342 



November, 1912. 



American ^ac Joarnalj 



great many bee-keepers — especially be- 

 ginners — -and which cannot be too 

 strongly emphasized, " In union there 

 is strength." It is the rousing colonies 

 that produce the honey. And what 

 makes rousing colonies ? Prolific 

 queens ! Queens which fill, with brood 

 and eggs, the whole length and breadth 

 of the brood-frames. When you find 

 the brood-cells scattered — with empties 

 between — the quicker you get rid of 

 that queen the better. One of the hard- 

 est things for a new bee-keeper to do 

 is to part with his queens, even if they 

 are old and worthless. But an old, 

 worn-out queen is a burden, and you 

 might as well make up your mind to 

 drop her. When a new queen comes 

 along, prolific, clean limbed, filling the 

 brood-cells solidly, then you see the 

 uselessness of keeping an old queen 

 "for the good she has done." 



Every experienced bee-keeper knows 

 how difficult the task is of getting all 

 the old colonies in strong enough con- 

 dition to enter the supers at the be- 

 ginning of the clover bloom. It is safe 

 to assume that any one who follows 

 Mr. Allen's suggestions will have 100 

 percent of his colonies strong and 

 well prepared to gather the nectar 

 "that will surely come stalking across 

 the plains some few days each season," 

 as Mr. Allen poetically puts it. 



Any system that will give us rousing 

 colonies, and the strongest force of 

 workers right at the beginning of the 

 harvest, cannot fail to give us full su- 

 pers. Twenty-five strong colonies will 

 store more surplus honey than a hun- 

 dred weaklings ; therefore, all colonies 

 that are not in a condition to work in 

 the supers at the beginning of the 

 honey-flow should be united with 

 others. 



There is no excuse for any bee- 

 keeper to allow any part of his apiary 

 to remain unproductive by neglecting 

 to attend to a few easy, simple details 

 that will secure large crops of surplus 

 honey. Any one can easily acquire 

 the necessary skill who has the energy 

 to read such priceless articles as those 

 referred to above. 



Mr. Allen's suggestion of removing 

 surplus and uncapped honey from the 

 brood-chamber to prevent the crowd- 

 ing of the same with honey at the be- 

 ginning of the laying season, is inval- 

 uable ; but to how many beginners 

 would this occur ? 



The writer recently visited a small 

 apiary whose owner was the son of an 

 old bee-keeper, but he had never heard 

 of the American Bee Journal, and said 

 that he did not know that bee-papers 

 were published. This bee-keeper, if he 

 may be called one, had hives with mov- 

 able frames, but the frames were so 

 knitted together that it was impossible 

 to remove a single one of them from 

 the hives. They had not been lifted 

 out for years, and some of them never. 

 Something was the matter with his 

 bees, but he could not tell what. A 

 glance at the entrance of some of the 

 hives, or raising the covers was all that 

 an experienced bee-keeper needed to 

 do in order to correctly diagnose the 

 condition of the bees. Old, worn-out 

 queens ! They did not swarm last 

 year because there was no honey, and 

 this year they were too weak to at- 

 tempt to propagate their species. 



"Swarm Prevention," by Louis H. 

 Scholl, of Texas; "Closing the Sea- 

 son," by G. M. Doolittle; " How to Get 

 Bees Started in the Supers," by the 

 Editor; and " (Jueen-Rearing and In- 

 crease," by J. J. Wilder, of Georgia, in 

 the August number, are also some of 

 the best articles that have ever ap- 

 peared in any bee-publication. That 

 number was surely an "august" issue, 

 in quality as well as name. 



These varied experiences, sugges- 

 tions and interchange of ideas, dove- 

 tailed together, round out the progres- 

 sive bee-keeper and make him suc- 

 cessful. 



Kansas City, Mo. 



The "Auto" for Bee-Keepers 



Delivered deli*re the S^in Hernardirio County Bee- 

 Keepers Club at Redlands, Calif ., 



BY GEO. L. EMERSON. 



The first cost will be from $500 up. 

 The operating expense varies from % 

 to IK cents a mile, and the mechanical 

 expense should not exceed $20 a year 

 for the first .5 years, to which you must 

 add the price of a new set of tires, for 

 the average man will about use up a 

 set a year. 



It is practical to buy a second-hand 

 machine and rebuild it to suit the bee- 

 man's needs. It is necessary, if you 

 are not posted in automobiles, to get 

 the services of an expert to examine 

 the machine and pass on its worth and 

 suitabilityforrebuildingfor your needs. 

 Do not hesitate to get a machine be- 

 cause you do not know anything about 

 one, for they are coming into such 

 common use that it will soon be a very 

 great inconvenience not to understand 

 the handling and ordinary care of a 

 machine. As fast as the auto is adapted 

 to certain uses, it is found so much 

 more satisfactory than the horse that 

 usually the horse is never used again. 



Among all the commercial needs, I 

 know of none to which the " gas 

 wagon" is so necessary as to the pro- 

 duction of honey. There are two points 

 of advantage that stand out prominently 

 in our calling that need not be con- 

 sidered in other lines. First, stings 

 won't hurt it and make it run away, 

 kick your head off or lie down and die ; 

 consequently you can haul all your 

 supplies right up to the honey house 

 and unload them at your pleasure and 

 move them away with the same ease. 

 The second is, that it saves so much 

 time in the rush season. In a business 

 like ours, where we harvest our entire 

 crop in the course of a few weeks, any 

 convenience of equipment that will 

 help us to save time will often mean 

 more honey; for, who of us is there 

 that has not had considerable loss at 

 one time or another by not being able 

 to keep up with the pace that the bees 

 set '. The heaviest extracting that I 

 ever had was gathered in 4 days, and 

 it was capped solid (black sage). 



The auto is of special value in mov- 

 ing bees; in fact, it removes the most 

 disagreeable features, and is very much 

 easier on the bees. The jolting does 

 not last so long, and a corresponding 

 amount of honey is saved as the bees 

 keep themselves gorged with honey 

 only as long as tlie motion is con- 

 tinued. I have loaded l.j colonies of 



bees, moved them 12 miles, and put 

 them in the apiary on the new stands 

 in 1 hour and l.j minutes. It was all 

 done in the cool of the morning, there 

 being not much chance of the combs 

 melting down. Where horses are used 

 about bees, it is a two-man job ; this 

 is not necessarily so with the auto. 



One man, with an auto carrying 10 

 cases of honey at a time, will haul 

 more honey to the station than two 

 men with a 4-horse team. If at night, 

 the machine has not snowed the 

 horses under too far, put on a night 

 shift and keep it going, as it is not 

 tired out. It may also be sent to town 

 at night for a load of provisions, or 

 cases and cans. With us, the auto with 

 4 men now does the same work that 

 required 8 men and 6 horses, and the 

 work is better done. We have 1300 

 colonies in 8 apiaries. 



It is practical to use your moter to 

 drive your hive-making machinery, 

 pump water, saw wood, or any other 

 power use, and in this way make it 

 earn something whilethe bees are idle, 

 but if you want to lay it aside, how 

 much cheaper it is to run it in the shed 

 and give it no more attention than to 

 take care of and feed the horses! 



Few people have grasped the idea 

 that the gasoline power is the horse of 

 tomorrow. Two men with a large 

 tractor can do more plowing than a 

 number of men with 30 heads of horses. 

 The small orchardist with ."j to 20 acres 

 of land must have a team, but there 

 is not enough work to keep it busy 

 more than half of the time, and the rest 

 of the time they are eating their heads 

 off. This is not so with tlie gas tractor, 

 the expense stops when you put it in 

 the shed. Besides, a machine has no 

 will of its own ; it will not reach up to 

 browse on a tree, or perhaps run the 

 cultivator into another tree and knock 

 off the bark. While cultivating it does 

 not stand on the vegetables; it does 

 not get tired and have to rest every 

 other round. 



On a small farm or orchard a small 

 machine can do anything that a horse 

 can, and do it better and cheaper, but 

 this machine should be so arranged 

 that it will have the different imple- 

 ments attached to a sub-frame which 

 is controlled from the operator's seat. 

 A machine may take the place of all 

 other farming implements by simply 

 attaching the kind of tool you wish to 

 work with. Growing hay for horses is 

 a waste; let us use that ground for 

 something we can eat ourselves. 



Los Angeles, Calif. 



Bright and Coated Nails 



UY WM. MUTH-RASSMUSSEN. 



In the March number of the .Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal I noticed the article 

 on nails for the covers of comb-honey 

 cases. I have always used the plain 

 (not cement-coated) nails, but have to 

 buy them specially for this purpose. I 

 have just been looking over several 

 supply catalogs, and none of them 

 quote any but cement-coated nails, ex- 

 cept the very smallest sizes, '4 to fs 

 inch. 



This is a fault of the supply-dealers, 

 and should be remedied. For covers 

 of honey-cases there should be used Yi, 



