Mur. 1. litl'J 



135 



This photograph shows a part of my apiary of 40 colonies under a good shed 75 feet long. I have very 

 little time to work with my bees, but I improve every spare moment I have. This spring I am going to 

 give each colony two supers of sections, and if it is a good honey year I will have plenty, 



T. C. IlAMBLY, Santa Clara, Cal, 



works. Most of the lumber used is half- 

 inch box stock. The floor is nailed on, and 

 has three rugged cleats across the under 

 surface. 



In the Adair hive the queen had the run 

 of all the combs; in the "Let Alone" she is 

 restricted to the seven next to the entrance. 

 And the frames outclass the .lumbo, being; 

 M H inches long and 15 inches deep, with 

 ends and to]is "closed," Along the upper 

 l)art of the hive sides are nailed strips on 

 which the frames hang, and in the lower 

 corners arc beveled strips against which the 

 bottom corners of the frames touch, so that, 

 when the frames are in place, the hive is 

 virtually double-walled and air-spaced. 



The first seven frames are wired, and fit- 

 ted with full sheets of foundation; the other 

 fourteen have a vertical bar in the center, 

 are without wires, and are fitted only with 

 starters. Back of the seven wired frames is 

 hung a sheet of excluder zinc, an<l this 

 serves to separate the brood from the surplus 

 comfjartment. The entrance extends away 

 across the front of the hive, eighteen inches, 

 and is one inch high. It is permanently 

 guarded against the ingress of mice by a 

 row of wire nails. And it is left wide open 

 for three hundred and sixty-five and one 

 quarter days in the year, Mark that, you 

 skeptics. 



The surplus chamber is apjiroximately 

 IT X 14 y 22 inches, and will hold about 150 

 jxiunds. If it so happens that the crop is 

 removed in the fall, then it remains empty 

 all winter. A most beautiful way to kill 

 the bees, isn't it? ,Iust think of a colony of 

 l>ees in the front part of such a box with 

 that great emptyTchamber behind it, and 



eighteen square inches of open doorway! A 

 man who would seriously consider keeping 

 bees in any such fool way as that must sure- 

 ly have something the matter with his brain. 

 Well, he has, but not on the line of foolish- 

 ness — oh, no! only of progressive thinking 

 and of daring. 



It is not enough that he should make bee- 

 keeping in such hives a success in sheltered 

 spots; but he must needs attemjit the im- 

 possible, so he planted colonies here and 

 there on the upper end of Cape Cod, about 

 the last place on earth to expect success in 

 honey production. And there again he fools 

 you. His reputation for veracity is good; 

 but when he talked of an average of 150 

 pounds to the colony down on that bleak 

 sand spit, one man at least had to go and 

 see how bees extracted nectar from sea-water. 

 And the honey was there— great sheets of 

 pearly combs full of their golden store, and 

 the bees tumbling in with more. 



The gales from the wide Atlantic appear 

 to be impotent against the bees' work in 

 summer or their comfort in winter, for there 

 those wide-entranced hives stand all through 

 the storms and gales, heat and cold. For 

 most of us the bees would promptly become 

 quite dead; but not for Latham, They dare 

 not. That wizard has filled them with such 

 a sense of fear or something, that, whatever 

 he says, they do. He has even persuaded 

 them to adandon the classic "bee-line," 

 and one finds his bees ducking and dodging 

 around the sand dunes and following along 

 the railroad cuts, zigzagging here and there 

 and anywhere out of the wind till they are 

 close tohome, when with a dash they plunge 

 over the bank and down into their hives. 



