MARCH 1, 1913 



161 



between the bees and the cover. One of ns 

 peels otf the cloth, and the other slides on 

 the super. We seldom use smoke for that; 

 but we need it for removing bee-escapes. 

 J asked Mr. Crane how he liked my smoker. 

 He said he thought that kind was worth 

 about ten cents a bushel. My suspicions 

 are confirmed, and I shall have a new smok- 

 er. 



Last season the honey-flow was poor in 

 Ibis locality. It w^as mainly from basswood. 

 1 secured a little more than 1000 salable 

 sections from 31 colonies, fall count. There 

 was no surplus from some of them. The 

 local trade takes all my honey, and I could 

 have sold much more. I am " fussy " about 

 scraping, grading, and packing sections. 

 Success in selling depends upon it. 



Highgate, Vt.^ 



MISTAKES OF AN AMATEUR 



BY MRS. S. L. DORSETT 



As I am a beginner in beekeeping, and 

 made several mistakes during the first year, 

 I send you this article, hoping it will help 

 some one to avoid making these same mis- 

 takes. 



In the spring of 1911 I purchased (from 

 a i^erson going out of the bee business) an 

 outfit consisting of ten eight-frame hives, 

 and two common box hives. There were 

 three colonies of hybrids in eight-frame 

 hives and one colony of leather-colored Ital- 

 ians in another eight-frame hive. There 

 were Italians in one of the box hives also. 

 In the other box liive the bees were so vi- 

 cious that I ne\er got near enough to them 

 to know what kind they were. The outfit — 

 bees, hives, and all — was delivered on my 

 premises when the snow was about ten 

 inches deep ; and, not having a place pre- 

 pared for them, they were set in a corner 

 of the garden. 



BEES PLYING BEFORE HIVES VP^ERE PLACED 

 ON SUMilER STANDS. 



About the 18th of March I had the box 

 hives and the eight-frame hive of Italian 

 bees placed where they were to stand all 

 summer; but the hybrids were not moved 

 until the last week in April. This I now 

 look upon as a mistake, for the bees had 

 been out enough to get their bearings, and 

 kept going back to the place in the garden 

 from which they had been moved, and some- 

 times the air seemed full of flying bees. I 

 finally set a liive with empty frames at the 

 place in the garden where the colonies had 

 been, and at night there would be a n:ce 

 cluster inside of the hive. About ten o'clock 

 at night I would bring this hive and set it 



over one of the four colonies with a queen- 

 excluder under it, and next day I set anoth- 

 er decoy hive in the garden, and at night 

 brought that and the bees to another of the 

 four colonies. I do not know whether I 

 really helped the bees to find their homes or 

 not ; but at last there were no more bees 

 fiying aimlessly around in the garden. Two 

 of these four colonies east a swarm, and 

 two stored nearly a superful of surplus 

 honey. 



QUEEN-CELLS NOT CUT OUT. 



With my outfit there was one eight-frame 

 hive of nice clean empty combs. Wishing 

 to have the Italian bees build up strong I 

 set this hive of empty combs on top of the 

 eight-frame liive containing the colony of 

 Italians in April, and on May 30 they cast 

 a fine large swarm. Now, as I had not 

 learned much about entrance-guards or cut- 

 ting out queen-cells, I left the bees in the 

 two-story hive, and in two weeks they had 

 cast three after-swarms. I could not think 

 it wise to put these back in the parent hive 

 and. kill such splendid young queens ; and 

 as I knew nothing about introducing I put 

 each of these small swarms in a separate 

 hive. Of course, by this time the parent 

 liive had very few bees left, so I confined 

 the queen to the bottom liive with a queen- 

 excluder, and let the top story act as super ; 

 but they gave very few pounds of surplus 

 after filling their hive nicely for winter. 



This mistake proved even more disastrous 

 than moving too late in spring or allowing 

 the after-swarms. I had three after-swarms 

 of splendid Italian bees with small patches 

 of brood about as large as my hand, and 

 scarcely any honey, so I decided to kill the 

 vicious bees in a box hive and one colony 

 of hybrids that had proved cross during 

 the summer, and use these combs and stores 

 for the after-swarms. 



CROSS COLONIES AND HYBRIDS DESTROYED BY 

 SULPHUR FUMES. 



The last of October I had sand banked 

 up around the two colonies; and, putting 

 some coals in the smoker (another mistake, 

 I presume), I then added a tablesiDoonful 

 of sulphur for each hive, and drew away 

 just enough sand to allow the mouth of the 

 smoker to enter the entrance. I puffed the 

 sulphur fumes into the hive for a couple of 

 minutes, and drew the sand in place again, 

 and left them until next day. Then the next 

 day I had the old box cut away and then 

 the combs were cut to fit the Hoffman 

 frames. I filled one eight-frame hive with 

 these. I then swept all the dead be&s from 

 the combs in the other eight-frame hive. 

 Both hives were now ready, and I put one 

 of the after-swarms into each hive and took 



