4U 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REMh-" 



days of luy early enthuBiawm in bee-keeping 

 I eagerly read every thing on the subject that 

 was within reach, and I was so im pressed 

 with the advantages of straw for material 

 for making hive-bodies, that I concluded 

 that, to have the very best, the lirood cham- 

 bers must lie made of straw. I knew that 

 both theory and practice agreetl that a wall 

 of straw, if properly made, is one of the best 

 non-conductors of heat that is cheaply 

 available, so I determined to have the hcsl, 

 and immediately began the task of making 

 a hive of straw that would be suitable to 

 receive movable frames and be adapted to 

 modern surjilus fixtures ; and I soon had a 

 straw hive, beautiful to the eye, light to 

 handle, capable of receiving all modern im- 

 provements, and with but very little increas- 

 ed cost over ordinary brood hives. These 

 hives were made by having a skeleton frame 

 for the body, lined on the inside by strips of 

 wood two inches wide and '4 thick, placed }.3 

 inch apart. Nice, clean, rye straw was then 

 cut in suitable lengths to lay in the frame 

 against these slats so as to make a wall 1^., 

 inches thick. Thin strips of wood were used 

 to cover the ends of straw and another stri[) 

 placed across the middle, and when all was 

 nicely painted we had one of the handsomest 

 hives we ever saw. Taking say so and the- 

 ory for truth, we went to considerable ex- 

 pense for machines to make these hives, for 

 we were quite sure we would have no other. 

 These hives were warm and dry in winter, 

 cool in summer, and seemed to possess all 

 the qualities of a superior brood-hive, but 

 after several year's trial of them on a scale 

 large enough to prove their superiority if 

 they had any, I abandoned them because 1 

 never could or rlid get any more surplus or 

 swarms from them than from single-walled 

 brood-hives of the same size and shape. 



Since then I heard such positive reasons 

 given for the superiority of double-walled 

 hives, packed with chaff, cork and sawdust, 

 that 1 constructed 100 of them in the most 

 careful and thorough manner, but after care- 

 ful trial it came out just the same as with 

 the straw hives, they would give no better re- 

 sults than single-walled hives of the same 

 size and pattern. 



4gain, I thought Mr. Adair's long-idea 

 hive seemed so reasonable that 1 made 20 of 

 them. They were costly, and clumsy to-han- 

 dle, the bees did not winter well in them and 

 I could never get any more honey from them 

 than from ten-frame hives ; m fact I never 



got as much surplus, and I abandoned them 

 as so much wasted lumber. 



I see in O'lraninys that the A. I, Root Co. 

 is pondering over the (juestion of changing 

 eight and ten-frames to twelve or more 

 frames. Friend Root don't do it. I now 

 have ten hives with twelve frames ; twenty 

 hives with sixteen frames and twelve hives 

 with nineteen frames. All the e hives took 

 the same frame as my single, brood-cham- 

 ber ten-frame hive, and I gave them a fair 

 trial alongside the ten-frame hive in the 

 same yard under exactly the same conditions 

 aad they had no superior qualites and many 

 great disadvantages, and they now encum- 

 ber my buildings as useless waste. 



Again, the partly closed-end Hoffman 

 frames, seemed so desirable for moving bees 

 to out yards, that I made some three or four 

 hundred of them for my own use and out- 

 yards, tried them fairly, and am now throw- 

 ing away even the frames in the new hives 

 that have never been used, and replacing 

 them with the wire-end, fixed frames invent- 

 ed thirty years ago. 



Now, none of these five or six kinds of 

 condemned hives were really very bad. I 

 could get good crops of honey wiih them, 

 perhaps just as much as with other favorite 

 hives, but it came at the expense of more 

 work and many disadvantages as compared 

 with plain ten-frame, sixteen- inch-square 

 wire-end, frame hives. One of my former 

 out-yards is new owned by Mr. D. W, Whit- 

 more, my former partner, and that yard is 

 filled up with the wire-end frame handy 

 hives, and has never been burdened with any 

 of the new improvements, and it now con- 

 tains many of the hives made thirty years 

 ago, and this yard has been one of the most 

 successful of any with which 1 have had an 

 interest, and you could not give Mr. Whit- 

 more a Innuired new hives of a different pat- 

 tern and compel him to change to them. 



Now, friends, don't think 1 am writing all 

 this to advertise ray hives, for I assure you 

 1 have no such motive ; my only motive is to 

 show you a guiding star in the lilack dark- 

 ness of conHicting interests and opinions, 

 in regard to the proper thing for beginners, 

 especially, to do. I say to such, do not 

 adopt any liivi* hastily because some inter- 

 ested manufacturer sounds its praise. Such 

 will always tell a plausible story. All the 

 vile patent medicine frauds get that same 

 kind of suppi)rt. Just consider the matter 

 carefully so tliat after your apiary is estab 



