1886 



GLEANIKGS IX BEE CULTURE. 



731 



else, seem to accept red as the gage of battle. One 

 day, having torn tlie wristband of my under-shirt 

 (red fiannel) so that a small portion was exposed to 

 View, the bees attacked it vigorously, and to the ex- 

 clusion of every place else where they might have 

 stung. 



COMB-BUCKET, HOW TO IMPROVE. 



I want you, friend Root, to improve your comb- 

 bucket in two respects. I want you to put legs to 

 it, to extend down and biit two or three inches, so 

 that it may be set down on the grass without tip- 

 ping over of its own weight ; and instead of two 

 wooden handles, make one a kind of sheet hook, to 

 hook over the otlicr, making only one in the hand. 

 It is very difficult to hold the two when cari'ying 

 the bucket full of combs. Bke-Kkepeij. 



Charleston, III. 



No, friend Bee-Keeper, I am not going to 

 say tluit grass was discarded long ago, and I 

 very mncli dotibt if a brush can be invented 

 tliat will work as well as a fresh Inmch of 

 grass, or a bunch of clover. — Legs on a comb- 

 bucket would cost money, and would also be 

 unwieldy to ship. Have a lawn-mower, and 

 keep the grass shaved off close. 



FUN WITH THE BEES. 



HOW MY BEES HAVE GONE WILD— THE OTHEK SIDE 

 OP BEE-KEEPING. 



T TELL you, I have had fun with the bees this 

 (^ year, or else the bees have had fun with me. 

 ^l The"fun"maj' be said to have comnieuced 

 ■*■ May 18th, when a swarm issued alioiit three 

 weeks earlier than ever before. .(\t that time 

 the meads were growing white with clover, and I 

 went to clapping on surplus arrangements, and di- 

 viding. But owing to an accident which had crip 

 pled me for several weeks in the spring, and the 

 fact that the season had set in so mueli earlier than 

 usual, I was not prepared for it. 1 had a plan 1 had 

 resolved to try. I wanted, and still want, us it hap- 

 pens, to control the wild, everlasting swarming in- 

 stincts of my bees. I did with a dozen or Hftoen ac- 

 cording to my notion, but T could not get around 

 fast enough. I had to (juit dividing, prepare the 

 section cases, and put them on. I could not do that 

 in a daj'. In the mean time the bees were sending 

 off their skirmishing parties, and ere long the great 

 swarming armies were upon me. Among them 

 were some from those I had swarmed myself. I 

 grinned a "just as I expected," and let them 

 swarm. It was fun to see the bees go to work so 

 heavily in the boxes, and how I laughed to take off 

 some fine white sections about the day in the year 

 that I had formerly seen bees first go lightly to 

 workinthemi About the same time I laughingly 

 shouted, " Well, they are enterprising," when 1 

 beheld ray 18th-of-May queen lead off a second 

 swarm, one day earlier than I had ever had a swarm 

 before. The season was now nyjon me. You all 

 know what that means. I had little time to swarm 

 artificially. I could only put together frames and 

 sections, take off honey, hive swarms, and do the 

 making and mending 1 found necessary. Soon one 

 after another of those that had swarmed and been 

 hived on the old stand followed the example of the 

 first, and swarmed again; also several of those! 

 had divided. Thus far all these unwelcome swarms. 



I found had been hived partly on frames wholly or 

 partly filled with old comb. I smilingly decided 

 that I would know how to fix them next year! 



" Bees," said I, " when they swarm, want to sot up 

 housekeeping anew." I had long thbught it, and 

 now I was sure of it. Ves, I laughed in joy at the 

 discovery. But the laugh turned against me, as 

 you will soon find. Just about now so many things 

 happened that I can not keep up in the telling. 1 

 had started into the season with .57 stands of bees 

 and a queenlcss one, and about .3.5 empty hives 

 available. I was going to keep down swarming, 

 and bend all our resources and powers to the pro- 

 duction of honey, that I was as sure of as the world, 

 etc. Thus far 1 had controlled it in such a manner 

 that, at the l-ate they were going, three days bade 

 fair to utterly exhaust my stock of hives. No frame 

 hives to be obtained, except two L. hives, about as 

 much like mine as black is like green; no lumber 

 to make any box hives, which I did not want any 

 way; no time to make them or get anybody else to 

 make them; no time, in fact, to do any thing but 

 what was before me. Every one else was as busy 

 as the bees were, and, as crowded as I was, what 

 should I do? Well, it was part of my plan to set two 

 old colonies side by side after swarming, and, after 

 the queens had hatched, to unite them. I put the 

 extra frames in the upper story, and ran for ex- 

 tracted honey. The frames of some colony that re- 

 cently swarmed I would distribute among the col- 

 onies thus formed. These young queens, contrary 

 to all precedent and all reason, went to swarm- 

 ing pretty soon after they got to laying. Also some 

 weak colonies that I had utilized some of these old 

 colonies to strengthen, swarmed as soon as they 

 felt big enough. Also, if 1 chanced to put a frame 

 containing unsealed larva' into a hive with a cell 

 nearly ready to hatch, they would start a new set 

 of cells, and swarm ; then again two or three weeks 

 after I thought it was all over, here would come 

 another puny swarm. All these things happened a 

 number of times. Of course, these proceedings 

 filled up my hives all the faster. 



Every day for nearly two weeks, except a couple 

 of very rainy ones (and I tell you I smiled broadly 

 at the chance they gave me to get a little ahead), I 

 would run down to al)out two hives to none availa- 

 l)le. So about six o'clock p. M. 1 would start to 

 empty some hives for— to-morrow. I usually hived 

 mj' swarms on six frames. Now I would take oft' 

 supers, remove dummies, and poke a frame any 

 where I could Bnd to poke it. Colonies of today's 

 swarming that I had set off' from the old stand I 

 would tear to pieces, or perhaps carry them mostly 

 to the upper story of some hive that ought not to 

 swarm. Peveral hives now held 13 to 30 frames. I 

 had to put my swarms on emiity fi'ames. Accord- 

 inglj- 1 had to tuiil a lot of new ones that I had not 

 expected to want, and fix fdn. in them. No time 

 for enmii. 1 was kept on a hop, skip, and jump 

 all the time. But, not content with contrariness, 

 those crazy bugs nuist add to it capi'iciousness. 

 I hived a big swarm one Sunday. The next day it 

 arose and left. The new disease caught and ran 

 like wild-fire. 1 would hive sw'arm numl)er 40 as 

 near as they would hive. Perhaps they would near- 

 ly all go in. If they did they would crawl out and 

 cluster in front, on top and all around, more or less. 

 All the way from half an hour to 24 hours they 

 would swarm out and settle, to lie hived again or go 

 oft', or simply adjourn to the front part of another 



