1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



235 



bute to my care that no combs are 

 ever left exposed so as to breed these 

 pests. Years of care ah')ng this line 

 will certainly largely free any apiary 

 of this moth difficulty, unless you 

 have those keeping bees about yon 

 who pay no attention to this matter. 

 Hives of comb left in the yard after 

 the bees have died from them, as they 

 often are, will give moths by the 1000 

 to be a nuisance in years to come. 

 A little care will save all this. 

 Borodino, N. Y. 



Handling Bees, 



BY WILDEF. GRAHAME. 



On more than one occasion recent- 

 ly I have seen the advice given to 

 beginners to bewaie of handling their 

 bees except when absolutely necessary, 

 and every season's experience con- 

 vinces me more and more that this is 

 bad advice. 



I well remember the first swarm of 

 bees I ever owned ; how they were a 

 constant source of pride to me and 

 how perhaps several times a day I 

 would gently lift the cover and, seat- 

 ing myself beside them, watch them 

 work. Day after day this happened 

 and the result was that before the 

 summer was over these bees were so 

 accustomed to my visits that no atten- 

 tion whatever was paid to them. 

 E"ven the guards barely poked their 

 heads out, took a minutes view of the 

 surroundings and then withdrew satis- 



Not contented with this, with the 

 fied. 



venturesome spirit of boyhood I 

 gradually explored further and fur- 

 ther into the anatomy oP their domes- 

 tic arrangements until it was almost 

 a daily occurrences for me to remove 

 at least one of the frames : sometimes 



several. All the summer I did my 

 apiary work without veil or smoker 

 and got but one sting. Those bees 

 appeared to know and trust me and 

 I had no difficulty in handling them 

 quite as I pleased. 



The next year I began in the same 

 way and with the same results. But 

 later in the season I became too much 

 occupied with other things to pay 

 much attention to my old pets. The 

 result was that hive of bees by fall 

 were wholly beyond my control ex- 

 cept with veil and smoker and I 

 never after that regained ascendancy. 



Now I am not prepared to advocate 

 a daily overhauling of the brood nest. 

 I do not even insist noon the lifting 

 of the cover and cloth two or three 

 times a day being any benefit to the 

 bees, though I am not prepared to say 

 I think it injures them i£ carefully 

 done. But 1 do say that bees may be 

 tamed by frequent presence among 

 them, perhaps as much as the domes- 

 tic animals of the field can. They 

 become accustomed to one's presence 

 and, as day after day the cover is 

 lifted without injuring them, they 

 gradually gain confidence and cease 

 to be seriously disturbed by every 

 little movement. 



It is very well to argue that fre- 

 quent and unnecessary disturbance of 

 of the hive robs the inhabitants of so 

 much time. When I see some simple 

 operation like placing a super upon a 

 hive throw the bees in that hive into 

 such a state of resentful confusion as 

 to be dangerous to approach for the 

 rest of that day I think of my gentle 

 little pets that would not have allowed 

 themselves to even be interrupted in 

 their work by such an operation. 

 And the difference lay simply in the 



