52 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Jan. 23, 



short time. The following day it conies out early and stays 

 out longer, probably clusters. The third day the bees will 

 certainly cluster, and perhaps go away half a mile or so and 

 cluster again. Every day they will stay out longer and cat 

 up all sorts of capers worse and worse before returning. 

 Occasionally they stay out until the nest morning. They 

 hardly ever swarm twice a day. Sometimes in coming back 

 they scatter into two or several different hives. 



As to uniting together, it depends upon the circumstances, 

 and a trifling cause may determine two queenless swarms to 

 unite aud all go back to the same hive. If while a swarm is 

 returning and " calling," another in the air would be almost 

 sure to unite ; but one clustered would not pay any attention 

 to it. 



Once I was working with a hive. When through, and the 

 hive was closed, the bees began to " call " at the entrance as 

 they usually do in such cases. A swarm in the air hearing the 

 call, came and entered the hive ; that is, would have done so 

 if I had not prevented. 



A queenless swarm never swarms as compactly as a nor- 

 mal one. The cluster is irregular, and has a more or less 

 ragged shape, changing constantly. The bees are much more 

 restless, and move continually. A queenless swarm will also 

 fly slower, and closer to the ground, than a normal one. 

 Neither will the bees fly as close together. 



MATING OF QUEENS. 



All that is very well — excluders and queen-traps will cer- 

 tainly prevent the swarms from decamping, except, perhaps, 

 when a strange swarm, passing by, might unite with one of 

 your queenless swarms. But, by and by, some virgin queens 

 will have to mate, and if some queenless swarm happened to 

 be out at the same time, the whole outfit would go to the 

 woods and never return — at least this would be nearly always 

 the outcome of the meeting. I once had an exception. The 

 queen brought the swarm to her own hive. I suppose they 

 met after she was fecundated, and already on her way home. 



Very rarely a swarm issues after 3 o'clock p.m. The best 

 is to remove the excluders only from that time until night, 

 and only when the apiarist is present ; then should a swarm 

 issue, it could be taken care of. Sometimes a queen has not 

 yet returned when the apiarist closes the excluders and goes 

 home. That does not matter ; she will stay on the excluder, 

 outside, and be taken care of by the bees, even for several 

 days, and be just as good. 



QUEENS PASSING THROUGH THE ZINC, 



or rather not passing through the perforated queen-excluding 

 zinc — we must be careful in our conclusions on this point. 

 As I stated above, a queen caught in a trap, will eventually 

 go back through the cones, and we might think that she has 

 passed through the zinc. Sometimes there is a hole some- 

 where — a cover warped, leaving a crack at one corner; a zinc 

 bent somewhere. My hive-bottoms are made of two pieces or 

 more. The ends, exposed to the weather, do not shrink 

 much, but the part under the hive being kept dry, shrinks 

 sometimes enough to leave a crack between the two pieces big 

 enough for any queen to go through. Knoxville, Tenn. 



An Eventful Visit to an Out-Apiary. 



BY C. P. DADANT. 



Let me warn the reader, at the outset, that I have no in- 

 formation of any value to give him in this article. Perhaps 

 some of you will say that this is no news, and that you took it 

 for granted at the start. But, if I succeed in making you 

 laugh at my expense, my object will be attained ; and let me 

 say that I vouch for the truth of all that I am about to relate. 



Some six or eight years ago I took a trip to the South, and 

 went to visit a brother bee-keeper living less than a thousand 

 miles from St. Louis. He is a nice, warm-hearted fellow, very 

 enthusiastic over all that he does, and he welcomed me heart- 

 ily. I arrived there on Saturday evening, and after examin- 

 ing his bees, his Heddon hives and his large hives, which he 

 was then testing side by side, he took me into his home, where 

 I made the acquaintance of his old mother, a nice, gray-haired 

 lady with the genteel manners of well-bred New England 

 folks. I was royally treated, and the next morning my friend, 

 whom I will call X, so as not to hurt his modesty, proposed to 

 me to take a trip to his out-apiary, four miles away. This 

 apiary had been established but a short time, and I concluded 

 that he was taking a pride in showing me that others could 

 have out-apiaries as well as ourselves. But it was not out of 

 bee-keeping pride that he wanted to go there, as I found later. 

 X was a single man, and there was a young lady, living in the 



neighborhood of that apiary, whom he evidently felt required 

 to visit every Sunday. 



It was a raw March day ; the roads, well — there was no 

 bottom to them. X had a nice, new top-buggy and a neat, 

 fiery little bay mare which had but one fault— she was balky. 

 She could go " like the wind ;" in fact, it was of no use to hold 

 her, for go she must, and if you tried to slacken her pace she 

 would stop and stay there, quite a little while longer than you 

 liked. So we started at full speed, in the mud, but the buggy 

 was good, and we had a storm-apron that kept the flying slop 

 out of our faces. In due time — no, I mean before due time, 

 for the horse galloped all the way — we reached the apiary, 

 some 60 or 80 colonies nicely arranged in rows on a hillside. 

 Aud, of course, your humble servant got acquainted with a 

 very nice young lady, who he felt sure would be a bee-keeper's 

 wife some day not very far distant. 



When the hour came for retracing our steps towards the 

 city, Mr. X inquired of the host in regard to another route, 

 which had been less in use, and which they seemed to think 

 would be less muddy than the much-traveled road through 

 which we had come. This route was a sort of a private road, 

 and consequently less traveled. There was one stream to ford 

 — " Wood river" — which might be swelled by the recent thaw, 

 but our host assured us it was "all right." So we started 

 down the valley, and soon got to the edge of Wood river — a 

 slow and quiet stream, probably 30 feet in width, running its 

 smooth and muddy course noiselessly among the willows. 

 " What do you think of it?" said X. "Bah, it is surely safe 

 enough," said I ; accustomed as I was to the noisy torrents of 

 our county, this little stream did not seem to have a foot of 

 water in it. 



In went our horse with a rush, and we instantly found 

 ourselves in four feet of water, and there the horse — balked. 

 That buggy was not very high, and we had water on the seat, 

 so we stood up, or rather stooped up under the top, waiting 

 for the horse to start. Did you ever have to wait for a balky 

 horse to change his mind, yourself knee-deep in the water, 

 with an unknown quantity of the same muddy beverage on 

 either side, wishing for dry weather? If so, you have a faint 

 idea of our feelings. 



After a few minutes X tried to coax the horse forward, 

 but only succeeded in getting her to plunge in such a fashion 

 that she entirely disappeared under the water for a few sec- 

 onds, and took us about ten feet down the stream and out of 

 the main track. It was then next to impossible to turn back 

 into the main road without backing, even with a steady horse, 

 for the stream was narrow and the banks very steep. Backing 

 with this horse was out of the question. We began to seri- 

 ously consider the necessity of wading to shore. X is a gen- 

 tleman all over, and when he saw me look at my traveling 

 suit, knowing I did not have my entire wardrobe along with 

 me, he concluded that I should not soil my clothes — he bravely 

 took off his coat and vest, fastened them in the only dry place 

 in reach — the brace of the buggy-top — and jumped into the 

 water. 



" Now," said he, "there is no use of two of us getting 

 wet; I am strong enough to carry you to shore." And so he 

 did, though I felt a little ashamed of accepting such a gen- 

 erous offer. 



Then he returned to the horse and unhitched her. When 

 she found herself free, the little mare quietly walked to shore. 

 Then X hitched himself at the shafts and tried to pull the 

 buggy out, but the bank was steep, and the bottom was sandy, 

 so he had to tie one of the lines to the shaft and hand the 

 other end to me, and by the efforts of both, the rig was at last 

 on shore, but full of water. 



That buggy was new, as I said before, and held water like 

 a tub. We had nothing to bail it out with, and houses were 

 too far away. So we upset the bqggy to take out the water ; 

 but, unfortunately, we forgot to remove the coat aud vest 

 that were fastened to it, and spilled the contents on the two 

 garments. Still we were not out of our trouble, for, after 

 having hitched up and started off, we found that the by-road 

 that we had taken had teen lately fenced in, in two different 

 places. Luckily these were of the old-style of worm fences, 

 and with a few minutes' delay we managed to get through. 



We soon reached the city, where a good fire and a hearty 

 supper awaited us. A temporary change of garments, es- 

 pecially of foot-wear, soon set matters right. The kind hos- 

 pitality of X, and of his aged mother, I will not forget, neither 

 will he, nor I, readily forget our experience in Wood river. 



Hamilton, 111. 



P. S. — Let me add that X has since married the young 

 lady who was the indirect cause of this eventful trip. 



C. P. D. 



