NOVEMBER 15, 1913 



a fine flow from wLdte clover. It has never 

 been more abundant than this year. 

 La Crescent, Minn. 



HOME-MADE BEE FIXTURES 



BY W. L. PORTER 



One frequently reads articles in bee-mag- 

 azines commending the beekeeper who makes 

 his own sui^plies. Mr. W. Foster recom- 

 mends tliis in the February Review. I have 

 had a long and extensive experience along 

 this line; and while Mr. Foster has had a 

 chance to make a good many observations 

 I must differ with him on the subject. 



In the many years I have been handling 

 bees I have been constantly running up 

 against the home-made hive, and it has been 

 almost invariably in my experience that 

 such hives are a detriment and an expensive 

 article to any one who has to use them. So 

 far as my experience is concerned, they are 

 an expensive article, even if the beekeeper 

 could get them for nothing. 



I have bought a great many hives of bees. 

 These bees are in all kinds of hives, and 

 many of them are in home-made hives. 

 While these hives have not caused all the 

 gray hairs, the trouble and woiTy over 

 handling home-made hives and fixtures are 

 certainly enough to make one's hair turn 

 gray. I do not say that a beekeeper can 

 not make a perfect hive; but I do find in 

 my experience that nine-tenths of the home- 

 made hives are imperfect, and even hives 

 made by good carpenters are off somewhere. 

 The brood-frames are either too long or too 

 short ; the rabbets where the frames hang are 

 too shallow or too deep (often the frame 

 hangs so as to rest on the bottom) ; or the 

 supers are too shallow or too deep. I often 

 get hives where the end-bars of the brood- 

 frame touch the ends of the hive; and often 

 the top-bar is so thin that the frame sags 

 under the weight of the honey in the frame. 



It has been mj^ experience in handling 

 and inspecting for foul brood that the home- 

 made hive is one of the most menacing parts 

 of the work on account of its being almost 

 impossible to get into the hive. The diffi- 

 culty in finding lumber of tlie right quality 

 and dimensions makes it almost impossible 

 to produce an ideal hive. I have known a 

 good many planing-mills to try to make 

 hives to sell; but the trouble to get the 

 proper lumber, and the mistakes they make, 

 cause them to discontinue making them. 



In moving my apiai'ies from Colorado to 

 Idaho I tried to weed out all of these mis- 

 fits, and broke them up for firewood. They 

 filled a woodshed to the roof. Some of these 



818 



hives were made of the best clear lumber; 

 but their imperfections made them worse 

 than useless. 



I think it best for those starting in the 

 bee business to buy hives made at factories 

 which have made the liive a study. In this 

 way one can get the best. Then buy the 

 same kind each year, thus having all the 

 hives and fixtures alike. Parts of the hives 

 are then interchangeable. 



The same is true in manufacturing foun- 

 dation. It is a science to handle beeswax 

 propei'ly. The factories exchange founda- 

 tion for wax, charging from 15 to 16 cts. 

 per pound. By exchanging, one gets the 

 best, and avoids the muss and the expense 

 of getting cans, press, etc., to make i;p the 

 wax. I believe if a beekeeper is out of 

 work in the winter, it is better that he 

 should get busy raising chickens or some- 

 thing else that will pay, and let factories 

 which have had experience and have the 

 best macliinery do the work of making the 

 supjDlies. 



Caldwell, Idaho. 



BEEKEEPING IN AUSTRALIA 



Getting a Queen into a Laying-worker Hive 



BY MAJOR SHALLARD 



Louis H. Scholl says, p. 720, Nov. 15, 

 1912, that he has never succeeded in getting 

 a laying-worker colony to rear a queen suc- 

 cessfully. I do not have many colonies in 

 tlais condition, but I do not recollect having 

 much bother in getting the bees to rear a 

 queen. Mr. Scholl is speaking, apparently, 

 of the attempt being made while the laying 

 workers are still in the hive. I should tliink 

 this would be impossible unless there were 

 enough new bees in the hive to outvote 

 them. I once found a colony in a very bad 

 way with laying workers, with not more 

 than a quart of bees in the liive. I shook 

 them out, and gave a frame of larvae, and 

 another of hateliing brood. They reared a 

 nice queen, which proved to be a good layer. 



BEES STINGING BLACK HATS. 



Bees will sting black hats venomously, 

 and will get so wild that they will soon 

 transfer tlieir attentions to the wearer, and 

 drive liim out of the apiary. A young fel- 

 low working for me once came to the apiary 

 wearing a new fawn-colored felt hat. The 

 bees took a violent dislike to it at once. In 

 less than ten minutes the hat was the center 

 of a cloud of angiy bees, and the wearer 

 had to decamp quickly. In this case I think 

 it was the smell of the new felt that was 

 disagreeable. I watched a peculiar experi- 

 ment of bees stinging on one of my farms, 



