THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



get some entrance guards made of Dr. Tin- 

 ker'' s drone excluding zinc and place over the 

 entrance to each colony, these will allow the 

 queen to pass out and return Ijut keep the 

 drones in the hive. If the bees are not gath- 

 ering honey, I would, about noon, feed the 

 colony having the Italian drones to induce 

 them to fly freely. 



In my opinion it will pay the honey pro- 

 ducers to follow the above plan and re-queen 

 his entire apiary each fall, even if he keeps 

 black bees. Good young queens to com- 

 mence the season with add greatly to the 

 chance of getting a good honey crop. I fol- 

 low the above myself and it pays me, though 

 I re-queen so late in the fall that but a few 

 young queens begin to lay before spring, but 

 I would not advise everyone to wait that 

 late. I have said nothing about how to rear 

 the queens, because any one thinking of rear- 

 ing their own queens should get a book de- 

 voted to that subject, as there is too much to 

 be treated in a bee journal. 



Unionville, Mo. Jan. 9, 189.5. 



Twenty - Five Years of Experiments in Bee- 



Keeping. Some Modern Implements 



in Embryo. 



B. TAYLOK. 



f 



%. 



TN the year 1863 I 

 1 produced and 

 sold .fCS.OO worth of 

 honey from two col- 

 /.•^%i >;». onies of bees, and 



my apiarian zeal at 

 once arose to a 

 white heat, I said 

 " If there is no roy- 

 al road to knowl- 

 edge, there is one to 

 wealth, and it lies 

 right through a bee- 

 yard." I was very poor at the time, having 

 lost all of my previous savings by the great 

 flood of 1859. 



When President Arthur visited Chicago 

 during his Presidental term, and the gold- 

 bugs and monopolists of all kinds gathered 

 about him in glittering array, he said in his 

 speech to them, " i am proud of my country 

 for I see around me signs of great prosper- 

 ity." So, after I had got the sixty-five dol- 

 lars for the honey from two swarms I went 

 out into my bee yard of some seventy-five 



colonies and said, "I see around me signs of 

 great prosperity." There could be no mis- 

 take, for there were the seventy-five colonies 

 which at thirty-two and a half dollars each 

 would bring two thousand three hundred 

 and fifty cents the very first year. I at once 

 decided I would increase my colonies to at 

 least one thousand and at once build a fine 

 dwelling (we were living in a log house 

 13x20.) How all this came out I will tell b -- 

 fore the end of this article. 



At this time part of my bees were in Lang- 

 stroth and part in hives of my own inven- 

 tion in which the frames shoved in from the 

 back. I was no.t exactly pleased with either 

 of these hives, and, as I was now to have 

 large quantities of honey to handle, and 

 many colonies to manipulate, I decided that 

 i must have something better, for the surplus 

 was now obtained in 16-lb. boxes three of 

 which just covered the top of a Langstroth 

 hive, and to handle the tons of honey I was 

 going to have in them would be laborious and 

 costly. In a patent office report I had read 

 a description of the Dzierzon bar hive, and I 

 began to plan an improvement, which, after 

 much thought, took the form of shallow sec- 

 tions 5 ?/4 inches deep and IG inches square 

 outside. The bar was improved by nailing 

 on end bars 4^4 inches long, but no bottom 

 bars were used on the first lot of fifty that I 

 made. My plan was to tier up these shal- 

 low sections to any height required and not 

 only use them for a brood chamber, but all 

 surplus boxes were to be discarded and the 

 surplus comb honey was also to be stored in 

 them. The frames in each section were ten 

 in number, they were 13^,2 inches long inside 

 and 4% deep. They held, when filled with 

 honey, about four pounds each. I sold many 

 cases of this honey just as they came from 

 the hive, letting the hive section go with it 

 as a shipping case. When the honey was to 

 be taken out to use the frame could be taken 

 out without cutting or breaking a cell. You 

 see, it was just a four-pound section. I won- 

 der if this would not entitle me to claim to 

 be the inventor of sections, for I had never 

 heard of sections at that time. 



After one year's trial I added bottom bars 

 to the frames. I exhibited one of this first 

 lot of shallow hives at the meeting of the 

 North American at Keokuk in 1889. These 

 little hives caused nearly every person who 

 saw them to smile with contempt, and I 

 soon went to trying the experiment of mak- 

 ing them deeper. I made some with frames 



