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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 16, 



and still just keep tight together. They can be pulled out 

 easily with a nail or anything that will hook into the loop. 



Adulteration and Low Prices. — If eternal vigilance is 

 the price of liberty, so constant hammering at adulteration 

 will eventually give laws stringent enough to stop the most of 

 it, and that will give us a little better price for honey. Comb 

 honey is a luxury, and the working class are a little short of 

 money Just now, hence less demand and lower price. 



Lancaster, Pa., June 15. 



^ 



Hunting Wild Bees — An Experience. 



BY C. F. ZIGLER. 



I have been hunting wild bees since I was a boy 12 years 

 old, and will tell somewhat of my experience last year. 



Myself and a friend located and cut 16 wild bee-trees last 

 fall. I use a box with a sliding lid to keep the bees in while 

 carrying them from one point to another. I then find bees 

 working on flowers, or bloom, of some kind (sumac and buck- 

 wheat being my favorites). I have a bottle of extracted honey, 

 also another small bottle about one-half full of water, which I 

 fill with honey, and shake well, with just a scent of oil of 

 anise. I then take a mouthful of this mixture and blow it 

 over a few bunches of flowers, that I see the bees are working 

 the most on, then I sit down and watch the bees working till 

 I have a direct course, or line, which won't take long if done 

 in the way above mentioned. 



After watching them carefully, and having obtained a 

 straight line, I cut off these few bunches of flowers and carry 

 them to some point where I can hide, or destroy them from 

 the notice of the bees ; and in a few minutes I am ready to 

 start after the line, for as soon as the bees can find no more of 

 this mixture on the flowers, they will go into the box ; so in 

 this way one will have no trouble at all to get the liees to work 

 in the box from the start, for all experienced bee-hunters 

 know that it is a very hard matter at times to get bees off of 

 flowers and get them to work in a box on comb containing 

 pure honey, or sugar syrup, as the strange smell of the combs, 

 etc., make the bees very shy, but experience has taught me 

 that to take pure honey and make it half water it comes 

 nearer being the same as the bees are gathering from the 

 flowers, and they will load much quicker than from pure 

 honey, and it is not nearly so sticky — they never get daubed 

 as much as they do from pure honey or sugar syrup. 



Now, all you have to do is to follow up this line until you 

 find where the colony is ; but sometimes this becomes a very 

 trying piece of business, and gets very interesting before one 

 gets through with it, as it did in one case with me last sum- 

 mer, which I wish to relate: 



It was a beautiful morning, July 2-i, that myself and 

 friend started out to see if we could locate a colony of wild 

 bees. We went 3>2 or 4 miles away to some old fields, and 

 found bees working on sumac blossom ; it didn't take long to 

 start the bees, and get a straight line, which, without a 

 doubt, would prove to be a colony of wild bees. We had a 

 mountain to cross, and therefore we tried to get as many bees 

 as possible before starting, as it generally is a pretty hard 

 matter to get bees to come down as you go up a mountain, but 

 in this case it didn't prove very hard, and we followed them 

 until sundown, taking them over two miles from where we 

 started them the first day. 



The next morning we started early, taking everything we 

 needed to cut a bee-tree, and hive a colony of bees with, for 

 we expected to find it in a short time, for we thought we were 

 close to the colony when we left off the evening before. 



But to our surprise we took it over two miles further — in 

 all over four miles from where we started it; but we failed to 

 find it until 6 o'clock that evening, and after looking at all 



the trees for a circle of three-fourths of a mile around, and 

 even looking in the rocks and at the old logs, I found the 

 colony hanging on a limb in the top of a large tree, and if It 

 had not been for the noise of the bees, we would not have 

 found them that day. 



We then came to the conclusion that some one had found 

 the colony before, and not caring for anything but the honey, 

 they had left the swarm in the woods, and it had settled on 

 this tree ; but after looking closely we were still more sur- 

 prised to see the beautiful white comb they had built, shining 

 through the bees. We then cut the tree down, and secured 

 between 30 and 35 pounds of fine honey, being gathered 

 chiefly from wild raspberry, and it having built comb 2 feet 

 long and from 10 to 12 inches deep; I hived the swarm, 

 brought it home and transferred it to a hive filled with comb, 

 and so far have it living yet. 



Hunting wild bees is a trade in itself, and it matters not 

 how much knowledge one has of bees, if he never hunted them 

 any to get the theory or idea, I am sorry to say, he will never 

 make much headway at the business. 



I find great sport and enjoyment in looking through the 

 woods in the summer and fall, in hunting for wild bees, and I 

 am never so happy as when working with these busy little 

 creatures. Waterside, Pa. 



CONDUCTED BY 

 DR. C. C MILZ,ER, JUAICENGO, IXt. 



LQuestloDB may be mailed to the Bee Journal, or to Dr. Miller direct.l 



Shady Places for Bees. 



1. Can there be too shady a place for bees ? 



2. Is there any danger of comb becoming moldy in a hive 

 on a stand say 6 or S inches up from the ground where it is so 

 shady no grass or any other weeds will grow? E. A. W. 



Answers. — 1. A place can be made so shady as to be 

 dark as in a cellar, but I can hardly think any growth of trees 

 or vines can be so dense as to make it too dark for the bees. 

 But there may be such a dense growth on all sides that there 

 is too little circulation of air about the hives. I once had 

 combs melt down in hives upon which the light of the sun 

 never directly shone. There was such a dense growth on all 

 sides that there was very little stir of air, so the combs melted 

 down with the heat. 



2. There is no danger under ordinary circumstances. For 

 several years I kept an out apiary in an evergreen grove, and 

 the dense shade allowed no grass or weeds to grow, but there 

 was no trouble from mold or anything else. But there was 

 full chance for the air to move under the trees. It is barely 

 possible that some peculiar spot might be so close and damp 

 as to favor the growth of mold. 



Now the way is open if any others have more light to give 

 on this shady question. 



■ — ■ 



A mixecl.Up Colony — Holy.Liands. 



1. I have a black colony, black queen and all. Now this 

 spring some of her bees were dark black, some a little light, 

 and others 5-banded, just like Italians. What kind of a col- 

 ony would you call that ? 



2. In April I took from it 6 frames of bees and brood, 

 and put it in an empty hive and set it off by itself in a corner. 



