350 



American 15^^ Journal 



October, 1914. 



trance to keep them out and thus rid 

 the hives of this "useless bee." 



"Honey falls from the air and gen- 

 erally rone is produced before the 

 rising of the Pleiades" (Pliny calls it 

 the spittal of the stars). This idea 

 lasted long. "Wax," he tells us "is 

 made from the flowers," referring no 

 doubt to the pollen with which it was 

 long confounded. "Bees breed their 

 sweet kind" from the amiable matter 

 found in the flowers. Honey came 

 from the air or aj pearnj as a dew — 

 these wore the ancient beliefs. Our 

 autlKu- (oiiimends the wlufest honey 

 faliov.-i J' that their "dew" and ours 

 differ at least in color. Aristotle 

 believed iu a uivision of labor among 

 the bees much the same as that so 

 poetically described in Shakespeare: 

 "They have a king and officers of 

 sorts, etc." 



He tells us that in his time bees 

 stung animals as large as horses 

 causing death at times. "When they 

 sting anything they perish for they 

 cannot withdraw their sting from the 

 wound without tearing their own en- 

 trails, but they are frequently saved 

 If the person presses the sting from the 

 wound." The efficacy of the sting as 

 a weapon of offer se and defence was 

 well known and thoroughly appreciat- 

 ed in these early times. Particularly 

 is this brought under our notice when 

 he deals with bees' enemies. Ever 

 since his day the swallow has borne 

 the reproach of being a deadly ene- 

 my; wasps are also blamed for being 

 very destructive, while the toad is 

 accused of blowing in at the entrance 

 *i entice the bees to come out and 

 be eaten. Old writers always pro- 

 duce a long list of deadly enemies 

 of bees, but I am pleased to put on 

 record the fact that man was not one 

 of these at that time in ancient 

 Greece, for he tells us distinctly that 

 their keepers "took what honey they 

 could spare and did not kill them." 

 We learn that they knew how to 

 smoke bees, and also how to brim- 

 stone them even at that early date, 

 but it says much for their skill and 

 humanity to know that they only took 

 the surplus as their share. 



A warm, dry season, he considered, 

 was the best for honey and a moist 

 one for swarms. Swarms, he consid- 

 ered, were made up mostly of young 

 bees. He mentions the peculiar note 

 of swarming and gives us a graphic 

 picture of the huriy-burly in and out- 

 side the hive while the bees are rush- 

 ing about. He was one of the first to 

 take notice of "ringing" or "tanging" 

 bees and to condemn it. "They ap- 

 pear to have pleasure in noises, so 

 they say that they collect them into 

 their hives by striking vessels and 

 making noises." Ho doubts if bees 

 can hear, and therefore concludes they 

 may collect either from pleasure or 

 from fear, but not on account of the 

 ringing. He does not credit that bees 

 can be generated from the carcasses 

 of dead animals, because they shun 

 everything that is putrid or unclean 

 and love what is clean. 



The belief in bees as weather 

 prophets is very ancient. Aristotle 



" LOMA DK MiEL" Al'lARY AT HOLGUIN, CuBA. 



The past year, in my particular location, has been the poorest 1 ever saw in Cuba, on 



account of dry weather, but I averaged a little better than lo gallons of extracted 



honey per colony, and bees are in tine shape now.— D. W. Millar. 



says: "Bees discover the approach of 

 cold weather and of rain and tney will 

 not leave the hive even if the day is 

 fine but remain occupied inside; and 

 by this their keepers know that they 

 expect severe weather." 



Aristotle is the most scientific of 

 ancient beekeepers, he liked to verify 

 even his quotations and he is very 

 guarded in making direct statements; 

 he seems to examine everyone from 

 a scientific standpoint. The beekeep- 

 ing section of his "Natural History" 

 is the best known and the most trust- 

 worthy of ancient works of nature as 

 a whole, and especially on apiculture. 



It is doubtful if he himself was an 

 active beekeeper. He tells us of sev- 

 eral sources from which he derived 

 his information — Aristomachis of 

 Soli, for instance, who for a period of 

 fifty-eight years did nothing else but 

 study the bees, and also Philiseus 

 who passed his life apart from his 

 fellow men tending his bees, and liv- 

 ing by the fruits of their labors. 

 Banff, Scotland. 



That Chaff Hive 



BY J. E. HAND. 



THAT chaff hive article in the July 

 number of the American Bee Jour- 

 nal, page 210, by Dr. Bonney, calls 

 for some explanation, and possibly 

 some correction, especially his state- 

 ment that I advocated a hive only 

 four inches deep in 1907. I am in- 

 clined to be lenient with him, how- 

 ever, for he evidently does not under- 

 stand that a single division of a sec- 

 tional hive does not constitute a hive, 

 but is only part of a hive, and that 

 an eight frame sectional hive, com- 

 posed of shallow divisions, may be 

 larger than a fixed hive of sixteen 



frame capacity. It is to be regretted, 

 however, that so much time and space 

 is required to explain a matter that 

 should be apparent to a novice, and 

 doubly so, to one who poses as an 

 authority upon subjects pertaining to 

 the economics of beehive architecture. 

 Evidently his memory needs sharpen- 

 ing, for, in spite of his statement con- 

 cerning our alleged four inch hive, 

 the smallest division of a hive that we 

 ever used was over five Inches deep, 

 and three divisions constituted a reg- 

 ular brood chamber over fifteen 

 inches deep; this is the four (?) inch 

 hive that Dr. Bonney is worrying 

 about, but we cannot see what that 

 hive has to do with the convertiblt 

 method of wintering bees. 



Again, Dr. Bonney is in error in as- 

 suming that we use eight frame su- 

 pers, for our brood chambers and su- 

 pers are alike and interchangeble, 

 furthermore, his suggested modifica- 

 tion of our convertible hive intro- 

 duces undesirable complications that 

 weaken the protection at critical 

 points, and leave one side of the 

 winter nest unprotected by packing. 

 The sixteen frame hive, with the eight 

 frame inner chamber is an economi- 

 cal solution of the wintering problem, 

 for it is .a single wall hive in summer, 

 and a double wall hive in winter, pro- 

 viding perfect winter protection at 

 half the cost of chaff hives. My opin- 

 ion concerning the status of chaff 

 hives, past, and present, is based on 

 personal experience, and personal ob- 

 servation, covering a period of more 

 than a quarter century. In 1S80 T 

 purchased my first chaff hives for 

 IL.'iO in the flat, they were two story 

 hives, double walled throughout, with 

 a capacity for fourteen frames above, 

 and ten below and were undoubtedly 

 the best wintering hives ever put on 

 the market in this country. Mean- 



