May, 1919 



G L E A N T N S I N P. K F. IM. T U K E 





t'-,-;:^^ 



a'i.FROM THETIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



.«,..:..;,*:.:.. 



FINDING THE QUEEN 



Here is a Way That Saves Time and Eye Strain 

 and Works Without Fail 



The usual way of finding the queen is by 

 the diligent-search method, with aching 

 back and foggy eyes, so that a worker is 

 magnified to the size of a queen, and a drone 

 looks quite respectable. This has been my 

 past experience till I had over 50 queens to 

 find very late last fall when requeening. 

 Necessity called for a quick method. Tak- 

 ing an excluder, I tacked it on the bottom 

 of an extracting super which was placed 

 over a hive body or box. I shook the bees 

 into this super, and all that could passed 

 thru the queen-excluder, going below to 

 cluster. If they were too slow, I set another 

 excluder on top for a cover. A few puffs of 



BEES AWAY UP NORTH 



A queen-excluder tacked on the Ijottom of a super 

 makes a queen-sieve. 



smoke and a good shaking up always started 

 them down. After they were quiet, I took 

 oft" the top excluder, and all the bees remain- 

 ing were drones, the queen, and a few scat- 

 tered workers. 



In the picture the hive at the left repre- 

 sents the colony having the queen to be 

 found, which is set back of the hive-stand, 

 and an empty hive put in its place to receive 

 the frames after shaking all the bees into 

 the super (shown tilted up in the picture for 

 a better view.) Carefully lift out the frames 

 in the center of the hive first. Very often 

 the queen may be found on one of the 

 frames; but after becoming excited she is 

 quite likely to leave the frames and hide in 

 a cluster on the hive wall. After the frames 

 are out, jar the hive body by a sudden jolt 

 on its corner on the ground. The bees then 

 lose their footing, and can be poured like 

 water. It is all more quickly done than 

 told. 



Put your bees thru this strainer to get 

 the little black queen, and then give them a 

 beautiful Italian. Geo. A. Brill. 



Elk Mound, Wis, 



How an Apiary to the Northward of Winnipeg is 

 Successfully Conducted 



For five years I have been in charge of 

 our apiary at St. Norbert, Manitoba, Can., 

 Trappist Monastery. I am not an experienc- 

 ed apiarist. In fact I am yet a novice in the 

 art of keeping bees. Nevertheless, in 1915 

 and 1916 I secured a large crop of honey. 

 Fourteen years ago one of us purchased 

 some bees and became enraptured with the 

 work of beekeeping; and the result of this 

 was that he also purchased 12 ten-frame 

 Langstroth hives of bees from which, dur- 

 ing the next year, he secured 24 swarms, and 

 3,000 pounds of honey. This profit induced 

 him to take up the business of beekeeping 

 as a pursuit. He, therefore, bought a man- 

 ual of bee culture; built a house 18x26; pur- 

 chased a complete beekeeping outfit; and 

 then secured, the first year, a crop of 200 

 pounds of extracted honey per colony. From 

 1904 to 1912 Bro. Anthony had only one 

 poor year, and even then the profit from his 

 colonies was sufficient to pay all expenses. 



You doubtless know that in Manitoba the 

 winter is very long, and, therefore, heavier 

 winter losses are experienced than in the 

 United States. One winter we lost 18 colo- 

 nies out of 75; but during the same year we 

 took 10,000 pounds of honey. 



In 1912 all our hives and colonies were 

 burned in the cellar of our guest-house, 

 where we kept them in winter. We bought 

 .30 other colonies from which we secured 33 

 swarms the first season. This was my first 

 experience with our apiary, and since then 

 I have remained in charge of it. 



In our first wintering we were forced to 

 keep our new colonies in a cellar that was 

 too warm. Dysentery was the result, and I 

 was able to save only 28 colonies. But I 

 gave my bees close and accurate observa- 

 tion and hard study, and now I am glad to 

 tell you that I received a crop of 4,200 

 pounds. During the following winter the 

 cellar was not heated at all, and all the 

 frames became mouldy. However, I saved 

 32 colonies, which increased to 45 and stor- 

 ed 420 pounds of honey. 



The following spring I began with 42 colo- 

 nies. The weather was fine during that 

 spring and summer and I secured an average 

 of more than 250 pounds per colony. The 

 strongest colony gave us 420 jiounds of hon- 

 ey, and several others at least 300 pounds. 

 I also hived more than 20 swarms. 



In 1916 I secured still more honey, but in 

 1917 was far less successful, and every- 

 where around us honey was very scarce, too. 

 The spring of that year was remarkably 

 dry, flowers were scarce, and many had no 



