THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



245 



more than they could well assimilate 

 at one dose. I imagine I can see 

 the knowing ones popping their 

 heads above the parapets and laugh- 

 ing in derision. But hold ! If I 

 should charge the gun with what I 

 doti't knoiv about bees, I don't 

 want to be around when it is fired 

 ofif. I should expect it would be 

 blown to flinders and the cannoneers 

 carried off in baskets. 



But we will let the big gun rest for 

 the present and if you are not afraid 

 of the smell of gunpowder, I will 

 proceed to touch off a few harmless 

 squibs. The commissary depart- 

 ment first suggests itself to my mind 

 (perfectly natural to an old soldier) 

 so I announce my subject : Feeding 

 Bees and Bee Feeders. By way of 

 reconnoitre I wish to state that, after 

 I returned from the late civil war, 

 being still aggressive, I looked about 

 for other foes to conquer ; and soon 

 found them under an apple tree in 

 the shape of two hives of bees, 

 20,000 strong. As they appeared to 

 have considerable fight in them I 

 arranged with their owner to place 

 them on my territory and to give 

 them the advantage of position. They 

 were placed on the flat roof of the 

 ell where I could make sorties at 

 them through the garret window. 

 Instead of the cast-iron guns I had 

 been using I chose a small tin breech- 

 loader about a foot long, and with 

 armor on I soon began to skirmish 

 around those hives, — but I never 

 caught them asleep ; they proved 

 themselves fully worthy of my valor. 

 Indeed, they were perfect little sav- 

 ages. Talk about the hero of Ther- 

 mopylie. If Leonidas had had to 



advance and retreat through a garret 

 window as many times as I did with 

 a cohort of enraged bees after him 

 he would have been a hero indeed. 



All that is changed now and those 

 hybrids have given place to civilized 

 Italians, and although we exchange 

 shots occasionally we for the most 

 part get along very amicably. 



I have had very fair success with 

 my bees — especially in wintering 

 them. 



Although the amount of surplus 

 honey I get is rather small, which I 

 attribute to poor location, still I doubt 

 if any beekeeper in eastern Massa- 

 chusetts with an apiary of over twen- 

 ty stands can show a much larger 

 average. 



I use the closed end standing 

 frame and prefer it to the hanging 

 frame, having used both. Now to 

 return from this digression to my 

 subject : Feeding Bees and Bee 

 feeders. I have two feeding cam- 

 paigns in the year, spring and fall. 

 We will begin with the fall. Having 

 performed all preliminary work of 

 uniting all nuclei, removing all sur- 

 plus boxes, reducing number of 

 brood frames to eight as the maxi- 

 mum number, supplying, queens 

 where needed, etc., then by raising 

 the rear end of a hive I can tell to a 

 hard-tack just how much each will 

 need to be fed. If they have 

 twenty-five lbs. of stores, all right ; if 

 not, then feed till they have. I make 

 my feed as follows : I place my tin 

 budge barrel (which has a faucet 

 near the bottom and has been used 

 all summer as an uncapping can) on 

 the stove and put therein twenty-five 

 lbs. of granulated sugar and five 



