13(i 



Gleaninus in Bi'e Culture 



l,aughlin I-'alconer, 1)4 years oh 

 and one of his assistants. 



The hives are usu- 

 ally stocked by run- 

 ning a natural or ar- 

 tificial swarm into 

 them. The bees are 

 then instructed to set 

 up house - keeping, 

 jtrovide themselves 

 with a i)roper amount 

 of sup[)lies, and put 

 aside a suitable sur- 

 plus in return for the 

 care (?) and oversight 

 he has given them. 

 Talk about the high 

 cost of living, and 

 then think of taxing 

 those poor little bees 

 one huntlred pounds 

 of honey for the rent 

 of an old barn of a 

 box without any 

 stormdoor on it! 



But the insatiate 

 man is not content 

 with that, but, for- 

 sooth, insists upon 

 the bees sorting out 



the various kinds of honey for him, each 

 kind in a comb or combs by itself, and 

 the meek little creatures do so, as far as 

 the Hows jiermit. It happens in thiswise: 

 The bees till the brood-chamber and then 

 crowd through the zinc, build comb in 

 half of a frame and fill it, then in the other 

 half, tlien into the next frame, and so on. 

 He has merely applied his hive and frame 

 arrangement to fit the habit of the insects. 



Yes, they swarm sometimes, but not very 

 often; and as most of the queens are clipped 

 they seldom depart, but return and settle 

 down with the young queen, which, of 

 course, is against the rules of the game, but 

 those don't count with I^atham. 



He keeps bees in the conventional hives, 

 too; has some eighty odd colonies thus; and 

 that he does it well, witness the summer 

 and winter views of one of his yards. His 

 home yard is an interesting place to visit, 

 and there will be found all manner of hives, 

 appliances, and experiments. One of the 

 striking features is a honey-house built "in- 

 side out "—that is to say, the studding is 

 on the outside; on the inner face of that, 

 heavy water-proof pa[)er; and within that, 

 matched sheathing. It is placed on a foun- 

 dation of stone laid dry, and the shallow- 

 cellar is open on one side, so that literally 

 the hou«e is hung in the air. (Cleanings 

 for .Ian. 1, page 8, says, " Do not winter in a 

 closed room above ground." But Latham 

 winters thirty or forty baby nuclei in this 

 closed room above ground, and has done it 

 ever since 'twas built, three or four years 

 ago. So exceedingly careless of him to do 

 such a thing without consulting anybody! 



And those baby iniclci! utterly dilTerent 

 from any used by other folks. One nice lit- 

 tle entrance-hole, easily defended against 

 robbers, isn't at all to his liking, so he has 

 two such holes— perhaps reasoning that, if 



a pioneer t'liicago beekeeper: his son. 



one is easy to defend, two will be twice as 

 easy. The blooming combination works 

 just because it shouldn't. 



To feed them he floods the lower part of 

 the little box (])reviously water-proofed) 

 with syrup— a jolly nice way to start a rob- 

 bing scrape, but it doesn't. His nucleus 

 construction and operation is a fine story in 

 itself, and perhaps the editor can persuade 

 him to tell; and if so, let the reader be warn- 

 ed that, no matter how improbable things 

 may seem, or how weirtl his tale, it is so if 

 he says it, even though every other bee- 

 keeper has tried it and failed. 



'Tis jolly lucky for Allen Latham that he 

 lives in the twentieth century rather than 

 in the days when belief in witchcraft ran 

 riot. 



Providence, R. T. 



BEEKEEPING IN A CITY 



A Great Record by a Man who is Now Almost a 

 Centenarian 



BY J. L. GRAFF 



The accompanying picture show a i)art of 

 an apiary that has lielped to furnish a city 

 now numbering twenty-two hundred thou- 

 sand people with honey for sixty-seven 

 years, and is still i)roducing 9000 lbs. a year. 

 It not only in a large measure has furnished 

 a living for its owner, but has supported a 

 whole family. 



In the last thirty years it has produced 

 l;')5 tons, and the output for the previous 

 thirty-seven years would run the total pro- 

 duction to considerably over 175 tons. 



This apiary was started on the banks of 

 the Des Plaines lliver, Illinois, in 1844. It 

 was started from thf" capture of a single col- 

 ony from a bee-tree, and hived in a barrel. 



