Nov. 12, 1903. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



725 



[ Convention Proceedings | 



THE LOS ANGELES CONVENTION. 



Report of the Proceeding's of the 34th Annual 



Meeting" of the National Bee-Keepers' 



Association, Held at Los Ang-eles, 



Calif., Aug-. 18, 19 and 20, 



1903. 



(Continued from pajje 711.1 



REMINISCENCES OF BEE-KEEPING AND BEE-KEEP- 

 ERS IN THE EARLY DAYS. 



J. G. Corey — After listening- to the remarks of Mr. Har- 

 bison and Mr. Root, I do not know that I will be able to say 

 anything- that will interest you, but inasmuch as I am called 

 on, I will give you the benefit of some of my early experi- 

 ences in bee-keeping. 



To begin at the beginning, where a man first becomes 

 interested in the pursuit, would be to go back to the year 

 1836. We moved up from the center of the State of Illinois, 

 near the line of the present Illinois Central Railroad. We 

 did not make as good time as they make now, and we were 

 two or three months going up that 200 miles. We landed 

 on the east side of the river, a few miles below Rock Island, 

 and they met us with the ferry boat and ferried us across 

 Rock River. The boat was built by hewing down trees and 

 hewing out the timber. 



We continued our journey, my father not being satis- 

 fied with that country, and we located in Stephenson 

 county, 14 miles north of Freeport, near the northern line 

 of the State of Illinois. We arrived there, I think, about 

 the middle of May, and after building a little cabin, the 

 man that drove our team commenced cutting down the trees 

 in the grove, and splitting up rails to fence our farm. In 

 doing so, he very often came across bee-trees and marked 

 them, and the mark was respected ; and in the fall, when 

 our pork-barrel was empty, we filled it up on chunk honey. 

 We then had enough bee-trees for filling our pork-barrel of 

 some 300 or 400 pounds. We cut them down below the en- 

 trance and above, and set them down on the south side of 

 the fence. We fenced our dooryard in, and I was installed 

 as bee-keeper, to watch those bees when they swarmed, and 

 assist about hiving them. We made our hives out of sec- 

 tions of the basswood or linden tree, and called them 

 "gums." We bored holes in them, and put cross-sticks 

 in them, and split out lumber to make the tops, and sawed 

 little notches for the bees to fly out. That was the primi- 

 tive apiary in Stephenson county. I became interested in 

 bees by watching these bees. Then, afterwards, I assisted 

 a man by the name of Rowe, about 5 or 6 miles from us. He 

 was a Pennsylvania German, who had been a bee-keeper in 

 that primitive style. He maintained that no man could 

 keep 100 colonies of bees. He said he had 99 once, but 

 when he counted them over, some of them had decamped, 

 and he had but 99 still, and he did not believe a man could 

 keep 100 colonies. 



Soon after that a pamphlet fell into my hands, which 

 seemed to have been written by a man who was a little bit 

 " light in the upper story." He claimed to have invented a 

 bee-bellows which would keep the bees in ; the bees would 

 fly out, and all you had to do was to go in there and get out 

 wagon-loads of honey. Not knowing, of course, whether 

 that was so or not, it served to increa;se my interest in bee- 

 keeping. 



I had no opportunity to gratify my desires in that 

 direction until 1859. I was then high up in Plumas county ; 

 the altitude is something a little less than 4000 feet above 

 the sea-level. I picked up a paper and read an account of 

 the invention of a movable-frame hive by Mr. Langstroth, 

 and a review of his book. I soon obtained a copy of his 

 book, and it cost me S4.00 or $5.00. I think it cost me SI. 00 

 express from San Francisco up. I read that book with a 

 great deal of attention and care. 



In December (I was then acting as County Treasurer of 

 Plumas county), I went to Sacramento to settle with the 

 State Treasurer. Of course, as I had become interested in 

 bees, I was told of Mr. Harbison. I went out to his place, 



but did not find him at home. I was told that a colony of 

 bees would cost me something like S200 to S250. Hut that 

 didn't make an difference. 



After that I went down to San Francisco to have some 

 books made for the county. As the facilities for book- 

 binding were not very perfect, it took two or three weeks to 

 get the books made up. Meantime I was looking around 

 for bees. I picked up a paper and found an auction notice 

 of some bees that had come across the Isthmus of Panama, 

 and the owner had left them in the hands of the Wells- 

 Fargo Express Company, and they were to be sold for the 

 charges. I looked them over, and when they were put up 

 for sale I bid in two colonies at $35 apiece. When the auc- 

 tion was over a man came to me and told me he lived in 

 Oakland, and that he had been buying some tees that had 

 come across the Isthums of Panama ; that he had trans- 

 ferred them and built them up, and they were in good 

 shape. He asked me what I proposed to do with them. He 

 said, " You ship them over to Oakland, and we will see what 

 there is to them." Well, I did so, and we found they were 

 very weak, but both had queens. 



He made a proposition to sell me a box about 12 inches 

 square, with the combs fastened in so they would not move. 

 The box was made of cracker-box lumber about ^s of an 

 inch thick. It suited my notion on account of high altitude 

 and heavy transportation. So I made a bargain with him, 

 and paid him " boot money," and let him have mine at $35 

 and took his colony at $100. 



I took that colony up on the steamer, and when we got 

 to Marysville, a man told me the country was getting full 

 of bees, and he didn't see why I wanted to pay such a price. 

 He said there was a man named Kennedy out there who 

 had, I think, 65 colonies. Perhaps he had divided or sub- 

 divided them until they did not seem very strong. But they 

 were working very nicely. However, I took my colony on 

 the stage, and went up to Bidwell's Bar. I owned an inter- 

 est in a saddle-train connected with the Feather River Ex- 

 press. Our facilities for transportation were rather imper- 

 fect, and we went up to the nearest place called Buck Eye 

 Ranch, and from there over, and the mountain was covered 

 with a great deal of snow, in some places 25 to 30 feet deep. 

 My partner was there with me, and we got ourselves across 

 the mountains. I had my colony of bees, and he had some 

 express matters. 



I took along some honey, and mixed that up and dashed 

 in a little honey once in awhile, and let the colony rest on a 

 window-sill where the bees could fly out into the yard. The 

 choke-cherries soon blossomed there, I think about the lat- 

 ter part of February or the first of March. My bees built 

 up very rapidly, and on June 6, 1860, my first swarm came 

 out. Court was then in session. They flew out and up on 

 a pine tree, and the man who went after them said the tree 

 was 95 feet high, and he charged me $5.00 ! He tied a cord 

 around his waist, as he would lower a body on a rope. He 

 would cut the limbs away below and let himself down. 

 When court adjourned, we came out and saw this colony of 

 bees hived. Then, having read Langstroth a little, I made 

 a sub-division of this colony, and at the end of the season I 

 had six colonies of bees in good shape. I was offered $1.00 

 a pound for honey very often, but I wanted to build up the 

 bees. 



Soon after that I received notice of my father's death, 

 I sold my six colonies of bees for $600. The man is living 

 there in that country now. It is said that bee-keepers are 

 quite long-lived, but many of us are getting so old that we 

 are not able to do very much in the business. 



I located in Ventura county in 1874, and bought a half 

 interest in about 100 colonies of bees, hived in Langstroth 

 hives. We did not have any foundation then. He did not 

 know what he could do, though. I bought a half interest 

 in them, and paid him at the rate of $8.00 a colony for them. 

 I transferred them in the spring of 1875. I gathered up 

 bees around there. Then I went to San Francisco on busi- 

 ness and tried to get some of the Harbison section -boxes. 

 They told me Mr. Harbison had moved to San Diego, and 

 all he had were down there. But I found a man named 

 Weatherby who made me some section-boxes, which he 

 called the " Weatherby Modification," but they were vir- 

 tually the Harbison section-boxes. I bought of him sec- 

 tion-boxes and packing-cases, and produced 12 tons of 

 honey in the Harbison boxes, and 8 tons of extracted 

 honey. My extracted honey sold for 10 cents, and comb 

 honey at 18 cents. I still own some bees there. 



My success has been variable, sometimes very good, 

 and at other times not so good. We have had a series of 

 poor years, but still we stick to it, and the old bee-keepers, 

 somehow or another, can not entirely shake it off so as to 



