80 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



March 



After bees have been imprisoned 

 in one of these cases an hour or 

 more, one can, by placing an ear 

 next to the case, hear a few bees 

 lazily humming. These bees are keep- 

 ing a slow current of air going into 

 and out of the box. Some 99 plus 

 per cent of the bees are clustered m 

 absolute quiet. This condition pre- 

 vails for many hours, even for a day 

 or two. After a confinement of two 

 days or so, once in a while the bees 

 will set up an uproar. They have 

 beeK shut in as long as their pa- 

 tience permits. They wish to get out 

 and fly. During the third, fourth 

 and fifth days of confinement these 

 periods of uproar will occasionally 

 take place, the interval of time be- 

 tween the uproars varying with out- 

 side conditions. If the air is cool 

 the uproar will almost cease, but if it 

 .be a hot and muggy day the interval 

 will be small. The bees are now 

 reaching a danger point. Unless the 

 journey soon ends and the bees set 

 free they will waste their vitality 

 just as they do in ordinary shipping 

 cases. . , 



It is still a question in the writer s 

 mind whether any case can be de- 

 vised that will admit of the safe 

 transportation of bees in hot weather 

 if the trip is to consume over four or 

 five days. The instinct of the bee is 

 against long-continued confinement 

 in hot weather. The bees chafe to be 

 liberated ,and though darkness will 

 keep them quiet for a long time, it 

 will not fool them beyond a certain 

 limit. 



The writer is not a large shipper of 

 bees by the pound. His total ship- 

 ments in the last three years are 

 probably under two hundred. Setting 

 the number at 200, allow me to state 

 the percentage of failure. The first 

 loss was a 2-pound package sent only 

 100 miles. The express company let 

 this package be held up enroute until 

 the bees starved. The next loss was 

 a shipment into Canada. This ship- 

 ment was delayed in the customs 

 house and the bees reached and 

 passed the danger point. They got 

 into a frenzy and ran amuck. They 

 arrived a sticky dead mass of bees in 

 the bottom of the case. The next loss 

 was a shipment to a point not very 

 distant. These bees were put up at 

 the close of a day of heavy honey 

 flow. The bees were bursting with 

 new nectar. Evidently after they 

 were confined they raised the tern- 



Few bees had died after three weeks confine 

 ment. 



perature of the box through their 

 conversion of the nectar and brought 

 on a speedy death. Two have been 

 made to England and two to Califor- 

 nia. All four of these have been 

 either total failures or practically so. 

 So far as I know, every other ship- 

 tiient has gone through in excellent 

 shape, and in most cases the recipi- 

 ents have written me expressing their 

 pleasure over the fine condition of 

 the bees upon arrival. 



My experience tells me that this 

 case can be relied upon to produce 

 uniformly excellent results just so 

 long as no effort is made to get it to 

 do the impossible and so long as one 

 uses care to see that the case is 

 properly prepared. The things to 

 avoid are shipments that iwill con- 

 sume over five days, food that is 

 very moist or very dry, and bees that 

 are overloaded with thin nectar. 



My method of stocking these cases 

 is as follows : The cover is removed 

 and the case inverted. Blocks are in- 

 serted between the blinds and the 

 case to prevent bees from gettingin 

 between the two bottoms, from which 

 they might issue on the trip and thus 

 queer the business of shipping bees 

 by post. The case is now weighed 

 and its weight marked on the bottom. 

 Next the case is set on a wide, thin 

 board or even on the ground. The 

 bees are next shaken down beside the 

 case, care being used to see that the 

 queen is started into the case, which 

 is raised at one side on a small block 

 of wood or a small stone. After a lit- 

 tle experience one knows how many 

 frames to shake. While the bees are 

 going in, another case is started, 

 and then the first case is again 

 weighed and a few more bees allowed 

 to enter, a few brushed out. I gen- 

 erally allow 18 ounces weight, for the 

 package will shrink about two ounces 

 within twenty-four hours. This meth- 

 od is much better than dumping bees 

 into the case through a tunnel, for 

 most of the old bees fly back to the 

 hive and only young bees, for the 

 most part, remain to crawl into the 

 case. 



An even better way to stock these 

 cases is to use temporary boxes into 

 which bees are driven and confined 

 over night. The next morning these 

 bees are dumped on the ground next 

 to the cases and after they have 

 quieted and all taken a flight which 

 desire it, the cases are closed and the 

 bees started on their journey. It is 

 hardly necessary to state that if 

 this last method is used the bees 

 must not be taken and released in 

 the same apiary. 



The failure of my case to carry bees 

 successfully to England and also 

 across this continent from Connecti- 

 cut to California was a great disap- 

 pointment. But it has not shaken my 

 belief in tlie case for domestic use. 

 It will carry bees successfully from 

 the South to the North, and will carry 

 them half way the length of the Unit- 

 ed States. As the pound package in- 

 dustry rarely demands a journey ex- 

 ceeding three days, this case will 

 meet the needs admirably. 



If we are to ship bees to England 

 or other distant points we must, I feel 



Bottom of cage with cover board removed. 



sure, seek the solution of the problem 

 not in the case in iwhich the bees are 

 shipped, but in the atmosphere in 

 which the case is kept during the 

 journey. If we could persuade the 

 postal authorities to provide special 

 cars, or if shipments could be made 

 on a sufficient scale to pay for a re- 

 frigerator car we could solve the 

 problem. I feel fairly certain that if 

 the atmosphere of the car could be 

 kept at about 70 per cent humidity 

 and about 45 degrees for tempera- 

 ture, bees would be quiet for a long 

 period, possibly even a month or 

 more. 



I wish to reiterate that which I 

 have stated with emphasis before. If 

 we are to make the shipment of bees 

 in pound packages successful we 

 must conserve the vitality of the bees. 

 A customer who receives a lot of bees 

 for which he has paid good money, 

 which peter out before they can rear 

 brood to take their places will be a 

 dissatisfied customer. We must see 

 to it that there is no cause for such 

 dissatisfaction. 



Connecticut. 



(Mr. Latham's package of bees sent 

 to us was received in the fall and was 

 kept in the office as long as the food 

 lasted, which was in the neighbor- 

 hood of two weeks. We then united 

 the bees with a weak colony. Hardly 

 a dozen bees were dead, and all ap- 

 peared in fine shape, which speaks 

 well for the cage. Of course, it being 

 fall, the bees were not subjected to 

 excessive heat, but the fact that they 

 came out after nearly three weeks 

 from the time of shipment in such ex- 

 cellent shape goes to show that Mr. 

 Latham's cage has merit. — Editor.) 



Package Bees 



By Jay Smith 



IT is now generally agreed that the 

 combless method of shipping pack- 

 age bees is no longer an experi- 

 ment, but an established, successful 

 industry. Nevertheless there are two 

 features of this method of shipping 

 bees that for a long time threatened 

 to make this method a failure, namely, 

 loss of bees during transportation and 

 loss of queens in those packages. 



When one reviews the past suc- 

 cesses, or rather failures, in this line 

 he is sometimes led to wonder how 

 the industry survived at all. I do not 



