NOVEMBER 1, 1913 



753 



the flow is the preventive, not the blocks. 



1 have used the blocks, and do yet ; and I 



go further and shove the covers and supers 



backward and forward, and the swarms 



leave just the same. The ven,tilation surely 



lielps. but I could have shown colonies so 



treated swarming by the dozen this past 



summer. Bees swarmed here right through 



August up to within a week of the closing 



of the flow, and we surely had a time with 



them. 



* * * 



MAKING INCREASE IN AUGUST OR SEPTEMBER. 



In my Harmon apiary I had sixty es- 

 tracting-bodies of full-depth Hoffman 

 frames that were about full of honey. In 

 my other apiaries, and also in the Harmon 

 apiary, the bees were still swarming late in 

 the season, so that I had available some fine 

 cells for starting nuclei. I wanted a lot of 

 young queens for what increase I got, so I 

 s'.arted sixty nuclei in my Crosby and Su- 

 perior yards of one or two frames each; 

 and early in September, when these queens 

 were laying, I took off my extracting-hives 

 at the Harmon yards and hauled them to 

 the nuclei apiary, giving one or two full 

 slieets of foundation or empty combs for 

 the queen to rear brood in to streng'then 

 them for winter. The comb-honey supers 

 were then coming off my surplus colonies, 

 and most of these had more bees than they 

 needed. True, many of these bees were old 

 and worn out, but I used them just the 

 same. I shook out one or tw^o pounds of 

 bees from one or more colonies into one of 

 my tin covers, and over them tacked a mov- 

 able screen cover. This gave the bees a 

 space three inches deep and the size of the 

 liive. In these covers I quickly moved a lot 

 of bees to my nuclei in the other apiaries, 

 and strengthened them. The moving was 

 necessary to preclude the return of the bees 

 to their own hives. The young queens had 

 most of September for breeding up, and by 

 this means I have been able to get some 

 extra colonies of bees in prime condition 

 for wintering. 



Sr * * 



BEEKEEPING IN THE PLATEAU VALLEY. 



In the Plateau Valley beekeeping enters 

 into diversified farming operations almost 

 as much as alfalfa-growing. Nearly every 

 farmer has his neat honey-shop close to the 

 house. The apiary at one side or behind 

 the house, some distance, is often a model 

 of neatness. Few box hives are to be found 

 in the valley, and foul brood is all but un- 

 known — a small percentage only being 

 found in the lower part of the valley around 

 Molina and Mesa. 



When I visited the valley early in Sep- 

 tember it was the rule to find the beekeeper- 



farmer and his wife at work cleaning and 

 packing comb honey ready for the market. 



Comb honey is the sole shipping product 

 of the apiaries, very little extracted being 

 produced. The pi-ice secured has been from 

 about $2.40 to .|2.65. The honey is packed 

 in 24-pound single-tier eases, with glass 

 front or wood slides. Two gi'ades are made, 

 more attention being paid to w^eight than 

 color. Considerable attention is given to 

 finish in grading. The honey is sold through 

 fruit associations at Palisade, Debeque, and 

 Grand Valley, which are loading stations on 

 the railroad, fifteen to twenty-five miles dis- 

 tant. The fruit associations charge 5 per 

 cent for selling the honey, and pay for it 

 when it is loaded into the car. They do not 

 pay for the honey, however, until a sale is 

 made, although they may have verbally con- 

 tracted for it. 



One thing I have noticed in various places 

 as well as in the Plateau Valley: The prod- 

 uce dealers offer good prices for honey 

 early in the season. The beemen haul in the 

 lioney to the warehouse, but the dealer or 

 association does not generally sell until a 

 car is about ready to load. Then if the price 

 has fallen he tells the beeman that he can 

 not pay so much for the honey. I have 

 found this method altogether too prevalent. 

 The beemen have ended this uncertain man- 

 ner of dealing in some places, and it is time 

 that it was ended in all. "When one has an 

 offer of so much for his honey he should 

 clinch the bargain with a cash-down pay- 

 ment of fifty cents to a dollar a case, and 

 then live up to the bargain and make the 

 buyer live up to his. 



The farmers, most of whom have some 

 stock, told me that honey is their money 

 crop. This is more generallj^ true of the 

 farmers in the Plateau Valley than in any 

 other part of Colorado where I have been. 



An incident will illustrate the prevalence 

 of beekeeping. I went into the general store 

 and postoffice at Plateau City to get a bill 

 changed, and was handed a dollar among 

 other change. It was so daubed with pro- 

 polis that I could hardly see the eagle. Do 

 you suppose the jjostmaster knew I was a 

 beeman ? 



The winters are more severe in the Plat- 

 eau Valley than twen.ty-five miles further 

 down in the Grand Valley around Grand 

 Junction, and the winter stores are more 

 likely to gi'anulate and cause winter losses. 

 There is a great deal of waste land upon 

 which sweet clover grows, which is the main 

 reason for uniformly good crops. The 

 greatest drawback, as I saw it, is in having 

 to haul the supplies fifteen to twenty-five 

 miles, and to haul the honey this distance 

 to the loading station. 



