54 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



February 



Baptist Beck, three score and ten years of 

 age, with his bees. 



a damnable arrangement from which, 

 although the honey will leak at the 

 least attempt at removal, it beconies 

 posible to secure almost anything 

 but honey. 



So they come back to the old skep 

 or "buc," as it is called here, a hive 

 made of 4 boards 10 or 12 inches in 

 width and iVz to 4 feet in height, 

 with two sticks crossed, near the cen- 

 ter, which are supposed to separate 

 the brood chamber from the super, 

 for it is there that the avidity of the 

 honey gatherer is understood to stop, 

 when the time comes to remove the 

 honey. A board at the top and a tile 

 under the bottom, with a few holes 

 bored on one side nea"- the bottom, 

 for entrance, finish up the "buc." 



Do not imagine, however, that the 

 building of such a hive is a simple 

 matter. You must use boards of 

 poplar, cut during the dark of the 

 moon, else the moths will destroy 

 your bees. On the principle that 

 "good soups are made in old pots," 

 an old "buc" is better than a new one, 

 for a new one may not please the 

 bees, while an old one has been 

 tested. Bees are queer beings, that 

 is why each colony makes different 

 honey. 



If you figure out the differences in 

 the bees, in the age of the "buc," the 

 influence of the moon, the quality of 

 the wood, you will acknowledge that 

 beekeeping under these methods is 

 an art. A man is courageous, indeed, 

 who manages to keep bees under 

 such Chinese-puzzle conditions. 



As for the movable-frame hive 

 keepers, the greater number use the 

 Layens horizontal (long-idea) hive, 

 or the Dadant-Blatt. Others, still, 

 use hives of their Qwn devising, high, 

 or long, or wide, or with frames 

 crosswise, a mixture of models which 

 would be impossible to manage if 

 they tried to do anything with them 

 outside of harvesting the honey. No 

 wonder that, often, the peasant gets 

 more results from his "buc" than 

 from the modern hives. 



Letting a Pocket in the Hills Fulfill 

 Its Destiny 



Florence L. Clark. 



OH, the most wonderful thing I 

 ever saw over on the island 

 yesterday! I took a boat and 

 went over, and everywhere, all 

 aroimd, wild cucumbers; oh, so pret- 

 ty, and my bees all over them." 



Old Baptist's eyes shone and he 

 gesticulated with the energy of youth 

 despite his seventy years, as he 

 talked in his broken English. Then 

 he pointed to a hive that had more 

 supers on it than any other of the 

 three hundred in the bee garden. 

 Scrawled across the top was a sen- 

 tence in German. 



"Klnow what that say?" asked Bap- 

 tist. "It say there, 'Goot work. I 

 dank you.' When my bees they do 

 goot, I tell them." 



Baptist Beck's apiary promises to 

 produce 6,000 pounds of honey this 

 year, and has yielded its owner good 

 money for twenty years, largely, as 

 he believes, because nature fashioned 

 a little paradise for bees where his 

 apiary now is, and when he drove his 

 homestake on the spot he saw na- 

 ture's plan and fell in with it. The 

 only "improving" Baptist has done 

 is to make the place a little more 

 wild by adding to the natural pro- 

 fusion of plant life as much more of 

 a tangle of flowers and vines as he 

 could make the soil produce. 



It is in the Mississippi hills, up 

 Miner's Creek, just south of Gutten- 

 berg, Iowa, that Baptist lives and 

 grows honey. There is no main road 

 leading that way, no other house on 

 that side of the valley. The rambler 

 over the hills finds a foot path in the 

 woods and following it comes upon 

 the gate to the bee paradise. Just 

 inside, a great spring pours from a 

 dark hillside into a big wooden vat 

 arbored over with a venerable grape- 

 vine. A step or two from the spring 

 is the home, an old stone house built 

 way back in the days when they dug 

 for lead in the hills round about and 

 dreamed of rich mineral treasure that 

 never came true. More grapevines 

 climb over the house and make a 



wide natural back and side porch. At 

 the front of the house is a sight to 

 charm nature-lover, artist, poet, bee- 

 keeper or what not. Hills two hun- 

 dred and three hundred feet high 

 tower in a horseshoe about a wonder- 

 ful little pocket of a garden. Through 

 the opening in the hills to the east is 

 a vista of bottomland, Mississippi and 

 island. The hills are covered with 

 the wild beauty of tree, brush and 

 vine characteristic of the Iowa bluffs. 

 The bottom land is a lush mass of 

 lowland plants. The island is out 

 just a bit in the channel and there is 

 white clover, locust, wild grapevine 

 and the wild cucumber. Basswood is 

 abundant on the hills and white clo- 

 ver on the bottom lands. 



The late August morning I saw 

 Baptist's garden ; it was ablaze with 

 the yellow of sunflowers and golden- 

 rod, splashed with great red splotches 

 of princess feather. In the center a 

 fountain of water from the spring ran 

 into a cement pool. The beehives 

 stretched in a semi-circle around the 

 edge of the garden, back up against 

 a high bordering of wild grapevines. 

 In among the flowers were corn, to- 

 matoes, cucumbers and canteloupes 

 for Baptist's wife grows garden stuff 

 for market, while he raises honey. 



The hills, bottoms and island are as 

 much Baptist's property as though 

 he owned them, for nobody ever dis- 

 turbs their natural growth of trees 

 and plants. So, in the spring, "Mon- 

 arch of all he surveys, his right none 

 to dispute," he goes out with a sack 

 of white clover seed and scatters it 

 over the bottoms and out on the 

 island, making a great bee pasture all 

 around his little garden. The hills, 

 island and lowlands give the greatest 

 imaginable profusion of honey 

 plants throughout the spring, sum- 

 mer and fall, though Baptist regards 

 the island as his particular treasure 

 trove, next, of course, to the bass- 

 woods on the hills. 



The nearness of the island to the 

 mainland makes it a safe pasture. 

 This is in contrast to the experience 

 of other beekeepers in the valley 

 somewhat north of the one in which 

 the Beck apiary is located. Here the 

 islands are quite n distance from the 









Baptist Beck's apiary, with grape vines over tlic house. 



