1898. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



131 



Eleven Months with Bees. 



Written for the Amtriean Bee-Keeper. 



BY "OPTIMUS." 



§KEEP BEES for the purpose of 

 fertilizing my young orchards. If 

 profit comes my way I will not ob- 

 ject. The work affords pleasure. 



On the 10th of April, '97, I purchased 

 my first colony of "blacks," a prime 

 swarm cast by a colony wintered on its 

 summer stand. About three weeks af- 

 terward I obtained a prime swarm of 

 hybrids. The "blacks" were delivered 

 in a sort of mongi-el— observatory — box 

 hive. This combination of ingenuity 

 gave me more trouble than pleasure. 

 To transfer was now the problem. This 

 operation was deferred for four or 

 more weeks till the hive was com- 

 pletely filled with honey. Finally I un- 

 dertook the formidable task. I tried 

 to get those bees up through the open- 

 ings at the top. That was a failure. I 

 then tried it through the rear, where 

 the pane of glass afforded the "'obser- 

 vation." This was also a failure. I 

 had no neighbor more versed in bee 

 lore than myself from whom to get a 

 pointer. My next alternative was to 

 purchase a bee book — Quinby's New 

 Bee-Keeping — it being the only work in 

 stock on the subject. From this I 

 learned how to transfer— not by the 

 improved Heddon method — Heddon 

 was then an unknown factor to me. I 

 pried off the bottom, turned that hive 

 "up-side-down," drummed up those 

 bees into a box, and dumped its hum- 

 ming contents in front of my dove-tail; 

 thus did I get the little fellows "home" 

 in great shape. I repeated the drum- 

 ming and dumping act until all had de- 

 camped. I then cut out the well filled 

 combs, and after trimming to size, 

 fastened them with strips into Hoffman 

 frames and gave them to the bees in 

 their new abode. Owing to my crude 

 management 1 got no surplus honey, 

 but they cast two swarms before they 

 had been transferred. 

 My next tussle was with a colony of 



high-toned Italians obtained from Mr. 

 Doolittle in Gallup frames. Here, again 

 I was in for the transferring amuse- 

 ment. Mr. D. assured me that it was 

 the easiest thing in the world to trans- 

 fer them into dovetail hives. This may 

 be, and certainly is, for such a veteran 

 as "The Uncrowned King of the Buffalo 

 Convention," but not so easy for a 

 verdant amateur. At any rate I could 

 not see the feasibility of the perform- 

 ance through Mr. Doolittle's glasses ; be- 

 sides, it was then late in the summer 

 and I feared the experiment might cost 

 me the loss of my $6.00 beauties. So I 

 made a Gallup hive after Mr. Doolittle's 

 very plain and specilic directions. But 

 alas, for the accuracy of my workman- 

 ship, it was too small. All the frames 

 would not get in. I then "divided," put 

 half in the hive and left the remainder 

 in the shipping box until I made a 

 second and improved hive. I furnished 

 full sheets of fdn. in new frames to 

 complete the full complement of frames 

 to both colonies. Here a new trouble 

 arose. One colony was queenless. hope- 

 lessly so; but here again Mr. Doolittle 

 came to the rescue by mailing me an 

 "untested" queen, which I "introduced" 

 after much study and hesitation. She 

 was "accepted" all right, and her off- 

 spring are genuine beauties. 



I wintered my bees on summer 

 stands in winter cases: fed them 

 granulated syrup, and at present have 

 nine colonies in apparently first-class 

 condition. 



Verona, Pa., March 25, 1898. 



Market Problem Again. 



W'rillnifor tin Ann riran Ilfr-lufjur. 

 BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



(OtTlR. EDITOR, will you kindly al- 

 low me just a word or two 

 further on that "Problem of 

 Marketing," as per the .June number 

 of The American Bee-Keeper. I was 

 wonderfully surprised that Bro. .JoUey 

 should take wheat to sustain his pos- 

 ition. Can it be possible that he is not 



