, after a super is placed 

 over it, there is no passage to the 

 brood-chamber or odor coming up 

 through it to the bees in the super. 

 The wire tube lets in some light when 

 the bees are not passing out through 

 it, so they recognize at once the e.xit 

 and pile out about as fast as they can 

 when once they realize their isolated 

 condition. It might be thought that 

 there is danger of the bees coming 

 back and entering the super, but they 

 do not, as the small size of the tube 

 and sharp ends of the wire make it very 

 difficult if not impossible to enter 

 through it; so they content themselves 

 in trying to get in at the base of the 

 tube where the arrows are shown. 



Middlebury, Vt. 



The Charm of an English 

 Apiary 



BY A. H. BOWEN. 



THE Cotswold Hills of sunny Glou- 

 cestershire are noted for some- 

 thing else beside their villages of 

 Gothic quaintness, the upland scenery 

 and the trout streams — they are noted 

 for bees and honey. 



It is bee-hives everywhere. They 

 are kept in old-fashioned gardens 

 amongst the rosemary and wild thyme 

 — quaint straw skeps bound by a 

 wooden hoop or two; and you come 

 across them in large apiaries of a hun- 

 dred colonies or more, surrounded by 

 rolling fields of purple sainfoin, of 

 yellow charlock, and the unpretentious 

 white clover, from which the bees 

 gather so much. Usually they are 

 found in th^ shelter of a wood, so that 

 the blasts of winter are tempered, and 

 the bees can sleep in warmth and 

 quietness. 



From the windows of the honey- 

 hous:you can look out at the hives 



stretching away like long white lines 

 in the distance, and at no time of the 

 year do they look better than when 

 tiered with the heavily laden supers. 



Every month from spring onward 

 brings its work in the Cotswold apiary. 

 The first examination of the year is a 

 particularly interesting one. On arrival 

 the smoker is primed from a box of 

 decayed wood, and veils are put on; 

 for the examination of the hives may 

 entail some stings before it is over. 

 The brood-nests are examined to see 

 if the queen is all right and food plen- 

 tiful, clean floor boards are substituted 

 for soiled ones, and new hives for 

 those that are leaky, or in need of 

 repairs. 



Then comes the time for adding the 

 supers, and the long, hot lune days 

 when the bees begin to swarm, and you 

 have many a climb among the branches 

 of the sycamore tree, reclaiming those 

 that lodged higher than the rest. Dur- 

 ing the height of the season work is 

 often carried into the night ; the ex- 

 tracting of honey goes on merrily 

 within the honey house. 



The charm of Cotswold apiary is in 

 its quietness, its peacefulness, when the 

 bees and birds revel in the sweet sum- 

 mer sunshine ; and the bee-master him- 

 self may enjoy the wealth and beauty 

 of nature's glorious handiwork. 



Cheltenham, England. 



Alfalfa in Italy 



BY D. B.\R0NE. 



WITH growing interest I am read- 

 ing " Notes from Abroad," as 

 perhaps do all the readers of the 

 American Bee Journal. Nothing worthy 

 of remark was unobserved by the edi- 

 tor's scrutinizing eyes. So the smallest 

 act of dutiful hospitality by the Euro- 

 pean beekeepers had echo in your 

 mind. 



"What a pleasure it is to find so 

 hearty a welcome! The Italians are 

 hospitable." I, Italian by birth, mind 

 and hearth, know how much truth is in 

 your words. I hope many will follow 

 your e.xample when the calm takes the 

 place of the hurricane, which, by its 



A COTTAGER'S APIARY I.N GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND 



