Vol. XVII. 



AUG. 15, 1889, 



No. 16. 



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OUT-APIARIES, NO XII. 



NUMBERING HIVES -RECORD BOOKS. 



TN the main, the management of an out-apiary 

 fa! does not differ from tliat of any other; and af t- 

 W er years of experience you have had in the 



"*• home apiary you are pretty well settled in 

 your plans. 1 will, however, offer some sug- 

 gestions to any whose experience is yet very limit- 

 ed, as to some of the things that may be especially 

 appropriate for out work, and you can judge wheth- 

 er any of them are worth adopting, for you. Some 

 things, too, may come up that would never be need- 

 ed in home work. 



In numbering hives it will probably be found con- 

 venient to adopt some system by which the num- 

 bers can be easily changed. A satisfactory way is 

 to have tin tags painted white, with black figures 

 on them, fastened on the hives with half-inch wire 

 nails. 



TAG FOR NUMBERING HIVES. 



About4x2 l /£ inches is a good size, with figures 

 two inches long, so that they can be plainly seen at 

 a distance. These tags can be easily changed from 

 one hive to another, and with out-apiaries you may 

 find it very convenient, if not necessary, to change 

 them quite frequently. 



Jt is well to adopt some system of numbering by 

 which you can tell, from the number, to which 

 apiary a colony belongs. A good way is to let the 

 first numbers belong to the home apiary, then the 

 next series to another, and so on. This will be very 

 satisfactory if you never run higher than lOQin. 



each apiary, for then you can tell at a glance that 

 87 belongs in the home apiary. 187 in the Wilson 

 apiary, etc. If you expect that, before fall, some 

 of your apiaries may contain as many as 125 colo- 

 nies, then it may be well to let the numbers 1 to 125 

 belong to the home apiary, 126 to 250 to Wilson's, 

 251 to 375 to Hasti na:s, and so on; but in that case 

 you may not think so quickly whether 380 belongs 

 to the third or fourth apiary. An easier way to dis- 

 tinguish would be to let the first apiary run from 

 1 to 200, and the second from 2J1 to 400. An objec- 

 tion to this whole plan is, that you may feel un- 

 pleasant some day to have some one, on seeing a 

 tag marked 240, ask you, " Why! have you 240 colo- 

 nies?" when in fact you have only half that num- 

 ber. A way to avoid this is to commence at the 

 number 1 at each apiary, preceding it by an initial 

 letter. Then two hives, marked " H 87 " and " B 87," 

 would be recognized as belonging respectively to 

 the home and the Helden apiary. On the whole I 

 think I prefer the simple figures. If you bring all 

 your bees home to winter, you need pay no atten- 

 tion to numbers, but place them next spring indis- 

 criminately. Thus you may find the first row in 

 the home apiary commencing with the numbers 42, 

 17. 183, 260, and so on. Their new numbers are to 

 be 1, 2, 3, 4, but the old numbers should be left on 

 till you have entered them on your record book for 

 this year, and transferred any item you may wish 

 to keep about them, which will usually be only the 

 age of the queen, noting in the new record the 

 number they had the preceding year, so that you 

 can at any time trace back their history. After 

 your record is all straight, then take off all tags and 

 number the hives in order. I am^well aware that 

 many of our best bee-keepers do not keep any rec- 

 ord book, but have little slates, on hives, or a system 

 of stones, etc I suspeot, however, that at least some 

 of them, after establishing out-apiaries, would find 

 advantages In the record system tbatdid not exist sq 



