1898. 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



honey to amount to much, after all. 



As soon as I became a married man, 

 and even before I had a home of my 

 own, I procured some bees, proposing 

 to investigate to ray hearts content. 

 However, before the bees and I be- 

 came very well acquainted they de- 

 camped. But this only made me 

 still more curious, and in a short time 

 was " crazy," as the neighbors said 

 in regard to bee culture. I was pro- 

 prieror of a little jewelry store at that 

 time, where my sister assisted me in 

 my watch-repairing, etc. I remember 

 hearing her tell my wife one day that 

 every old farmer who came into the 

 store was compelled to stay until he 

 had told me every thing he could tell 

 and all that he had heard anybody 

 Ise tell, about honey bees. I ransack- 

 d old garrets for back numbers of 

 The American Agriculturist, " and 

 later I got hold of " The Rural New- 

 Yorker"; but the more I studied the 

 more infatuated I became. When I 

 was the happy possessor of " Lang- 

 troth on the Honey-Bee" I came 

 pretty near sitting up all night to read 

 the wonderful story — more wonderful 

 and fascinating than "Robinson Cru- 

 soe," because Crusoe's island was right 

 in my garden, where I could investi- 

 gate and verify all the particulars of 

 he wonderful story. I soon found 

 :hat Mr. Langstroth was living, and 



uf saved up my money until I could pur- 

 jhast the best Italian queen he owned, 

 n the best in America, as I supposed. 

 Very likely the progeny of that $20 

 jueen is now doing service all over the 



9» [Jnited States, more or less. 



Through my influence, largely, "The 



ilii American Bee Journal" was started 

 igain. it having been temporarily sus- 

 jended on account of the Civil War. 



'J'hrough its pages I learned of the 

 honey extractor, invented in Ger- 

 many. The German machine was 

 made of wood. In a few days I had 

 made one according to my own notion, 

 all of metal. 



The first summer after I received 

 my high-priced Italian Queen I neg- 

 lected my buisness at the store quite 

 a little, I fear, to rear queens and stock 

 minature beehives, or queens-rearing 

 hives, as we called them then. By this 

 time I had purchased a home of my 

 own, and the back yard with its hives 

 of bees, all Italians, was to me the 

 most pleasant place on the face of the 

 whole earth. We had a very pretty 

 garden, with currant bushes, peach 

 trees, grapevines, etc., but my queen- 

 rearing finally got agoing so well that 

 Mrs. Root said when she was picking 

 currants she expected to find a little, 

 swarm of bees clustered on almost 

 every bush. My hives were too small, 

 as I afterward learned, and the thrifty 

 Italians would gather honey enough 

 to fill the hive pretty thoroughly in a 

 little more than one day, and then, 

 following their instinct, they swarmed 

 out, because they wanted more room. 



As it begun to be noised around 

 that I was '"crazy on bees," a good 

 mady swarms were hived and brought 

 to me, for it was rumored that I would 

 give $3 or $4 for almost any kind of 

 swarm — even though it might be a 

 second or a third one. One exper- 

 iment made late in June set me al- 

 most wild. A neighbor brought me 

 quite a heavy swarm of bees.fur which 

 I paid him $5. These were at once 

 run into a hive completely furnished 

 with empty combs. Basswood and 

 clover were just at the height of their 

 yield. In two days' time this colony 



