June 13, 1907 



509 



A Memljcr— My bees arc within 50 

 feet of the siclewali< and I have no com- 

 plaints. I have only 3 colonies, but I 

 notice tlicy rise very qiiicUly. They are 

 up 10 or 15 feet in the air in 20 feet 

 of flight. Tlie sidevvall< is running north 

 and south, and my hives face the east, 

 but the bees go to a marsh straight west 

 from me, and simply make a little curve. 



Mr. Moore — I know Mr. Horstmann 

 so well, and I know he won't take any 

 offense when I say he has had some ex- 

 perience. The Plealth Department or- 

 dered him to "get off the earth." 



Mr. Horstmann — The bees that the 

 city got after were not at my home 

 apiary; they were in .another apiary. 

 They had a little trouble with the family 

 there. I had my bees on a man's lot, 

 and it seems this man and his neighbor 

 had a little trouble, and the only way 

 they could get satisfaction was to get 

 after the bees,so I got notice from the 

 Health Department to move the bees out 

 of there ; but I had that all fixed up, 

 and left the bees there until I got ready 

 to put them away. I wrote to Mr. 

 Moore, and I believe I wrote to Mr. 

 France at that time, too, for some litera- 

 ture. I thought I might have to bluff 

 the city, but I didn't have to do that. 

 I had a friend look after it, and we left 

 the bees there until I got ready to put 

 them away. The bees are not dangerous. 

 Where I live I have bees on the corner, 

 and people passing on the sidewalk every 

 day, and they are never molested. The 

 women-folks hang up their clothes and 

 the children play all around the hives, 

 and they hardly ever get stung. It is 

 not so much the distance as it is the 

 kind of bees you have. If I find a cross 

 colony of bees I do away with that queen 

 and get a more gentle strain of bees. I 

 admit that among the bees I had at my 

 out-apiary were some pretty cross ones, 

 and, of course, not being on the place, 

 I did not know where the cross bees 

 came from ; but at home I can tell, and 

 pick them out. I think everybody should 

 look after the bees, and then there will 

 be no trouble. 



Mr. Taylor — I ■ think we can not be 

 too careful with our bees in this respect. 

 It is not altogether safe to rely upon 

 a high fence. Bees do not always sting 

 intentionally, often unintentionally. I 

 know of one instance. I had started to 

 go down town, and I had some bees 

 some distance back from the highway. 

 The bees flew across the highway to a 

 pasture beyond. I suppose they went 

 high enough when they went away, but 

 when they came back heavily laden it 

 was quite different; and as I was driv- 

 ing down a bee came and touched me on 

 the eye, and of course eyes have a habit 

 of winking in such cases, and the bee 

 stung me. Now it is easily imaginable 

 great damage might be done just from 

 stings received in that way. Bees might 

 get into a horse's mane, or about his 

 eyes, and cause a runaway. You can 

 not be too careful. There is no need 

 of playing with bees and putting them 

 as near the road as we can. W- better 

 be like the Irishman and eet them as 

 far away as possible. 



Mr. Thompson — I had about 75 colo- 

 nies behind a fence right near the street, 

 as Mr. Duff speaks of, and I want to 



American Bgc Journal] 



ask him if he ever experienced a nerv- 

 ous feeling when he heard a child cry 

 when he was not right on the ground? 



Mr. Duff — I never heard them cry. 



Mr. Moore — Mr. Pease has had 

 charge of an apiary opposite a public 

 school in Ravcnswood, and I have heara 

 people say tli.it their families are being 

 stung to death by those bees! 



Mr. Pease — I have had charge of 100 

 colonies of bees, and about 85 feet across 

 the street is the school. When I first 

 located the apiary at this place I had 

 some little (lilficulty, not so much with 

 individuals as with an organization that 

 had the idea that we were to establish 

 a manufacturing plant at that point, and 

 they did not propose to take any 

 chances. A committee was appointed 

 and waited on me, and I was notified to 

 cease erecting a fence and apiary house 

 which was bemg constructed; that I was 

 going to needless expense, and that it 

 would only have to be torn down, I 

 disregarded that and went on with my 

 work, and after the first week or 10 days 

 the school children seemed to get ac- 

 customed to the bees. Nobody was stung 

 that I knew about at that time, but a 

 gentleman who lived some 2 blocks 

 away had been very greatly annoyed 

 with them, and he complained to the 

 Department of Health. An officer came 

 out. I showed him through the apiary, 

 answered all the questions he asked, and 

 possibly volunteered some information 

 for his benefit. He said, "I will have 

 to send in a report, but it will be one 

 that won't hurt you." 



Mr. Moore — Did he have a veil on 

 in this inspection? 



Mr. Pease — No, sir; he did not. He 

 went through the yard with me, neither 

 of us with a veil. I opened several 

 hives for him. I heard nothing more 

 from that source, and the only serious 

 case of stinging that I heard anything 

 about was from a little girl who was 

 stung through the sole of her shoe ! 

 [Laughter.] 



Mr. France — I see in looking over the 

 work of the National for the year just 

 closing that there are 18 different places 

 where bees in cities have been attempt- 

 ed to be declared a nuisance and ordered 

 removed, and 2 which were ordered 

 removed. Now there is a cause for all 

 this. One team was stung to death 

 quite a distance away. The road was 

 225 feet from where 150 colonies were. 

 The man that operated the bees had 

 extracted them, and they were unusual- 

 ly cross. It was out of the honey-flow 

 season and they had become so cross 

 that he was compelled to put protection 

 on his hands as well as his face to fin- 

 ish the work of the day. There was an 

 irrigating ditch by the side of this road; 

 the banks began to give way, and men 

 were sent out to repair the ditch. They 

 had to leave on account of the cross 

 bees. The consequence was the water 

 broke the banks, ran over the land, and 

 the laws of the State make the irrigat- 

 ing compan\- liable for all damages of 

 the water when it is out of its channel. 

 The next morning a team loaded with 

 grain, passing this road, was met by a 

 quantity of cross bees about 300 feet 

 away. B> the time they reached where 

 the watei- run across the highwaj', mak- 



ing a mudhole, there were a good many 

 bees on hand, and the team was unable 

 ■to pull the load out of the mud; before 

 they could get them away Ijoth horses 

 were stung to death. The man was 

 compelled to get into the mud and be- 

 smear himself over, to save his own life. 

 The team cost $225 and the harness $25, 

 and the case came up. Should they 

 carry it into the court or settle it? I 

 am a compromise man — believe in set- 

 tling every time and keeping out of the 

 courts; the further you carry it the 

 worse it becomes, as a rule, and I ad- 

 vised them, by all means, to settle in 

 some way. I got a letter last night that 

 upon receipt of my letter he had taken 

 it over, at my request, to the party losing 

 the team, and had read him the letter, 

 and rather than go into court, he had 

 agreed upon a compromise settlement of 

 $195. There is also a counsel fee of 

 $2.50, making $197.50 as a settlement. 

 Now he wants the National to pay the 

 whole bill. We have a great many so- 

 called city bee-keepers that are keeping 

 bees. A few colonies will bother no one, 

 but when you come to develop that into 

 a good-sized bee-yard it is a different 

 condition of affairs, and I have had some 

 pretty trying times to get excuses and 

 help some of our members when the 

 bees — although there might be a high 

 board fence — made trouble. The indi- 

 vidual lay of the ground at each place 

 cuts a great figure. There may be a 

 high board fence, and if the lay of the 

 land is such on beyond that the bees 

 drop over the fence, and soon get to 

 the ground again, the fence is of little 

 protection. I think it is a case for each 

 individual bee-keeper, if he learns the 

 bees are making an annoyance, to make 

 amends at once to those who have 

 grievances. Let us exchange our posi- 

 tion with the one who has the griev- 

 ance, and would we like to have the 

 bees spoiling the clothes in the spring, 

 and so on, as they do in the cities? 

 Would we like to be compelled to hitch 

 up our teams early in the morning and 

 shy around because a neighbor has bees? 

 I stopped at a hotel not long ago, where 

 the landlady said, "I would gladly give 

 you your board if you would tell my 

 neighbor how to keep the bees out of 

 the pump." I said, "That is easy enough. 

 A piece of elipeseclotli will Weep the bees 

 from going in, and it will strain the 

 water and make it cleaner." 



Mr. Moore — I want to say that car- 

 bolic acid smeared around the edges of 

 troughs where bees congregate is very 

 disgusting to them, and has been used 

 to good effect. 



Mr. Kimmej' — I tried it and it did not 

 work. 



Mr. Moore — Probably you did not 

 have it strong enough ; 95 percent solu- 

 tion' — what they call pure? 



Mr. Kimmey — Yes. I got over the 

 difficulty by putting a barrel of salt in 

 their place. We laugh, of course, at 

 stories of stinging through the shoe and 

 all that, and wondered on second 

 thought whether that really occurred 

 or not, whether anybody was so foolish 

 as to make the complaint. But, after all, 

 it seems to me no one should put 

 colonies of bees 85 feet from a school 

 and expect to keep out of trouble. I 



