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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



November, 1919 



c 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



Grace Allen 



FOR two peo- 

 ple to work 

 together at 

 the same hive is 

 "sociable like," 

 Dr. Miller, as 

 you suggest, 

 page 674. But 

 the two I know 

 the most about 



don 't find that system quite such a time- 

 saver as Miss Fowls does. It ought to be 

 (and of course can be), but you see it can 

 be so very sociable that the sociability itself 

 takes part of the time. But who cares? Not 

 these two sideliners! 



For that matter, even if sideline beekeep- 

 ers didu 't want to take a certain amount of 

 fun as they go, they almost have to do it 

 in self-defense. It's about their only com- 

 fort when they realize how vigorously some 

 of the professionals are opposed to them. 

 Haven 't you noticed how they slam us oc- 

 casionally? Well for us that we keep our 

 consciences clear — use factory hiv^es and 

 clean up foul brood when we get it and 

 keep the grass cut and read the journals 

 and sell our honey for the top price. Even 

 after we 've done all this, some of them 

 won 't let us play in their back yards. That 's 

 why we have to play in our own. And what 

 a good time we have doing it! 



* * * 



It has been interesting to note how much 

 darker than usual the honey has been around 

 here this season. Everyone thinks it is due 

 chiefly to the rather light clover flow that 

 followed a heavy fall flow; so that in practi- 

 cally every yard left-over aster honey was 

 mixed, in extracting, with this year 's clover 

 and locust. That makes it seem quite pos- 

 sible to leave too much honey on the hives 

 in the fall. There is a general tendency 

 among beekeeper writers to advise heavier 

 and heavier winter stores, some asserting 

 there is no such thing as too much. Per- 

 haps not, for the bees; perhaps so, for the 

 beekeeper. At any rate, it behooves him to 

 be careful the next year about mixing the 

 inferior fall honey with the high-grade prod- 

 uct of the summer. 



In our little home yard, several of our 

 hives, by late September, had a shallow 

 super sealed solid, with bright yellow cap- 

 pings, filled with late summer honeys, prob- 

 ably chiefly smartweed, boneset, and bitter- 

 weed, with the bitterweed so predominating 

 as to spoil it completely as a table honey. 

 We had more of it than ever before, and it 

 seems increasing rapidly. It came in July 

 and lasted till nearly October. Waste spaces 

 were bright with it. Now the aster flow is 

 on, further out in the country, promising 

 to be nearly as generous as last year, which 

 was a record-breaker. We don 't get much 

 aster here at home. 



* * * 



One day last week I was watching Rebec- 

 ca — remember Rebecca? — drawing water at 

 the sink. She was so quickly thru and away, 



1 



and then so 

 quickly back, 

 that I gathered 

 together a chair, 

 a watch, some 

 hand work and 

 the slate that 

 the favorite 

 neighborhood 

 baby so delights 

 in, and sat down to watch and take notes. 

 For 35 minutes I was uninterrupted; during 

 that time she made eight visits. It was in- 

 teresting to notice that she entered the 

 porch from the south end, and, when leaving, 

 swerved out into the open from the east 

 side. 



There was practically no variation in the 

 length of the periods she was at the sink 

 getting water — it was almost an exact min- 

 ute each time. The ti'ip to the hive and 

 back usually took about three minutes, but 

 it varied from two minutes to nearly seven. 

 I tried in my imagination to see what she 

 did there in the hive. But I couldn 't, be- 

 cause I don 't know. Nectar, carried in the 

 honey-stomach, is emptied into the cells. Is 

 water carried the same way? And is it then 

 given directly to larvae, or placed in cells? 

 The former, I suppose. I never heard of 

 their storing it. 



I didn 't touch Rebecca that day at all, 

 not wanting to interfere with her regular 

 plans. But another day we became quite 

 chummy. (I do hope no one will tell Dr. 

 Phillips I said that!) Time after time I 

 stroked her gently, down the wings and 

 back, while she was getting the water, and 

 she didn't mind a bit; or, if she did, she 

 was too polite to betray the fact. And she 

 kept on coming back. 



But one day the Favorite Baby and I 

 found her in a pitiful state. All wet and 

 bedraggled, she was trying weakly, to crawl 

 out of some water there in the sink. I 

 think some one must have deluged her, per- 

 haps with water either hot or soapy. I held 

 my finger out to her and she crawled up 

 gratefully. Not, of course, because she knew 

 it was my finger! — and friendly. It was 

 just something dry and convenient. (Tell 

 Dr. Phillips this — if you tell him any!) 

 I carried her into the sunshine, and finally 

 left her on the porch rail. The next day I 

 saw her twice. And never since. Probably 

 the short life was shortened still more by 

 the hard experience that day in the sink. 



When you try to realize the uncountable 

 numbers of living things in the world, those 

 that fly and those that walk, those that 

 swim and those that crawl, doesn't it sober 

 you a little, thinking of the hard things that 

 keep happening to them? But surely they'd 

 rather live and take what comes, than not 

 to live. Living is so wonderful. 

 s * * 



Friends of ours, recently leaving Nash- 

 ville for residence in Colorado, were deter- 

 mined to take their sideline bees with them. 

 They positively declined to sell them here 



