THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



Jan. 



criticism like a blunder in the center 

 of a beautiful picture. Fancy folks 

 pay fancy prices for fancy goods and 

 choose perfection as discerned by 

 sight and it takes very little to mar a 

 faultless section of honey. Every 

 cell that is bitten into counts. 



Our plan is to open the hive hasti- 

 ly and send smoke down amongst the 

 sections forcibly to hustle the bees 

 out before they have time to open the 

 cells. The other plan, with the bee 

 escape, they are allowed their own 

 time to get out, and not being scared 

 they do not molest the cappings. In 

 adjusting the escape board it should 

 be done carefully and without distur- 

 bance because a jar or rap on the 

 hives is as liable as smoke to set them 

 to taking honey from the cells. In 

 some instances enough cells may be 

 uncapped that it would seem neces- 

 sary to return the sections to the 

 hives to be refilled and resealed. 



Black bees are easier to start out 

 than Italians or hybrids, but a little 

 smoke seems to frighten them so 

 greatly that they run heedlessly about 

 as though they had forgotten where 

 the place of exit was so that a few 

 stick to the sections to a most vexa- 

 tious degree and to every turn they 

 make they grasp to the cap of a new 

 cell. Italians do not lose their heads 

 so easily. They know the way out 

 but require a little longer time. Nor 

 are Italians so liable to tear open the 

 cells but show a marked disposition 

 to preserve them. 



In finding queens in black colonies 

 the disposition of the bees is less fa- 

 vorable thau of Italians. Of course 

 the black queens are smaller and 

 dark, on which account they are more 



difficult to find, but where there is 

 enough Italian blood so that the 

 queens are large and sometimes yel- 

 low the distinctive dispositions of the 

 blacks are often retained. 



Where there are several combs of 

 brood it is seldom that three or four 

 can be examined before the blacks 

 will begin to roll and tumble, hang in 

 festoons and drop off on to the ground 

 and set the hive in a most confused 

 condition, so that the queen could 

 only be discovered by chance. At 

 the same time every bee breaks open 

 cells and fills up with honey until it 

 would be easy to mistake workers for 

 queens. In a very short time the 

 brood will have no bees at all upon it 

 and when robbers are around I have 

 thought that the bees joined in pilfer- 

 ing their own combs. 



The worst Italians are only slightly 

 inclined this way, and they will stand 

 still and in regular order over the 

 brood, really spreading out as a pro- 

 tection from cold or robbers and 

 though we look the combs over and 

 over again they maintain their posi- 

 tion as if to aid us in the search. 

 With such bees we can see just where 

 the sealed and unsealed brood and 

 honey are and find the queen within 

 a circular line of guards at her regu- 

 lar work on the unsealed comb. 



As we begin to remove the combs 

 on one side of the hive of a colony of 

 blacks they begin to charge downward 

 and under the bottom bars toward the 

 far side of the hive and when we 

 take out the last combs they are cov- 

 ered with bees four or five deep and 

 when the last comb is taken out a 

 great throng, perhaps the queen with 

 them, will go rushing into the corners 



