ESTABl 

 :OLDEST BEE-PAPER'' 



I»ablislied Weefc23'', at ^1,00 per anntum. 



Saini>le C)oz>y sent on Jlpp/ication, 



36th Year. 



CHICAGO, ILL., AUGUST 13, 1896. 



No. 33. 



Mrs. N. L. Stow and Her Apiary. 



BY 6E0EGE W. YORK. 



About three weeks ago we received a very cordial letter 

 from Mrs. N. L. Stow, inviting Mrs. York and myself to visit 

 her home and apiary in Evanston, 111., 11 miles north of Chi- 

 cago. I replied that all being well we would be pleased to 

 accept the generous invitation on Saturday afternoon, Aug. 1. 



The day came, and with it threatening clouds, but we 

 took the train, and soon were at the station where Mrs. Stow's 

 son, " Harry," met us with a two-seated carriage. Unbe- 

 known to us, Mr. Stow and daughter were on the same train 

 (as they both are employed in the city) ; so we all rode over to 

 the Stow home and plantation, a good half mile, where we 

 found Mrs. Stow and her apiary of some SO colonies of Ital- 

 ian bees. 



In conversation with Mrs. Stow before going to the bee- 

 yard, I learned that she began to keep bees in the spring of 

 1884, buying two colonies in lO-frama Langstroth hives from 

 a bee-keeper in an adjoining town, and paying .f 10 per colony 

 for them. Mrs. Stow, though entirely ignorant about bees, 

 was compelled to do her own selecting of the colonies out of 

 about a dozen, and how was she to judge, never having seen 

 the inside of a bee-hive? Well, she looked carefully at the 

 hive-entrances, and thought she saw rather more bees (lying 

 at some than others, and so she chose those that seemed to 

 have the most bees passing out and in. To show the wisdom 

 of her choice, or luck, I may say that by fall she had increased 

 to 8 colonies by natural swarming, and had about 70 pounds 

 of honey. 



Upon asking Mrs. Stow how she happened to begin to 

 keep bees, she said that she and Mr. Stow were very fond of 

 animal pets — birds, for instance, and she has quite a little 

 aviary — and they thought they would also like a few bee.s, 

 more for the pleasure to be found in caring for them than for 

 pecuniary profit. But with the pleasure there also came quite 

 a little proBt, as some years she has had as high as 1,200 

 pounds of comb honey, which she invariably sold to local 

 grocers at a good price. 



After chatting awhile in-doors, we repaired to the apiary, 

 which is slightly to one side at the rear of the house. The 

 hives, all neatly painted white and numbered, were set in 



rows — 9 in each — north and south, facing the east, and all 

 well protected by small willow and basswood trees at the west, 

 and various kinds of low-growing trees, corn, etc., on the east. 

 The rows were about 10 feet apart, and a space of about 3 

 inches between the hives in each row. The hives are of the 

 portico style, and at the front of each row there was a board 

 platform about 18 inches wide, upon which the bees drop as 

 they return laden with pollen or honey. 



Mrs. Stow has had some 30 natural swarms this year — 

 in fact, one issued just as we were examining another colony, 

 and alighted on a small willow tree about 10 rods away. It 

 had a clipped queen, which Mrs. Stow had no difficulty in 

 quickly finding just outside the hive and catching in a small 

 cage; she removed the old hive, put an empty one in its place. 



Mrs. N. L. Stoiv, Evanston, Til. 



and laid the queen (still in the cage) immediately in front. 

 Soon the swarm came pouring back, and began to enter the 

 empty hive, when Mrs. Stow liberated the queen, and saw 

 that she entered the hive along with the bees. Thus that 

 swarm was easily hived. 



The reason for placing the hives thus in rows, was for 



