The American Apicultiirist 



ENTERED AT THE POST-OFFICE, SALEM, AS SECOND-CLASS JLiTTER. 



Published Monthly. S. M. Locke, Publisher & Prop'r. 



VOL. II. 



SALEM, Mx\SS., APRIL i, 1884. 



No. 



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CARELESS BEEKEEPING. 



By Chas. F. Muth. 



As most beekeepers are apt to 

 relate their success in business, or 

 what they coukl do with their bees, 

 I have selected the above heading 

 in order to show a part of the 

 other side of beekeeping. Every- 

 body is acquainted with a careless 

 man or a careless boy who knows 

 that a certain part of his business 

 requires his attention at a certain 

 time, but who will invariably post- 

 pone to the next day or the next 

 week, and finally complain of his 

 bad luck and that he could not make 

 anything. I know of a farmer 

 who in July, 1882, turned his hogs 

 into a wood-pasture which he knew 

 was without water. He had lost, 

 six weeks afterwards, fifty fine hogs 

 from " cholera," and he added : 

 " I always had bad luck with hogs 

 and I shall keep no more." Upon 



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my enquiring where he kept them 

 and whether they had a sufficient 

 supply of water, he admitted that, 

 perhaps, the insufficiency of water 

 Avas partly the cause of the cholera. 

 It is a pity that there are just 

 such careless people among bee- 

 keepers ; but the very best of us 

 may be guilty of a very careless act 

 as I shall try to show by a case 

 from my own apiary. It brought 

 to my mind a vivid illustration of 

 a careless beekeeper and last but 

 not least, the superiority of Italians 

 over the black race of bees in 

 keeping their hives clean of the 

 bee-moth. 



After the honey season had 

 closed, I had three colonies of 

 black bees. The second story of 

 one of them, I filled with combs 

 which had been hanging in my 

 bee-room and become infested with 

 moth. I picked out all I could 

 and left to the colony of black bees 

 the finishing part. The same thing 

 had been done by me many times 

 previously with Italians, which 

 made a clean sweep of the moth in 

 every instance. I had not the slight- 

 est doubt that this strong colony 

 of black bees could accomplish 

 the same task equally as well. 

 Sickness and death of a member of 

 my family prevented me from look- 

 ing again at my bees until they 

 (73) 



