172 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



But later in the season comes the 

 -difficulty. The sections are not finish- 

 ed as quickly; in fact, you are not 

 sure whether they will be finished or 

 emptied out. You hardly know 

 whether to give them a whole super, 

 only half a super, or whether it is 

 best to clear everything off when the 

 .harvest begins to lag. 



If we leave any thing on, I think 

 we have generaly the best success in 

 -giving only twelve sections at a time. 

 They finish them more quickly if they 

 work at all, and the honey is not darken- 

 ed as it is apt to be when they work 

 slowly and to much is given at a time. 

 If they don't finish them your sections 

 are better off than on; and by using 

 12 instead of 24 you are likely to have 

 only half as many unfinished sections 

 at the end of the season. 



Of course this does not apply to 

 localities where there is a good crop of 

 fall honey, unless it be towards the 

 -close of the fall harvest. Still, it is an 

 open question whether it is best to 

 put on 12 sections, or clear every 

 thing off as soon as the harvest be- 

 gins to lag, and trust to extracting if 

 the brood-chamber becomes too crowd- 

 ed. Different seasons require differ- 

 ent management. This year we put 

 <on 12's and had our labor for our 

 pains, or nearly so, as very few sec- 

 tions have been finished. Although 

 a few colonies have stored a little, the 

 anost of them have left the sections 

 just as they were when we put them 

 on, and a very few colonies have done 

 some emptying out. 



When it is decided that bees can 

 not be induced to do any further 

 finishing, what then? Is it best to ex- 

 tract, or to sell at a sufficiently low 

 price to find ready sale! I suspect it 

 is pretty safe to say that sections hav- 

 ing only a small amount of honey in 

 them are best fed back to the bees. — 

 Emma Wilson, in Gleaning*. 



BEES AND THE FARM. 



In an introductory way it might be 

 well, if we had time, to glance at the 

 sentimental side of the relation be-, 

 tween the home and the honey-bee, 

 but I will omit it for more important 

 matters. It is to often the case that 

 this side of important questions are 

 left in the back-ground. It would be 

 folly for me to ask anyone here if 

 they would keep house without a few 

 colonies of bees on the lawn, or near 

 the kitchen-door. 



It is uot only a fact that thrift, in- 

 dustry and ingenuity are characteristic 

 traits of the inmates of the hive, but 

 the presence of the homes of our busy 

 little friends near our habitations im- 

 parts to us these elements in manhood 

 or womanhood. 



You never saw a lazy or stupid 

 person succeed with bees. The bee- 

 fever may sometimes get into the 

 system of a lazy man, but after the 

 first attack it leaves him in a seven- 

 fold worse state. The successful bee- 

 keeper is an industrious person, a 

 mechanic, a botanist, a producer, a 

 good salesman, and rarely a scamp. 

 He gets these traits from the hive. 

 He can even get his religion from it. 

 We are in times now that plainly 

 show that industrial conditions are go- 

 ing through a most radical change, 

 and the farmer, his methods, and his 

 farm, are going rapidly in the same 

 direction. The old farm routine will 

 be a thing of the past— if it is not the 

 farmer sees plainly that his owner- 

 ship will be. We find, in looking 

 around that the hive is being placed 

 on nearly every farm. The question 

 then comes up, is every person going 

 into the bee business? And the more 

 serious question follows, what are spe- 



