172 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



shall I sny now?" so be goes on in 

 a pleasant way and works a large 

 number of ycvx nsefiil bints into a 

 short article. The doctor's chatty 

 style is agreeable and works in- 

 strnction in a charming wa^'. He 

 has probably been a teacher in his 

 younger days : he is, to say the 

 least, one now. 



Next comes Brother Demaree 

 from Kentucky, the only represen- 

 tative in this series from the 

 "Sunny South." It is noticed 

 that he makes a point on locality, 

 as affecting different operations in 

 the production of honey. This 

 word is more and more used in our 

 literature from day to day, and it 

 may be remarked that we can 

 never have a manual of general 

 instruction in beekeeping and 

 honey-getting until we get the re- 

 sults from experiments conducted 

 at two or three apicultural stations 

 in each state and territor\f in our 

 Union. Many of the disappoint- 

 ments in beekeeping arise from 

 the attempt to make a plan which 

 succeeds in Maine apply in Cali- 

 fornia oi' somewhere else, when 

 the conditions surrounding the two 

 cases may not at all be similar. 

 Mr. Demaree is a veteran of about 

 forty years in beekeeping, and his 

 work has probably been laigel}' 

 devoted to investigation and ex- 

 periment, and his suggestions are 

 entitled to great respect. 



Taken all in all,4,liese five articles 

 are a remarkable collection to find 

 in one single number of any bee 

 ])aper, and they ought to go far to 

 the establishment of the "Apicul- 

 tukist" upon a permanent basis, if 

 it has not already attained the de- 

 sired goal. 



Des Moines, la., May 31, 1887. 



For the American Apiailturist. 



MANIPULATION OF BEES, 

 ETC. 



G. W. Demaree. 



The beginner must learn to han- 

 dle his bees, so as to learn practi- 

 cally the natural history and hab- 

 its of bees and to learn to know 

 just what goes on inside of the 

 hive, after which a i)ractised eye 

 will tell at a glance when anything 

 is wrong with a colony from ex- 

 ternal " signs." After the deep 

 snow we had the latter part of 

 March (which by reason of its 

 depth lay for several days), vvhen 

 the weather cleared up and the 

 bees were able to stir, 1 discovered 

 by walking through the apiary 

 about ten colonies, one of the best 

 in the apiary among them that had 

 "balled" and killed their queens 

 during the bad spell of weather. 



They do not often go so far 

 in their desperation as this, but 

 they did it for me this time. 

 Part of these colonies were saved 

 by making them lear queens and 

 heli)ing them with some capped 

 brood. The}' will not be in time 

 to do much this season. 1 have 

 found that it pays to give bees 

 plenty of stores in the fall, so that 

 they need not be disturbed in the 

 early spring till fruit bloom comes, 

 after which there is no danger in 

 handling bees. Last season 

 (1886) in March, after going 

 through ni}' bees to give them a 

 " looking over" and providing for 

 those colonies that might need as- 

 sistance, I had occasion to return 

 to one colony that had been exam- 

 ined, and when 1 opened the hive I 

 found the queen " balled." 1 per- 

 formed whatever I had reopened 

 the hive for, smoked the bees off 

 of the queen, closed the hive and 

 went my way, but that hive turned 

 up queenless afterwards. I now 

 make it a rule that vvhen I find a 



