31G 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



August 



somewhat of my experience last year. 



Myself and a friend located and cut 

 16 wild bee-trees last fall. I use a 

 box with a sliding lid to keep the bees 

 in Avhile carrying them from one point 

 to another. I then find bees working 

 on flowers, or bloom, of some kind 

 (sumac and buckwheat being my 

 favorites). I have a bottle of extract- 

 ed honey, also another small bottle 

 about one-half full of water, which I 

 fill with honey, and shake well, with 

 just a scent of oil of anise. I then 

 take a mouthfull of this mixture and 

 blow it over a few bunches of flowers, 

 that I see the bees are working the 

 most on, then I sit down and watch 

 the bees working till I have a direct 

 course, or line, which won't take long 

 if done in the way above mentioned. 



After watching them carefully, and 

 having obtained a straight line, I cut 

 off these few bunches of flowers and 

 carry them to some point where I can 

 hide, or destroy them from the notice 

 of the bees ; and in a few minutes I 

 am ready to start after the line, for as 

 soon as the bees can find no more of 

 this mixture on the flowers, they will 

 go into the box ; so in this way yuu 

 will have no trouble at all to get the 

 bees to work in the box from the start, 

 for all experienced bee-hunters know 

 that it is a very hard matter at times 

 to get bees off flowers and get them to 

 work in a box on comb containing 

 pure honey, or sugar syrup, as the 

 strange smell of the combs, etc., make 

 the bees very shy, but experience has 

 taught me that to take pure honev 

 and make it half water it comes near- 

 er being the same as the bees are 

 gathering from the flowers, and they 

 will load up much quicker than from 

 pure honey, and it is not nearly so 



sticky — they never get daubed as 

 much as they do from pure honey or 

 sugar syrup. 



Now, all you have to do is to follow 

 tip this line until you find where the 

 colony is ; but some times this be- 

 comes a very trying piece of business, 

 and gets very interesting before one 

 gets through with it, as it did in one 

 case with me last summer, which I 

 wish to relate ; 



It was a beautiful morning June 24, 

 that myself and friend started out to 

 see if we could locate a colony of 

 wild bees. We went out 3i or 4 

 miles away to some old fields, and 

 found bees working on sumac blos- 

 som ; it didn't take long to start the 

 bees, and get a straight line, which 

 without a doubt, would prove to be a 

 colony of wild bees. We had a 

 mountain to cross, and therefore we 

 tried to get as many bees as possible 

 before starting, as it generally is a 

 pretty hard matter to get bees to come 

 down as you go up a mountain, but 

 in this case it didn't prove very hard, 

 and we followed them until sundown, 

 taking them over two miles from 

 where we started them the first day. 



The next morning we started early, 

 taking everything we needed to cut a 

 bee-tree, and hive a colony of bees 

 with, for we expected to find it in a 

 short time, for we thought we were 

 close to the colony when we left off' 

 the evening before. 



But to our surprise we took it over 

 two miles farther — in all over four 

 miles from where we started it ; but 

 we failed to find it until 6 o'clock 

 that evening, and after looluug at all 

 the trees for a circle of three-fourths 

 of a mile around, and even looking in 

 the rocks and at the old logs, I found 



