314 



September, 1914. 



American Vee Joornal 



The Picture Would Not Be Complete Without Sage Directlly in Front of You 



do the work tliere. He says that he 

 finds it much more economical to 

 bring the honey home to extract, as 

 he has to make the trips to the out-yard 

 anyway. By using a power-driven ex- 

 tractor and large tank he can do nearly 

 all the necessary work alone, thus re- 

 ducing expenses to the minium. The 

 honey house is 30 feet square, with the 

 lower story walls of concrete. The 

 total cost of the building, exclusive of 

 equipment, was about $1000. There is 

 abundant room for every operation, 

 including storage for his hundreds of 

 extracting supers during winter. A 

 workroom, partitioned off in one cor- 

 ner, can be easily heated and necessary 

 work carried on comfortably in winter. 



1912 was a fairly favorable season, 

 and the Aldrich apiaries turned out 

 about 27,000 pounds of honey from the 

 300 colonies in four yards. In 1913 

 some increase was made in the number 

 of colonies, and the production jumped 

 to over 40,000 pounds. From the 1913 

 crop the modern home shown in the 

 picture was built, and it did not take it 

 all either. 



The location is apparently above the 

 average, being in the edge of the Mis- 

 souri river hills. Some of the out- 

 yards are in the hills and some in the 

 bottoms, so that rarely a season fails 

 to give a profitable crop in some of the 

 yards. In case of a failure in one or 

 the other it is not far to move the bees 

 to pasturage. There is a considerable 

 acreage of basswood surrounding the 

 home yard from which a heavy yield is 

 occasionally secured. Much of this 

 timber is being cut, so that this will 

 probably not be depended upon very 

 much longer. Sweet clover in large 

 acreage is within reach of one or two 

 yards, and heartsease the main de- 

 pendence on the bottoms. 



There is considerable similar terri- 

 tory entirely unoccupied about 20 to 50 

 miles to the south of this location, and 

 a few good locations near large towns 



which would furnish home markets for 

 an ordinary crop. 



Mr. Aldrich does not aspire to 

 greatly increase his present apiaries. 

 He has about reached the limit of one 

 man beekeeping, and his income is 

 sufficient for his needs. With a mod- 

 ern home, the best up-to-date equip- 

 ment, 20 ton honey crops, and a most 

 interesting family, he has every rea- 

 son to be content. 



Atlantic, Iowa. 



Bees and the Colors of Clothing 



BY JOHN H. LOWELL. 



SOME time ago the writer published 

 a description of a series of experi- 

 ments, which showed beyond ques- 

 tion that a beekeeper dressed in black 

 would receive more stings than one 

 wearing white clothing. While dressed 

 wholly in white, with the exception of 

 a black band of cloth 10 inches wide 

 sevved around my right arm. I opened 

 a hive of bees and gently shook several 

 frames. Immediately many bees at- 

 tacked the black band, and continued 

 to do so as long as I disturbed them, 

 while not a single bee attempted to 

 sting the left sleeve which was entirely 

 white. 



This experiment was repeated many 

 times, and the position of the black 

 band was changed, but the results were 

 always the same— the black band was 

 invariably fiercely assailed, while the 

 white portions of my dress received 

 very little attention. I estimated the 

 number of bees on the black band at 

 various moments at from .30 to 40, and 

 it would be difiicult to imagine how 

 they could make greater efforts to sting 

 than they did. 



At this point a very natural question 

 was: How would other colors affect 

 the bees? Ticknor Edwards tells us 

 ("The Lore of the Honey Bee," page 



40) that during the Middle Ages bee- 

 keepers were warned not to wear red 

 in the bee-yard, as this color was espe- 

 cially offensive to the bees. Accord- 

 ingly red was first selected for experi- 

 ment. A red band was substituted for 

 the black one, but my clothing was 

 otherwise entirely white. When I re- 

 moved the cover of a hive and angered 

 the colony, the red band was attacked 

 almost as fiercely as had previously 

 been the case with the black cloth. The 

 white sleeve, meanwhile, received very 

 little attention. The bee-masters of 

 the Middle Ages were thus entirely 

 right in advising against the wearing 

 of red garments. During the past year 

 Dr. Frisch, of Munich, has asserted 

 that bees cannot distinguish red from 

 black. 



When a blue band was used instead 

 of a black one, it caused a little more 

 irritation than white, but very much 

 less than black. Yellow and green 

 bands were later successively substi- 

 tuted for black, but the bees paid abso- 

 lutely no more attention to these colors 

 than they did to white. 



The experiments show that a bee- 

 keeper may wear in the apiary white, 

 yellow and green clothing; but should 

 carefully avoid a black or red apparel. 

 Blue is less desirable than white, al- 

 though much better than black. 



Waldboro, Maine. 



Some Cute Ideas 



BY DR F. A. BONNEY. 



I DO NOT doubt but that many oldish 

 men, those who have to wear glasses 

 as I do, are bothered with the sweat 

 running down and mussing up the 

 lenses. This bothered me so in look- 

 ing for queens or eggs that I discarded 

 my glasses entirely and now use a 3- 

 inch reading glass which I carry in my 

 pocket. 



To insur'e that no moths get into my 

 wax, I use a cream can with a tight cover 

 and pour in a teaspoonful of formalde- 

 hyde from time to time. No self re- 

 specting miller will tarry where the 

 odor of that chemical exists, so my 

 wax is safe from week to week. 



When I want to strengthen a colony 

 of bees I put on a bee-escape, then on 

 that put supers from neighboring hives 

 which are filled with bees fanning 

 honey. These go down, unite with the 

 colony, and then I return the super to 

 where it came from, or any other hive. 

 There is no danger in this way of get- 

 ting your queen lost, and more bees 

 will remain than if the bees were 

 shaken in front of the hive. Sprinkle 

 a little peppermint water around to 

 stop possible fighting. My supers are 

 all over queen excluders. 



To get rid of mice in the bee-yard, I 

 soak wheat in a quart of water in which 

 I have dissolved one dram (HO) grains 

 of strychnia sulphate. If you have ever 

 tried to poison the neighbors' chickens 

 you will know that a dose of poison 

 that will kill a man is only a nice tonic 

 for an old scratching hen, but if you 

 have exaggerated ideas about toxic 

 drugs lay down a couple of sticks, scat- 

 ter the grain between them and cover 

 with a board. The mice will certainly 

 find it, and they will not go into the 



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