Dec. 7. 19(5 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



841 



took me 4 days to teach those bees to rob and take the 

 amount of feed I expected to give them in 6 hours. 



If I had put out feed in that manner in August or Sep- 

 tember, it would cause such a furor as to cover the hives 

 black with mad bees, which would attack people in the 

 streets and nearest houses within an hour. Since there were 

 160 colonies in good order when the present honey harvest 

 began, we were somewhat satisfied, having set the mark 

 several years ago not to keep above 120 colonies. 



Skunks in the Apiary. 



But there may be other mistakes made besides those 

 along the line of feeding. In September, two years ago, it 

 was found that skunks were working about some of the 

 colonies. By the use of poison and traps there were 8 

 destroyed during the fall. This seemed to clear them out so 

 that there were no more about our apiary during the next 

 season also. 



A near-by apiarist having 225 colonies, when I asked 

 him if his bees were bothered by skunks, said he did not 

 care if they were ; it would clear out some of the bees and 

 save feed. He lived about 50 miles away, and left the bees 

 in charge of a neighbor, but with no instructions as to 

 skunks. It could be readily seen that there were plenty of 

 skunks about. 



As nearly as I have been able to determine, a skunk 

 will work at a colony for 2 or 3 weeks until the colony be- 

 comes weak, then go to another hive, and so on for some 6 

 mOD^ths or more. In this way a skunk will depopulate 6 to 

 8 hives during one season. It leaves the colonies too poor 

 in bees to last very long. 



Eight skunks would get away with 64 colonies. If un- 

 disturbed they will breed the next spring, and in the fol- 

 lowing fall return with the increase. This was what this 

 apiary went through, between the good season of 1903 and 

 the spring of 1905, when there were 89 colonies left. When 

 the owner was asked how he lost so many, he said by rob- 

 bing. This bee-keeper fed sugar. I fed honey. He con- 

 tracted the hive-entrances to '2 inch. I contracted none at 

 all, and saw no robbing. His loss, figured from our yield, 

 would amount to 10 tons of honey ; that is, 135 colonies at 

 ISO pounds per colony. At 5 cents a pound it would amount 

 to $1000. Just what part is chargeable to skunks is a ques- 

 tion. A half pound of beef and a little strychnine would 

 have " settled their hash " in short order. 



When skunks cost a bee-keeper $100 a head, it ought to 

 attract his attention a little. He might stoop to take a few, 

 if for no more than the hide and tallow. It might add 

 variety to life, and set his blood to circulating during an off 

 year. 



One day last June a bee-keeper came to my apiary about 

 7 o'clock in the morning to borrow a smoker. He had set 

 his smoker on a bee-hive while he went into the house to 

 extract. A spark fell out and set the hive on fire and then 

 burned the smoker. He intended to start for the city the 

 same evening, but had 500 pounds of honey to take off his 

 hives to complete his load and give the bees storage-room 

 during his absence. In some apiaries one can extract with- 

 out smoke, but this apiary is the other kind. 



At sunset the smoker I was using tipped over, setting 

 itself on fire, burning the bellows all off. By dark I had a 

 new bellows completed. The next morning I attached it to 

 the barrel in 5 minutes. 



Only for a few tanned skunk hides lying around I should 

 have been obliged to make a trip of 30 miles, or wait for 

 the mail to bring a smoker from the city. So I have come 

 to regard the skunk not as a detestable animal, but simply 

 a walking smoker-bellows ! 



After cutting out the two pieces to form the bellows, 

 the odds and ends are used for hinges and latches to the 

 baby-nucleus hives ; a latch for the honey-house door ; a 

 strap for the hive-opener ; a small part on the back of the 

 neck is of the right thickness for the leather part of the 

 screw-cap honey-gates. But the best of all is a patch of 

 leather on each knee, padded underneath so as to drop upon 

 the knees when examining colonies. This is about as good 

 as a seat, and more handy. The blacksmith wears an 

 apron. An apiarist might wear a part of one. It is very 

 restful to change from the long-continued walking and 

 stooping position. I have sometimes thought that I could 

 do one-fourth more work by these change-about positions, 

 especially in examining brood-chambers and in queen- 

 rearing. 



Then the oil of the skunk is useful. It will keep the 

 hinge-end of a jack-knife blade from wearing off round so 

 it will shut up in an unexpected moment and cut a gash in 

 the apiarist's finger. It is good on the cogwheels of the 



foundation mill. A clock may run too fast in summer and 

 too slow in winter, and the bee-keeper is continually trying 

 to regulate it. At last he becomes disgusted and throws a 

 good clock away as worthless. Or he takes it to some tink- 

 erer, who, if he were a bee-keeper, would extract his honey 

 before it is sealed. The clock runs about as long as unripe 

 honey will keep, and then gets back at its same old tricks. 

 Look at the clock, and then at the sun, to tell the time of 

 day. Poor or adulterated oil will harden and retard the 

 speed of a clock in cool weather, and do the opposite in 

 warm weather. 



The gun should be kept as bright as a new silver dollar 

 throughout the inside of the barrel. It takes oil. We can 

 not buy oil and be sure of what we are getting every time. 

 While some oil will appear to be all right, it has often 

 been mixed with an adulterant that spreads a tarnish in the 

 gun that shot and powder can not remove. When we aim 

 at a bee-tird that is perched above our hive of best drones, 

 we want the bird to fall instead of flying away unharmed. 

 Bee-birds (not king-birds) will lurk for hours around a baby 

 nucleus in which we may have a dozen hand-picked drones. 



Other Pests of the Api.\ry. 



There are pests as well as climate in Southern Califor- 

 nia, and rats and gophers are no trivial affairs. If we keep 

 a tank of honey 3 feet from a tree, rats will climb the tree 

 and make a flying jump into it. If we spread a cloth over a 

 tank so that the corners hang down, rats are sure to climb 

 up on the under side and get into the tank. I have known 

 them to carry away a bushel of side-bars to make a nest, 

 and cut large holes through the sides of hives. They de- 

 light in carrying away files, bits, nails, hinges, nail-sets, 

 screw-drivers, etc. 



When I bought an acre of land in southeast Los Ange- 

 les, I set a row of eucalyptus around the outside, then 12 

 feet inside another row of cypress, inside of which to place 

 my 120 colonies of bees. There were about 300 trees in all. 

 By fall they had all been destroyed by gophers except a 

 dozen or so. 



Before I purchased the land it was planted with pump- 

 kins. A man came along one day and called out (I think he 

 was lately from the East) : " What will you take for that 

 patch of pumpkins?" "How much will you give?" "Five 

 dollars," he answered. 



When he came to gather them he found them to be 

 merely skins filled with dirt, the seeds and meat having 

 been removed by gophers. I bought lumber and kept a 

 tight fence around the bees until I could learn to protect 

 trees from gophers. I have known a gopher to gnaw a hole 

 through the bottom-board of a hive and completely fill the 

 hive and super with earth. 



The aspects of neighbors toward gophers is about the 

 same as the above-described bee-keeper toward skunks. I 

 might continue describing their peculiar antics until it 

 would fill several bee-papers. The main thing to impress 

 upon the reader is that when we see a pile of fresh earth 

 and a gopher's head sticking up beside it, out in the middle 

 of the neatly-dressed lawn or bee-yard, to make it the last 

 time he ever pokes his head out anywhere. 



Due respect for the business demands that we learn to 

 steer clear of all difliculties, or, in fact, change many diffi- 

 culties into advantages. Watch for my article on trap- 

 setting. Chatsworth, Calif. 



Comb Foundation and Its Uses 



BY ADRIAN GETAZ 



AT this day the advantages of using foundation liberally 

 are so well known that it is hardly necessary to men- 

 tion them. In the brood-chamber the advantages of 

 securing straight combs of all-worker. Furthermore, the 

 increased rapidity of brood-rearing (that is, in case of a 

 swarm hived without already built combs). If no founda- 

 tion is given, or only small starters, the queen is obliged to 

 wait until the combs are built before she can lay any eggs. 

 When full sheets of foundation are given, a day or so is 

 enough to draw out as much foundation as she can fill with 

 eggs. So there is no delay. 



In the sections it is still more important to give full 

 sheets. Only a few bees can work at a time on a small 

 starter, so the building up of full combs is delayed. On a 

 full sheet a large number of bees can work at once, draw 

 out the foundation and add to it enough to begin putting 

 honey in it before hardly anything could be done on a small 



