264 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



December, 



BEE-KEEPERS OF GOTHAM. 



(Leon D. Jiverett). 

 (Ck)pyright, 1903, by P. F. Collier & Son ) 



FAR ABOVE the din and strife of 

 business, in the very lieart of 

 down-town business section of 

 New Yoris: city, bees buzz merrily as 

 they fly in and out of their busy homes. 

 On the roof of many a tall office build- 

 ing, janitors keep apiaries of from five 

 to twenty hives beyond the view of 

 rushing humanity on the streets below. 

 The city bee, however, has to hus- 



Imve gone five miles from home in or- 

 der to secure it. 



Ranged in a row on the top of an 

 office building in which bankers and 

 brokers scheme, are five to twenty in- 

 nocent-looking white boxes, or hives, 

 in and out of which the little fellows 

 go. Emerging from their hives, they 

 rise above the smoke and haze of chim- 

 neys, and Avhen at the proper height 

 away tliey go for distant fields. The 

 city bees never get lost, even though 

 they may wander several miles from 

 home; for every one of them is the 

 possessor of compound eyes, which en- 





An Apiaiv on a Sk.^ Sci.ipor. 



tie for a living, for it cannot, like its 

 country cousins, leave the hive and 

 Immediately strike a field of blooming 

 clover or flowering buckwheat, but 

 must stretch its wings and hie away 

 to liie blossoming shores of Now .Jer- 

 sey, Statcn Island or Long Island. 



In spite of these handicaps, the roof- 

 city bees manage to be a source of 

 profit to their owners, and day by day 

 i-eturn with rich stores of golden nec- 

 tar, even though in some instances they 



able it to see great distances, and 

 wlicii returning home to fly in a line 

 S(^ straight that the "bee line" has be- 

 come )iroverbial. 



Each one of tJiese hives or "colonies," 

 is a teeming city in itself, having a 

 poimlation of about foi-ty thousand in- 

 habitants, ruled over by a queen, only 

 one of which exists in a hive at a time, 

 and whose word is law. There is no 

 such thing as a king bee, about which 

 the Mucients ignorantly wrote, not 



