THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



169 



Tlbree Menu CairSiniM for I, 



.©I©iii< 



BY IRVING KINYON. 



EDITOR REVIEW, on page 155 of 

 the Review for 1904 you ask me to 

 tell your readers how Mr. Elwood 

 managed 10 apiaries for comb honey, 

 with the help of another man and my- 

 self. Well, I will tell you what we 

 did and how we did it. I began work 

 for Mr. Elwood March first, 1892, and 

 my first job was to go to the planing 

 mill and get 1200 new supers. The 

 whole 1200 went into an ordinary two- 

 horse sleigh box, without being tied 

 on; so you will see they were not a 

 heavy or a bulky affair. They cost 13 

 cents each and held 27 sections. These 

 supers were duplicates of all the supers 

 Mr. Elwood had. This is one of the 

 good points about Mr. Elwood's 

 system; he has only one size and style 

 of hive, super, and section, so every- 

 thing is interchangable. 



Mr. Olcott easier, of Deck, N. Y., 

 came to work on March 7, and, to- 

 gether, we nailed up 1200 new supers 

 and put together 60,000 four-piece, 

 dovetailed sections. This, with set- 

 ting the bees out of the cellar, prepar- 

 smoker fuel, and such things as would 

 be needed later in the season, kept us 

 busy until about the middle of April. 



VENTILATED BOTTOM BOARDS. 



The latter part of March we began 

 taking the bees out of the cellar. We 

 used a pair of two-horse, farm-bobs, 

 with the box removed, drawing 28 col- 

 onies at a load. We took out from 

 four to six loads each morning, work- 

 ing until the bees in the cellar began 

 to be too much excited from the light 

 admitted, when the cellar was closed 

 until towards evening, when from four 

 to six more loads were taken out. The 

 bottom board of each hive had an open- 



ing in the center, 6 x 12 inches in size, 

 which could be opened or closed by a 

 slide. It could be opened full size for 

 cellar wintering and for summer it 

 could be instantly adjusted to give any 

 desired size of entrance from, so small 

 that only one bee could pass at a time 

 to Yz inch or 2 inches, or ^4 inch b\' 12 

 inches or an extrance 12 inches long- by 

 an3^ width up to 6 inches, or it could be 

 closed entirely', which we did when 

 drawing the bees to and from the 

 cellar; so we had no trouble with the 

 horses being bothered by the bees. 

 After the horses were put in the barn 

 we went along and moved the slides so 

 the bees could fly. This bottom board 

 also embodies the Pettit idea of draw- 

 ing the returning field bees to the outer 

 part of the super. 



We took out 1252 colonies all from 

 one cellar. One yard was drawn 

 away as soon as they were out, and the 

 rest were drawn away between the 

 25th of April and the first of June. 



LOCATING OUT YARDS. 



Besides the home-yard, there were 

 nine out-yards, which were from three 

 to ten miles distant from home. Most 

 of the yards were located in pastures. 

 Such locations have several advan- 

 tages; first, the stock keeps the grass 

 down, second the bees are less liable to 

 trouble the owner of the farm, and 

 third, the rent is less than it would be 

 for tilled land. 



WOOD FOR SMOKER FUEL. 



For smoker fuel we sawed a maple 

 tree into blocks about three inches 

 long, and split them into pieces about 

 the size of a man's finger. These 

 pieces, when well dried, make the best 

 of smoker-fuel; and wood, in my opin- 



