1888 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



8yl 



our apiary. From the windows of our of- 

 fice as it IS, we can see every hive, and see 

 the apiarist phiinly, unless, indeed, he be 

 stooping down introducing queens, or some- 

 thing of that sort, behind an unusually 

 bushy grapevine. In tact, the office girls 

 are in the habit of calling to him when a 

 new lot of queens arrive by mail, or when 

 some special order demands that he go at 

 once to get it off by the first train. Another 

 thing, it is always a great bother to 

 have to run around a tree or a building to 

 look after a swarm that has issued. In our 

 old apiary we had a honey-house in the 

 center, and some mischief was sure to be 

 going on behind that house that would not 

 have happened if I could have swept the 

 whole apiary with my eye at a glance. Since 

 you call attention to it, I remember several 

 things tbat corrol)orate your point — that bees 

 depend on trees, buildings, and large objects, 

 rather than on the looks of the hive. The 

 first swarm of bees I ever owned was set 

 before an open upper window in a row of 

 brick buildings. They recognized their own 

 window, because it was always open. Final- 

 ly, however, when a workman raised liis 

 window precisely as their window was raised, 

 the bees were evidently perplexed, for great 

 numbers of them came into the window and 

 annoyed him exceedingly. He was on the 

 same floor, but the third window from where 

 they were located. Our grapevines, when 

 covered with foliage, differ somewhat, it is 

 true, but perhaps not as much as trees. But 

 our worst trouble is in thespring time, when 

 the vines are entirely destitute of leaves. 

 During the working season, when tlie vines, 

 grass, and perliaps a few sti'aggling weeds, 

 change the aspect of things, there is not 

 nearly so much of this sort of trouble ; and 

 about the time we rear queens largely, the 

 aspect of things is usually changed, so that 

 we are quite successful in getting young 

 queens fertilized. No doubt some of our 

 keen inventors may make a practical use of 

 tlie liints you have thrown out. Notwith- 

 standing your objections, I do like a nice, 

 regular, neat, and orderly apiary. We shall 

 be glad to hear from otherson this matter. 



MANIPULATION. 



EASY AND I' not IT ABLE IN WELTj-ADAPTED HIVES. 



"Up LTHOUGH I was present at the Detroit Con 

 oilk vention of beekeepers in December, 188.1, 

 ^^K where Mr. Heddon first called attention to 

 ■^^ the system of management with his " New 

 hive." I heard him too imperfectly to get 

 any adequate conception of his invention. My 

 head trouble returning soon after, and lasting near- 

 ly two years, I lost all interest in bee-matters, and 

 it was only in February last (my attention being re- 

 called to this hive) that 1 was impressed with the 

 idea that it might be a great step in advance, in 

 practical bee-keeping. From the very start I .saw 

 that many rt/Hc-eti the power of manipulation given 

 by the Langstroth hive, because they failed to see 

 that progress lay in reducing the necessary mani])- 

 ulations to a minimum. In the latest work of our 

 honored Dzierzon, his wonderful acquaintance with 

 the habits of bees seems, to Americans at least, to 



be greatly wasted upon a hive and system of man- 

 agement which would make our honey cost more 

 than it would sell for. 



To manipulate with whole cases of frames in- 

 stead of by single frames, seemed to me a very 

 wide extension of the principle so much insisted on 

 in my first work on bees, published in 1853, that a 

 hive ought not to re(iuire one single unnecessary 

 motion, either lor the bees or its owner. 



Influenced by such considerations, I determined 

 to see the actual workings of the Heddon hive in 

 his apiary at Dowagiac, Mich. As the weather on 

 my arrival there was too cold to handle bees, 1 care- 

 fully studied the hive. From what I know of the 

 habits of bees and construction of hives, just as a 

 short e.vamination of a Munn hive shows me that it 

 is worthless either for amateur or practical uses, 

 so the longer 1 studied the Heddon hive, the strong- 

 er was my belief that it would accomplish what he 

 claimed for it. 



As soon as 1 could see bees handled in these hives, 

 and could handle them myself, all my favorable 

 prepossessions were fully confirmed; and knowing 

 how little I could count upon the continuance of 

 health, 1 felt that, in justice to the public, as well 

 as to Mr. Heddon, I ought to put this opinion on 

 record, by writing to some of my bee-keeping 

 friends. 



I think that no one who knows how I was depriv- 

 ed of the legitimate fruits of my own invention will 

 be surprised that I should feel it to he a positive 

 duty to use what infiuence I may have among bee- 

 keepers to secure for Mr. Heddon both the honor 

 and the profit to which he seems, not only to me, 

 but to so many of our best apiarists at home and 

 abroad, to be justly entitled. 



Suiun Cin'(/i(c— " to each his own." 

 From uiy earliest recollections my dear father en- 

 joined this as a sacred duty upon his children— and 

 I believe that all who know what I have done and 

 written in connection with bees will bear me wit- 

 ness that I have not departed from the spirit of his 

 teachings. It was this strong sense of duty to give 

 honor to whom honor is due, which made me desire, 

 even before 1 had any correspondence with Mr. H. 

 about his hive, to go to Dowagiac and judge of il 

 for myself. I will now describe some of the most 

 important things that I there witnessed: 



1. Before I saw the easy working of his frames 

 {even in hives which had been occupied for several 

 years by hecs), with close-fitting uprights ([ prefer 

 this French term to our word ends), I could not 

 conceive how they could possibly be handled as 

 rapidly or safely as the Langstroth frames. The 

 ])iopolis trouble alone seemed to forbid this. Judge 

 of my surprise, then, to find that, by leaving no 

 space for bees to get between the uprights and the 

 cases holding the frames, and by keeping the 

 touching surfaces of the uprights so closely press- 

 ed together by the thumb-screws as to leave no 

 joint open wide enough for bee-glue, he had actu- 

 ally reduced the propolizing propensity of bees to a 

 minimum. 



My knowledge of the trouble and delay in manip- 

 ulating all the previous styles of close-fitting up- 

 rights led me to think that it would be quite diffi- 

 cult to handle the Hc'ddon frames. To find that I 

 wiis mistaken on this point was a greater surprise 

 than the way in which the propolis difficulty was 

 met. In handling Langstroth frames of the stand- 

 aid depth (and still more with deeper frames), bees 



