396 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



bees and hives much cheaper of other parties. 

 The preacher saw the progress his pupil had 

 made, and also found that he could enter the 

 field as a competitor, and said, with some re- 

 gret, that he had given his pupil a club w ith 

 which to knock him down. 



Mr. Littooy has become very expert in the 

 manipulation of the Heddon hive. He pre- 

 fers this hive, even if it costs more than others. 

 Although he uses it, there are not many bee- 

 men who follow his example. The Hoffman 

 hive and frame take the lead. Cedar takes 

 the lead here in hive-making, or at least in 

 Mr. L.'s apiary, and it makes a verv nice light 

 hive. It is needless to say that Mr. L. and I 

 were in entire accord respecting hives. Mr. 

 Littooy has about 75 colonies of bees. A por- 

 tion of them are in an out-apiary some 19 

 miles from Tacoma, and the rest are at his 

 home, where they are nicely protected from 

 sun and rain under a shed. The photo shows 

 them up in good style; the person in the fore- 

 ground is the enthusiastic owner, and, having 

 recently made a good sale of honey, he has 

 his hand in his pocket jingling the shekels. 



Mr. Littooy has an excellent tailoring busi- 

 ness, and he does not allow his bee business 

 to interfere with it to a great extent. If he 

 has not time to extract the honey he storifies 

 until he has the opportunity. 



The sources of honey here are willows, 

 fruit, and maple in the early spring. Oregon 

 maple is something like our eastern soft maple, 

 and sometimes yields quite an amount of dark 

 and strong-flavored honey. The main yield, 

 and the best in quality, is from white clover. 

 The great willow-herb, of which we have 

 heard so much in Michigan, also has a plen- 

 titul fooling here ; but, 1 understand, not as 

 yet enough to make much difference in the 

 honey crop. For a good yield of honey from 

 any source the conditions must be right, and 

 mostly in respect to humidity. When the 

 conditions are right, Mr. Littooy has secured 

 125 lbs. of comb honey to a single colony. 



The greatest danger to an apiary here is 

 spring-dwindling. A few hours of bright sun 

 and then a cool shower soon depletes the hive 

 of its working force. The climate, though, is 

 quite mild, and the bees often gather pollen 

 in February. 



Mr. Littooy sells all of his honey in the 

 home market, and, like all bee-keepers who 

 have a good trade at a fair price, he is disturb- 

 ed by outsiders who put the price down ; and 

 when it is once depressed it is a hard matter 

 to get it back to its former rate. 



Mr. Littooy is an expert wheelman, and we 

 made arrangements to go out the next day 

 and view the surrounding country ; but the 

 clouds have a careless way of shaking out 

 water at the most inopportune moments, and, 

 as the Oregon Dutchman expressed it, the 

 morning " vas too vet." It also has a habit 

 of holding up for a time that it may take a 

 better hold later ; and people who are well 

 enough acquainted with this trait of Jupiter 

 Pluvius do quite a Utile business between 

 showers; so when one of these periods arrived 

 in the afternoon, Mr. L. and I started out on 

 our wheels. He led off at a good strong pace 



toward the Indian reservation, some three 

 miles distant. Mr. L.'s patron, the Rev. Mr. 

 Price, lived here on a little square of wild 

 land, and his little cabin was among the 

 stumps and underbrush. He is now 83 years 

 of age, has lived in this portion of the country 

 several years, and claims to be the pior.eer 

 bee-keeper in this portion of Washington. 

 When he first came here bees could not get 

 enough honey to sustain them ; there was too 

 much forest, and no honey-producing flowers; 

 but the more it became settled, the better 

 became the honey pasturage ; and as these 

 fertile hills and valleys come under cultiva- 

 tion, bee-keeping will become more and more 

 profitable. 



It is a remarkable fact that some people can 

 handle bees, talk bees and bee-fixtures, even 

 write interesting articles upon them, and 

 never get down to real practical profitable 

 work with them. Furthermore, as the years 

 slorify on the best of bee-keepers they become 

 more and more conservative, and, after the 

 age of 60 or 65, rarely adopt new methods and 



LONGEST BICYCLE BRIDGE IN THE WORLD. 



fixtures; in fact, they become back numbers, 

 etc. Mr. Price feels himself in this class, and 

 gives Mr. Littooy the credit of having a better 

 knowledge of bees than he ever had. The 

 reverend gentleman boasted at one time the 

 possession of 100 colonies of bees ; but I be- 

 lieve his dealings were more in the sale of col- 

 onies and fixtures than in the production of 

 hone)-. There was an evident neglect of the 

 small apiary of forty colonies, and an octo- 

 genarian can well be excused from much 

 active work in the apiarv. His attention is 

 now devoted to the founding of an apostolic 

 asylum, as he terms it. His cabin is the nu- 

 cleus, and he has with him two aged impecu- 

 nious bachelors; the three are the only in- 

 mates, and it is a forlorn-looking institution, 

 fully in keeping with the forlorn apiary in the 

 rear. 



Such are the characters we meet while upon 

 our travels ; and some there are who might 

 ridicule the outfit, and use it to cast discredit 

 upon the ministerial calling ; but the bent 

 form, the careful walk, steadied with a stout 

 cane, the whitening locks, the dimmed eyes 



