GENEEAL 



BEEKEEPING ON 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



^PONDENCE 



THE 

 HOME 



LACHICOLA 

 MADE HIVES 



BY E. R. ROOT 



Last spring, while 1 was visiting our boys 

 who were managing our bees at Randlett's 

 Landing, I took a number of excursions up 

 and down the river with Mr. Marchant. On 

 one of these trips I visited Mr. R. L. Tucker, 

 who formerly owned Randlett's Landing, 

 where he kept bees for several years. He 

 has since carried on the beekeeping further 

 down the river. The weather was cold the 

 day of my visit in March, and a good warm 

 fire in his workshop, even if it was in Flor- 

 ida, seemed very comfortable. I did not 

 have with me my camera at that time or I 

 should have been very 

 glad to give you an- 

 o' her picture of him in 

 his present location. 1 

 sliowed his apiary at 

 Randlett's in Glean- 

 ings, pages 81 and 82 

 for the year 1912. It 

 is sufficient at this time 

 to say he is one of the 

 old-timers. He has 

 sUidied carefully all 

 local conditions, and 

 he has apparently 

 made a. success of the 

 business. 



On another one of 

 these excursions up 

 the river I had the 

 pleasure of meeting an 

 Ohio beekeeper, a re- 

 tired business man of Toledo, who spends his 

 winters in Florida keeping bees to the extent 

 of several hundred colonies. When Mr. 

 Marchant and I arrived there he was out in 

 his " workshop," which was outdoors, where 

 he was busy making hives with the aid of 



a single-cylinder gasoline-engine which he 

 had taken from an old Cadillac automobile, 

 jjumber is cheap down in this country; and 

 wliile it is not equal to white pine for hives, 

 nor as light to handle when made up, it does 

 very well. Fig. 1 will show his rig. 



In this connection it is proper to remark 

 that an old discarded automobile will often 

 furnish a fairly good engine, even though 

 the running-gear is completely worn out or 

 out of date. Some of these old single-cylin- 

 der motors, such as are found in the Cadillac 

 and the old Olds, make very good stationary 



Fig. 1.- 



FlG. 2. — Sumiii'MficId's gasoline-cruiser in which 

 he and his farailv went from Toledo by rail and 

 water to Apalachicola, Fla. 



F. W. Summerfield's beehive shop driven with an old 

 single-cylinder automobile engine. 



engines; at least Mr. Summerfield, who is 

 of a mechanical turn of mind, was getting 

 good service out of his old Cadillac. When 

 one of these engines is detached from the 

 automobile frame and radiator a substitute 

 of course must be used for cooling the water. 

 A common barrel with proper connections, 

 as shown in the illustration, does the work 

 very nicely. 



Our friend is rather fond of machinery 

 and boats. He has a regular gasoline-cruiser 

 whicli he brought from Toledo in which is 

 mounted an up-to-date four-cylinder four- 

 cycle automobile engine. When he went to 

 Florida the first time he put his cruiser, Fig. 

 2, on a big flat car, and he and his family 

 rode in it all the way to the nearest point 

 where they could get into the river. Then 

 tlie boat and all was put into the water, 

 when he and liis family went the rest of the 



