, THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 93 



hive, with or without a box chamber, the old hollow log, the straw 

 and willow work hive, and the old subtended and dividing hives, 

 the super and Madair hives, and even the old cupl^oard hives made 

 by Olmstead, way back in 1832 to 1842. These hives were a tier 

 of four or five square rims four to five inches deep, slats top and bot- 

 tom and all in a cupboard case with slanting bottom board. The 

 Bevan, the subtended hive, the lateral dividing hives, the super- 

 Nadair hives and system were fully described in a book published by 

 Saxton & Company, Chicago, Illinois, way back in 1853, titled "The 

 Bee-Keepers' Guide," and was sold here in Connecticut for 50 cents. 

 Being familiar Avith all those waA'-back and antique aftairs, I have 

 often laughed over some very recent or up-to-date improvements 

 that were, principle and application, in use before I was born. Xow^ 

 brother bee-keeper, where are your improvements? And what are 

 your improvements? 



The adding of one or two more stripes to the Italian (mongrel) 

 bee has improved them very much in weakness, that is, it has in- 

 tensified their propensity to weakness and ability to die out easily 

 and fast. Well, perhaps I don't know anything about it. But I do- 

 know where there are a whole lot of bee-keepers that are bee-keep- 

 ers no more, that they stocked their hives with the Golden Yellow 

 Beauties, and they were beautifully yellow — to honestly tell the 

 whole-honest-exact truth, there is nothing to be found in the apiary 

 more beautiful than a hive of those semi-transparent yellow bees, 

 taking their flying play spell in the clear bright sunshine between 

 11 and 2 p. m. Beautiful to look at. I have been there myself. I 

 have stood for a full half hour to admire the beauty of the appear- 

 ance of the moving gold colored lively mass. But I have never seen 

 any of them with supers on five or six tiers high as I have seen 

 with the old staples, Andrew & Vaughn, of Columbia, Tenn., leather- 

 colored stock of 1879, or the J. E. Oatman leather-colored stock of 

 1882 to 1886, and are the added yellow bands more than an improve- 

 ment as an eye catcher? Let's see about it. 



In 1ST7 I. in the last of the summer, had an order in — I think, 

 the last of September — for a dozen queens (here's another accidental 

 eye-opener). At one of my clusters of bee-hives I had fourteen 

 hives, thirteen contained young queens, the other had a queen of the 

 year before raised very early in the season. She was dark and not 

 an extra large one, her first season showed up good, the second sea- 

 son she was the banner of the country around, gentleness, honey 

 crop and in every way. A few days before the order came I had 

 put a number of nucleus together to make the weak stocks strong, 

 and the bees I had collected together giving them a good shaking 

 up, put them into a hive with a comb with larvae in from the old 

 queen. Looking in I found 1-4 nice large cells, so I shipped off the 

 thirteen queens to the customer. In that way I saved all of the cells 



(Contimted on page g8.) 



