498 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Aug. 12, 



and I submit it to any sensible beekeeper if that end is not 

 long enough already ! Mr. Doolittle expresses the opinion 

 that this lengthening is hardly possible with the rank and file 

 of bee-keepers, but leaves us to infer that it may be done by 

 the Captains, and Colonels, and Brigadier tJenerals, and Gen- 

 erals, of the industry. Therefore, I move that somebody get 

 out an injunction to restrain them from undertaking the job. 

 Notwithstanding the apparent folly of trying to produce 

 honey at present prices, and the possibility that the tail end 

 of the bee may be lengthened, and perhaps strengthened, it is 

 quite likely that if I live 20 years longer I shall write a book 

 at the end of that time narrating ray experience with bees 

 during these 20 years, and entitle the book " The Mysteries 

 and Miseries of Bee-Keeping." More likely, however, I will 

 call it " A Fool's Errand," and explain its authorship as Judge 

 Tourgee explained the authorship of his book, by saying that 

 It was written by one of the fools. 



You see, once a bee-keeper always a bee-keeper. Or, in 

 other words, once a bee-crank or bee-fool, if you please, 

 always a bee crank or fool. There is no getting out of this 

 work till one is let out of it by death or let into a lunatic 

 asylum. This is due to those things a bee-keeper will not sell 

 for cash even if he can, you know. And this is a good place 

 to remark that while there are a few things of this sort con- 

 nected with the pursuit, I have found this season, and other 

 seasons, a good many things that I would gladly sell at a dis- 

 count of 99 per cent., and some others on v/hieh I would 

 make a discount of a full 100 per cent., and throw in some- 

 thing besides for the sake of getting them «f my lumds. This 

 last remark might not have been written if the bees in my 

 yard were not so largely made up of a crop between blacks 

 and Italians. 



1 want to ask the pardon of the American Bee Journal 

 readers for ever having written a word about bees and bee- 

 keeping. The man who gets a few colonies of bees and reads 

 all, or a good many of, the bee-books and bee-papers, and 

 works aloug through several years of light honey-flow, or no 

 flow at all, may imagine that he knows something about these 

 things. Then let him find himself some June morning with 

 half a hundred to a hundred colonies on his hands, and the 

 bees filling up his hives and supers with bewildering rapidity, 

 and the conceit will soon be taken out of him. He begins to 

 realize that he does not know much of anything, and that 

 what he does know is hard to make available at just the right 

 time and in just the right place. 



Therefore, readers of the American Bee Journal. I bid 



you good-bye for 20 years After all, I guess that, 



before I get out of sight and hearing, I had better " holler 

 back "and tell you about some of my " fool capers " during 

 this season of 1897. 



This has been a first rate season to note the unreasonable 

 and unnecessary and unexpected things that bees will do 

 when prosperity gives them the opportunity to do as they 

 please. Did any of you ever notice, or rather ever fail to 

 notice, the persistency with which bees will monkey around 

 a hole that would admit them to honey if it were only just as 

 big again? But this is a digression. I started to tell you 

 about some fool capers. 



STARTING THE KOBBEHBKES. 



First, and worst perhaps, of these fool capers was leaving 

 some honey exposed in the early part of the season where the 

 bees could have access to It. Since then some robber-bees 

 have followed almost everywhere, and apparently took note of 

 everything I have done. If I put on a bee-escape in the early 

 part of the day, they hunt for holes and crevices, and have 

 nearly cleaned out three or four supers for me. 



The big extracting hives have telescope covers. These 

 covers are made a little larger than[the supers. Once when I 

 put a bee-escape under one of these supers, the bees crawled 



up between the sides of the super and the sides of the cover 

 and cleaned out the 10 frames which must have contained at 

 least 30 pounds of honey. 



HIVING BEES ON EMPTY FRAMES. 



Next in heinousness was the hiving of a large swarm of 

 bees on frames 11 inches deep with only starters of founda- 

 tion. This was done last season, but the consequences were 

 not made apparent till this season. The colony was strong 

 last spring, and I was expecting much from it, but for some 

 reason it would not begin to work in the supers. I gave the 

 hive an examination, and the combs were all broken down but 

 one. I prepared another hive and placed it on the old stand, 

 and then placed the old hive with these broken combs on top 

 of it. There was a good deal of brood in the old combs, and 

 when it was hatcht I removed the upper hive and gave the 

 bees below a queen after ascertaining that there was no brood 

 in the lower frames. The loss in consequence of my failure 

 to fill those frames last season with sheets of wired founda- 

 tion I estimate at 100 pounds of honey, judging by what 

 other colonies of like strength have done. 



GETTING BID OF A LAYING-WORKER 



Oue of my oldest colonies in a big 10-frame hive, which 

 seemed to be all right in the spring, did not get to work when 

 the other bees did, and on looking for the cause I found no 

 worker-brood in the hive but lots of drone-brood scattered all 

 over the combs. Laying worker ! Then I took the hive and 

 set it over that hive which contained the bees that would not 

 work on old foundation, but put combs between the division- 

 board and one side of the hive, I put a newspaper between 

 the two hives, tearing a small hole in the paper. After a few 

 days I found the bees all living together peaceably, and a big 

 hole in the newspaper. Then I set the upper hive in the 

 place of the lower one, making sure that the queen was in the 

 upper hive, and carried the lower hive to a new stand. All 

 the field-bees returned to the old stand, but lots of young bees 

 staid, and there was a good deal of brood in the old combs, 

 and the frames that I had given early in the season. At the 

 first opportunity I stuck a queen-cell onto those old combs, and 

 now all goes merry as a marriage bell in that hive. 



AN EXPERIENCE IN FORMING NUCLEI. 



On June 10 I made two 2-frame nuclei of bees and brood 

 in anticipation of receiving queens to give them in the course 

 of three or four days. But floods in Massachusetts and freezes 

 in New York delayed the arrival of the queens, and I didn't 

 know what to do. A colony standing close to one of these 

 nuclei swarmed the day the nuclei were made, and the swarm 

 got away because I lingered 15 minutes too long in the gar- 

 den that morning. I got into the bee-yard just in time to see 

 the last bees of the cluster letting go of their hold on a limb 

 of a peach tree. I could not tell at the time from which hive 

 the swarm had issued, but by observing carefully I found out 

 that day or the next. I paid no more attention to the colony 

 or the nuclei till June 21, when the colony swarmed again. 

 Then I went in search of queen-cells, and found a frame hav- 

 ing two with queens just ready to emerge. One did emerge 

 and dropt to the ground, and I pickt her up and threw her into 

 the hive standing close by that containing the nucleus. In 

 due time I lookt in and saw a circular patch of worker-brood 

 on one of the combs. The other cell I gave to the other 

 nucleus, and on looking (or worker-brood I found the two 

 combs pretty well covered with drone-brood. Another case of 

 laying worker. Then I took one frame of this drone-brood 

 and put it in place of a. frame containing eggs and larvic in 

 another hive, and gave the eggs and larvte to the nucleus, 

 and now all goes well with it. 



SOME SWARMING EXPERIENCES. 



Here are a few swarming experiences of the present sea- 



