188 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



May 



means of protecting the beehives 

 from the foraging ants." 



"One can successfully keep a few 

 colonies of bees in any portion of the 

 ant-infected area by making use of the 

 special stands described, but eternal 

 vigilance is the price of success, for 

 when the ants do gain access to the 

 bees the latter are likely to be dis- 

 organized within a few hours and the 

 swarms will abscond." — Bulletin 122. 



Possibly our correspondent lives in 

 a locality where the infestation is not 

 yet as heavy as that occupied by Mr. 

 Wing's apiaries, or those mentioned 

 in the above bulletin. Mr. Ford's re- 

 port is the first to reach us which in- 

 dicates that the bees may protect 

 themselves from the Argentine ant 

 without assistance. — Editor.) 



THREE WEEKS OF BEE CONVEN- 

 TIONS 



By C. P. Dadant 



If you wish to see a picturesque 

 place, away from the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, go to Asheville, N. C. It is 

 located between two ridges — the 

 Great Smoky Ridge and the Blue 

 Ridge. Its many hills are like the 

 waves of the sea and its waters drain, 

 through the French Broad River, into 

 the Tennessee. It is therefore in the 

 Mississippi Valley. Asheville is a 

 tourist city, has immense hotels, 

 beautiful views and a delightful cli- 

 mate. The famous Vanderbilt es- 

 tate, Biltmore, adjoins it. 



Elton Warner, whom I visited, is 

 one of the largest apiarists in the 

 United States. He has some 1,500 

 colonies in Porto Rico, where he lived 

 many years as an official, and some 

 600 in both of the Carolinas. His 

 method of locating apiaries is orig- 

 inal. He secures from the govern- 

 ment, either Geological Survey topo- 

 graphic maps or Soil Survey maps of 

 the different counties, and from the 

 topography of the country or nature 

 of the soil shown, makes a selection 

 of the locations to be examined in 

 detail. In this way he succeeds in 

 establishing apiaries in the most 

 promising spots. 



Mr. and Mrs. Warner left Porto 

 Rico to live at Asheville, because of 

 the health of Mrs. Warner, which re- 

 quires a cooler climate. They have 

 apiaries close to them in the moun- 

 tain coves or valleys, and in several 

 places of the Coastal Plains of South 

 Carolina. My personal acquaintance 

 with him dates back two years, when 

 I attended a week's course at Cornell. 

 Leaving Buffalo in a Pullman coach, a 

 pasenger seated across the aisle at- 

 tracted my attention by his pleasant 

 appearance. We exchanged a few 

 words and I was astonished then to 

 hear him say: "I believe this is Mr. 

 Dadant." We chatted all the way to 

 Cornell and roomed together there; 

 we promised ourselves to visit each 

 other at the first opportunity. This 

 was what drew me to Asheville, for a 

 short stay between bee meetings. 



One of the important requirements 

 in a large producer who keeps more 



bees than he can care for himself, is 

 executive ability. He must be able 

 not only to teach the indispensable 

 performances, but also to select men 

 of action who will promote his inter- 

 est at all times. Such men may not 

 be found everywhere, and they are 

 of more value than the fellows who 

 are constantly studying how little 

 they can do for the money they get. 



A good share of Mr. Warner's suc- 

 cess is without doubt due to his busi- 

 ness ability and to his loyal and ef- 

 ficient helpers. Several of his men 

 have children nearly grown, who were 

 literally "born and raised" in his 

 apiaries. 



We rode back and forth through 

 the city, until I became quite well ac- 

 quainted with it. Yet if there is any 

 town with a labyrinth of streets run- 

 ning in all the directions of the com- 

 pass, it is surely Asheville. We 

 talked bees, of course, and I am 

 giving, in another article, Mr. War- 

 ner's experience in transporting 

 queens, for he has shipped back and 

 forth several thousand queens for 

 and from his Porto Rican apiaries. 

 He confirmed my opinion that young 

 queens dislike to lay drone eggs, by 

 stating that he had seen such young 

 queens refuse to lay in drone cells, 

 although the drone comb had been 

 placed in the center of the brood- 

 nest. 



He asserted, as others have done, 

 from time to time, that bees of queen- 

 less colonies sometimes rob eggs out 

 of other hives to rear queens. This 

 I have never seen. 



Here are two subjects upon which 

 his experience, which should have 

 great weight, tallies with mine: 



Bees may travel for honey as far 

 as 6 miles, or perhaps more, if they 

 ■ follow a bait or a valley in which 

 honey plants or trees are found. But 

 they will not go 3 miles without such 

 bait. They will go twice as far up a 

 valley as across a hill. 



During a big flow it is almost im- 

 possible to overstock a location. It is 

 between the flows thc^t a location may 

 be unsatisfactory for a large apiary, 

 as colonies are likely to suffer from 

 the overrunning of a short pasture. 



Since I propose to return to the 

 Warner experiences in beekeeping, I 

 will now proceed to the last of the 



meetings of my 3 weeks' trip, that of 

 Nashville, Tenn. I arrived there the 

 day before the meeting and made 

 several valuable acquaintances. 



One of the reasons of the success 

 of the Tennessee meetings is the ac- 

 tivity and determination of the Ento- 

 mologist, Prof. G. M. Bentley. He ap- 

 pears to be the propelling power, not 

 only of the beekeepers' conventions, 

 but of several others, horticulturists, 

 entomologists, nurserymen, etc. He 

 is an example of good selection by 

 the associations who are under his 

 management. 



The program was full and well 

 carried on, though some of the best 

 speakers were missing. But there 

 were plenty of good ones left. W. R. 

 Walling, of Knoxville, Tenn., who 

 keeps bees in Harding, Mont., during 

 the summer, then puts his bees in 

 winter quarters and comes home 

 every fall to sell his crop, was one of 

 the good producers there. His sub- 

 ject was "Producing Honey by Tons." 

 He does. 



Mrs. Grace Allen, the contributor 

 of a department in Gleanings, had 

 her usual delightful annual address, 

 which she always delivers in an ex- 

 quisite manner. She was the prime 

 mover in the step taken by the Ten- 

 nessee Association to join the Ameri- 

 can Honey Producers' League. They 

 had only $29 in the treasury, but she 

 aroused the enthusiasm so that the 

 subscription of $100 was covered in 

 less than 15 minutes. 



Here I met for the first time Tom 

 Lewis, grandson of the man who 

 originated the G. B. Lewis Co. He 

 represents the third generation of 

 the same family in the bee business. 

 That should make me feel old, for I 

 did business many years with his 

 grandfather. Mr. Lewis reported a 

 little experiment of his, made at 

 Memphis, where he resides. He made 

 some very light shavings of beeswax. 

 These he placed in a dish with a little 

 syrup poured on them, at the time of 

 comb building, and placed this over 

 the colony which had been given 

 sheets of foundation. They took it 

 readily and finished 8 combs in 18 

 hours. 



I went home from this extensive 

 trip, on the 28th, but a week later I 

 was again at another meeting, Man- 

 hattan Farmers' Week, in Kansas. 

 More live wires, and more progress! 

 The world does move! 



"EARLV PREPARATION" 

 Drawn liy Marion Grace Brittain, a Washing- 

 ton girl of 12 years. 



THE FARM EXTRACTING PROB- 

 LEM 



By L. H. Cobb 



Working for extracted honey looks 

 good to most farmers who have be- 

 come interested in bees with the in- 

 tention to make the most from them, 

 but the cost of an extractor for the 

 small number of colonies that most 

 of them plan to keep looks prohibi- 

 tive. This is one of the difficult prob- 

 lems for the small producer to work 

 out, and it has prevented many from 

 giving bees much consideration. They 

 do not want to work for section 

 honey or comb honey in frames, and 



