1904 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



437 



made to the village fathers; an ordinance is 

 passed declaring bees within the limits of 

 the CO poration to be a nusiance, and re- 

 quiring the keepers of them to remove them 

 at once or suffer the penalty of fine or im- 

 prisonment, or both. 



In some instances, live stock has been 

 stung; a cow or a calf or a horse may get 

 near the entrances of the hives, vphich, we 

 will say, are within a foot of a dividing 

 line between the two adjoining properties. 

 Perhaps the stock is stung nearly to death. 

 Damage is claimed, a lawsuit follows, with 

 the result that a feeling of resentment is 

 stirred up against the bee keeper. But 

 this is not all. Possibly the bee-keeper 

 has an apiary in his front yard, bordering 

 on the general highway. A nucleus may 

 be robbed out, with the result that the bees 

 are on the war-path, and begin to sting 

 passersby. Perhaps a span of horses is 

 attacked; a runaway follows; damages are 

 claimed, and another lawsuit is begun. 



In the foregoing I have supposed possible 

 instances. It is proper to state that they 

 are only types of what has occurred and 

 may occur again, and it behooves bee-keep- 

 ers to be careful. 



In the case first mentioned (the washing- 

 of the aggrieved neighbor soiled by the 

 stains from bees affected with dysentery) , 

 it is well for the bee- keeper to send over 

 several nice sections of honey, or offer to 

 pay for the damage done to the washing. 

 Nothing makes a woman madder than to 

 have her nice clean white linen, after she 

 has scrubbed, rinsed, and hung it out to 

 dry, daubed with nasty, ill- sinelling brown 

 stains. But if our bee- keeping friend will 

 take pains to offer an apology before the 

 woman makes complaint, and show a dis- 

 position to make the matter good, trouble 

 may be averted. And right here let me say, 

 if the bees are in the cellar do not set them 

 out on wash-days; or if they are outdoors, 

 and the sun comes out bright, and they be- 

 gin to fly strongly from the hives, send word 

 to 5'our neighbors and ask them not to put 

 their washing out, if it is wash-day, for a 

 few hours. Send along a few boxes of hon- 

 ey, and keep the folks across the way "sweet- 

 ened up." Ninety-nine neighbors out of a 

 hundred will put up with a great deal of in- 

 convenience, and saj', "Oh! that is all 

 right. It won't take long to rinse out the 

 clothes again." 



Take, for example, the more serious cases 

 where horses or cattle have been stung. If 

 you have been foolish enough to place your 

 hives near the highway or your neighbor's 

 line fence where he has loose stock, you 

 may have to pay pretty dearly for it before 

 30U get through. The remedy is preven- 

 tion. Always put the bees in a back yard, 

 and not too close to your neighbor's line 

 fence. Be careful, also, to prevent robbing. 

 See that there are no weak nuclei with en- 

 trances too large. As soon as the honey- 

 flow stops, contract the entrances of all the 

 weaker colonies. If extracting is done aft- 

 er the honey-flow, great caution needs to be 



exercised. The extracting-room should be 

 screened off, and bee-escapes should be pro- 

 vided. Wherever possible, take off all sur- 

 plus by the use of bee-escapes rather than by 

 shaking. 



But we will suppose you do get into trou- 

 ble. What are you going to do about it? 

 We will assume that a city or village ordi- 

 nance has been passed, and that your bees 

 have been declared a nuisance. Do not 

 move the bees if you have used reasonable 

 precaution, but write at once to the Manag- 

 er of the National Bee keepers' Association, 

 whose address will be found in the back 

 part of this book. If you are a member of 

 the Association you will be entitled to pro- 

 tection, and possibly all or a part of the 

 court expenses will be paid by the organi?- 

 ation. But the Association does not under- 

 take to defend its members against criminal 

 carelessness of such a kind as I have already 

 described; but when the bee-keeper has ex- 

 ercised every precaution, then it endeavors 

 to protect his rights. This means, then 

 that you should become a member before you 

 get into trouble. The annual fee for mem- 

 bership and protection is $1.00. 



Well, we will say the attorneys have been 

 retained, and the Association is back of 

 you. Any number of decisions have been 

 handed down to prove that bees are not a 

 nuisance per se; that, when they are proper- 

 ly kept, and due precautions are used, they 

 can not be driven out of the corporation 

 There are several precedents from various 

 courts, even from the Supreme Court of Ar- 

 kansas, to show that bees have a right to be 

 kept within a corporation like any other live 

 stock, so that any ordinance not in conform- 

 ity with these decisions can be declared un- 

 constitutional. Several ordinances declar- 

 ing bees to be a nuisance havebeen repealed 

 — From nezu edition of the A B C of Bee 

 Culture, now in press. 



CUTTING CANDIED HONEY WITH A WIRE, OLD 



Referring to the matter of cutting can- 

 died honey with a wire, one of our corres- 

 pondents, Mr. William Russell, of Minne- 

 apolis, Minn., writes us that he has beer 

 using it for over ten years, and he supposed 

 it was so old that every one knew about it. 

 and he adds that the use of a taut wire to 

 cut cheese, butter, and other like substances, 

 has been in vogue across the water for 

 thirty years. I have known that such use 

 had been made, but did not kn )w of its em- 

 ployment for cutting candied honey. This 

 scheme of cutting honey has now been before 

 the bee-keeping public for two months, and 

 only one correspondent, since then, Mr. 

 Russell, speaks of using it before. It would 

 appear from this that it could not have been 

 in very general use by bee- men or we should 

 have heard from it more promptly. 



From his ten years' use of the plan per- 

 haps our correspondent can give us some 

 new facts of interest, whether such honey 

 continues to s' 11, whether it softens in sum- 

 mer, how to cut, etc. 



