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THE AMERICAN BEE JOLHrNAL. 



Sept. 17, 1903. 



( 



Contributed Articles 



) 



Carbolic Acid for Getting Swarms Down 

 from Trees. 



BY A. C. F. BARTZ. 



THE instructions given in the item on page 510, are very 

 good, as far as they go, but after having read the whole 



it makes me feel kind of sorry for those people who are 

 too old to climb, and especially the bee-keeping sisters, for 

 it is out of the question for a lady to strap on a pair of 

 climbers, pruning shears, bucksaw, claw-hammer, or per- 

 haps a whole carpenter shop, climb up a tree and saw off a 

 limb, tie it to a rope, get tangled up in the rope herself, 

 slip, and probably be fastened to the tree, and may be make 

 it necessary for some one else to take down bee-keeper, 

 swarm, and cabinet shop. And for these reasons I gave my 

 experience of recent date to the bee-keeping world, and I am 

 sure many of the readers, after trying it, will be satisfied, 

 and never make an attempt to get a swarm out of a tree too 

 tall to be conveniently reached from the ground by climb- 

 ing it. 



Then, too, how many swarms do not alight on a limb 

 that can be cut off and carried down, but will string out on 

 the trunk of a tree five or six feet or more ? And it was 

 one of those troublesome, hard-to-hive ones which caused 

 my noddle to get down to hard thinking. 



It was a tremendously large swarm which plastered it- 

 self to a tall tree, about 20 feet above ground, and, I tell 

 you, I dreaded to climb the tree, and even if I did I did not 

 know how to get the swarm off unless I took the smoker 

 and smoked them off, as I have done many times. But, 

 then, I would have to climb the tree. When all at once the 

 thought struck me, " Bees are afraid of carbolic acid." No 

 sooner had I thought of it when I sent my ten-year-old boy 

 to get a 2-ounce bottle of carbolic acid, while I got two poles, 

 one 10 feet and the other 16 feet long, and nailed the two to- 

 gether, which made a pole about 24 feet long ; but a fish- 

 pole, or any other light pole, will do better. 



I took a piece of cloth about 4 feet square, folded it up 4 

 times, so that it made a piece of cloth folded about a foot 

 square. I tacked it on the pole in two places, top and bot- 

 tom, as it might be in the center of the cloth, thus leaving 

 the two sides of the cloth hanging loose, something like a 

 stiff cloth hanging over a pole. 



Then I poured the two ounces of carbolic acid on the 

 cloth, raised the pole lip and brought the now carbolized 

 cloth over the swarm on the tree at its highest point, and 

 gently passed it down the tree as the bees fled from the 

 cloth, when, in less than S minutes, I had the swarm almost 

 in a solid bunch. 



But I was not satisfied. I proceeded to follow them up 

 with the cloth, being careful not to kill any. But, my I how 

 they got out of that tree. It made me laugh when they 

 came down and lit on another tree, so I could easily hive 

 them standing on the ground. 



Now, some one might object to this procedure for fear 

 of losing the swarm by its going to the woods. But 

 judging from the many swarms I have smoked out of 

 trees, and never having lost one in this way, I feel safe to 

 say that a swarm does not leave if disturbed shortly after 

 alighting, but sticks to the first place it first settled on, or 

 very near to it. And, furthermore, I do not handle swarms 

 of this kind very gently, that is, swarms coming out of the 

 regular order of management with virgin queens, which I 

 should think would have a tendency to make them leave if 

 that was their nature, on being driven off from the first 

 place they settled on. 



The next time I try the acid I shall use a large sponge 

 instead of the cloth, but shall never climb another tree to 

 take a swarm down. 



I made another experiment with the acid on a swarm, 

 out from which I wanted to take the virgin queens. I put 

 the swarm into an empty hive with a queen-excluder above 

 and below, and tried to smoke the bees out of the hive in 

 order to find the queen ; but the bees refused to leave the 

 hive on being smoked, but would, if smoked from the top, 

 go down to the bottom, and if smoked from the botton would 

 go to the top. Some of them of course flew, but enough of 



them of course stuck to the hive to make the procedure a 

 long, tiresome job, if not a total failure. Then I thought I 

 would play a little trick on them, and took the acid cloth 

 from the pole above mentioned, raised up the hive, zinc and 

 all, and pushed the cloth spread out under the hive and let 

 it down on it, when at once the bees started to the top away 

 from the acid. But there I was with the smoker, and gave 

 them no chance to cluster, but they left the hive as though 

 a panic struck them, excepting the drones and queens, 

 which could not escape. 



The bees went to the hive from which they swarmed — 

 just what I wanted — as I did not see them issue, and I in- 

 tended to put them back again ; and anyway it will be seen 

 in this last procedure I " killed two birds with one stone" — 

 I got the bees back to their home, and I had the queens 

 and all the drones in the swarm also caged. 



I now covered up the hive with the drones and queens 

 in it, thinking that I would dispose of then at dusk, but 

 had forgotten about it, and in the morning, when I found 

 the hive still covered up in the yard, I opened it at once, 

 and found everything dead in it. This, of course, was more 

 than I expected or intended to do. I think that the fumes 

 of the acid killed them very slowly, although it frightens 

 them terribly. I would not advise the use of the drug for 

 the purpose of killing drones, unless we learn from some of 

 our professors that that drug makes short work of destroy- 

 ing bee-life. Chippewa Co., Wis., Aug. 11. 



Getting Both Increase and Honey— Other 

 Matters. 



BY J. E. JOHNSON. ' 



WHITE clover bloom was fine, and yielded well. Bass- 

 wood was a failure, but we did not need it. There is 

 a little white clover yet. Simpson honey-plant 

 grows wild here, but it is not very valuable; also mother- 

 wort, but it does not attract bees as does catnip. My bees 

 are still storing honey in shallow extracting-combs, but are 

 not doing much in supers where they have to build comb ; 

 this is mostly from catnip and sweet clover, and smartweed 

 just beginning to bloom. 



Now, I see that the question is often asked of Dr. Miller. 

 How can I increase my bees rapidly and still get lots of 

 honey ? As I started last spring with 12 colonies, and 

 wanted both honey and increase, I formed a plan how to get 

 both, which worked well. This is how I did it : 



I found in early spring that my bees were nearly starv- 

 ing. I then fed them with candy, as per Abbott's plan, un- 

 til it was warm enough to feed syrup. The most of the col- 

 onies were weak in bees, with little or no honey. I fed them 

 every evening only about a half pint of syrup, some less 

 than that. White clover promised to be abundant. By the 

 time fruit-blossoms came out I had nearly all colonies ready 

 for supers. I then put on one super with shallow extract- 

 ing-frames containing for starters two-inch strips of foun- 

 dation with quilt above to keep warm. During a cold spell 

 in fruit-bloom I fed again every evening for nearly a week, 

 increasing the feed as the bees became stronger, always 

 above the brood-nest, and always just at dusk of evening. I 

 also kept entrances contracted during cool weather. White 

 clover and raspberry came in bloom about the same time, 

 white clover being two weeks earlier than usual, and May 

 15 found me with a good honey-flow on, from both white 

 clover and raspberry, and bees enough to fill two supers in 

 nearly all 12 colonies. 



I then soon began to slip an empty super under the top 

 one. By June 1, the brood-chamber of the 8-frame Lang- 

 stroth dovetailed hive was nearly filled with brood, and 

 from one-half to three-fourths of the super of shallow 

 frames. I then gave some another super next to the shal- 

 low frames. Everything worked well until a rainy spell 

 struck us, and for eight days we had three or four warm 

 showers every day ; as usual, under such circumstances, the 

 swarming- fever struck the bees. They would work for dear 

 life between showers, and swarm. 



By this time most of the colonies filled three or four 

 supers with bees, and were capping the first supers. I then 

 put another empty super on top, to give room, but the 

 swarming still continued — nearly all swarmed three times, 

 and I just let them swarm, but put back all fourth swarms. 

 When two swarms would come out at once I would cover 

 one hive up tight with a blanket, and, as Dr. Gandy says, 

 they would immediately quit coming out, and would not 



