18 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



JANUAKY, 1919 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



marked this hive by an X. It is beside the 

 apple tree. 



My husband and myself are known to the 

 stage as Hanson & Drew — ^and we are proud 

 to call ourselves beekeepers. 



Mrs. John T. Carlisle. 



Detroit, Mich., Nov. 18. 



A JERSEY SKYSCRAPER 



A Beekeeper Who Believes That the Honey Crop 

 Can be Doubled 



While this part of New Jersey is not an 

 extra-good honey country, yet this year has 

 been exceptionally good, our usual five- 

 weeks' flow from the middle of May to the 

 middle of June being reenforced by an un- 



This colony filled two large supers after this picture 

 was taken, making five large and five small supers 

 besides the brood-chamber, making a hive TA feet 

 high (10 frames), equal to an eight-frame hive nine 

 feet high. 



usual gentle fall flow lasting two months. 

 I am, therefore, sending a photo showing 

 what a happy combination of locality, good 

 season, good queen, good hive, and good 

 beekeeper can accomplish when only a few 

 colonies are kept. 



A few years ago I had boats to let, and 

 two fishermen from the city hired a boat 

 for all day. They had all kinds of fancy 

 lines, poles, hooks, and bait, and during the 

 day they caught two small fish. That after- 

 noon a boy from the town, with a sapling 

 for a pole and a piece of white salt pork, 

 caught a nice mess of fish in a couple of 

 hours. What made the difference? That 

 boy is now Harry Edsall, the owner of the 

 hive shown in the photo, which produced 

 400 pounds of honey this year, while the 

 colony of his next-door neighbor produced 

 less than 10 pounds. What made this differ- 

 ence? The fisherboy used a bait that could 

 be easily seen by the fish; put it in a part 

 of the pond where there were some fish at 

 that time of the day, and moved it around 

 so the fish could not see what it was, and 

 they grabbed it because it moved at just the 

 right speed. The beekeeper put his bait 

 just where he wanted the honey, and kept 

 moving it just ahead of the demand of the 

 bees. He watched the bees and knew what 

 they were feeding on, and knew when the 

 honey flow would begin and when it would 

 stop. Then he knew from sad experience 

 the necessity of a good queen, for two years 

 before he had ten good colonies till Euro- 

 pean foul brood struck them, and then he 

 had only two. So his queens are now all 

 Italians from the best breeders. 



As for the hive, just look at it and re- 

 member that the bees had to build half the 

 comb from sheets of foundation. The hive 

 is a regular standard hive with three full- 

 depth supers and five shallow supers. More- 

 over, the colony has filled two full-depth 

 supers since the photo was taken; therefore, 

 in all there are five full-depth, five shallow 

 supers, and one brood-chamber, making a 

 hive 71/4 feet high, or the equivalent of an 

 eight-frame hive nine feet high. Notice 

 how level the hive is — no danger of falling 

 over, and no props needed. The two next- 

 best hives had 150 pounds of honey each. 

 Can it be possible that a good queen can 

 make all the difference between 150 and 400 

 pounds? If .so, then this queen (honey at 

 25 cents) was worth $62.50 more than any 

 of the others, just as a honey-producer, in 

 one year. 



I feel sure that the honey crop of the 

 United States could be doubled if all the 

 beekeepers would get the very best queens, 

 and add new ones every j^ear. Let all de- 

 spondent beekeepers troubled with foul 

 brood take heart and get the very best 

 Italian queens they can. In the last two 

 years I have lost half of my bees by Euro- 



