494 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



I[. Perkins" " iiioriiion "" mating hive, an ordinary ten-frame hive divided into four conipartnients by 

 tin, each having a seijarate entrance. 



around his honey and bee-house, Bruin 

 keeping just out of his reach, till it was 

 hard to iell which was pursuer and which 

 pursued. Finally the bear made off for the 

 hummuck, and a rille-ball went speeding 

 after him — with what result Mr. Longstreet 

 never knew, for, while he found traces of 

 the effect of the shot, he never came upon 

 Mr. liear. 



The ants were almost as hard a projjosi- 

 tion. They fairly swarmed over the i)lace 

 at night. In order to outwit both kinds of 

 intruders, JNlr. Cornelius Longstreet was 

 forced to build the bee-house shown in Fig. 

 15, bear-proof and ant-tight. This was and 

 is still the only bee-house of the kind in the 

 State. It is 30 ft. long, and holds 80 colo- 

 nies that are numbered inside the house 

 and outside as well. It is shingled, roof 

 and sides, the entrances being ^-inch holes 

 bored through the walls. The alighting- 

 boards were i)ainted dilTerent colors to aid 

 the bees in locating their own hives. The 

 shingles had to be nailed with an extra row 

 of nails at the bottoms to prevent the bears 

 rii)ping them olT with their claws in their 

 frantic etTorts to get at the honey after the 

 house was first built. You can still see 

 their heavy scratches on the outside of the 

 shingles about tlie entrances. The extra 

 rows of nails can also be seen. 



The ant-proof feature of the house is 

 shown in the first two views. Hixteen i)iers, 

 formed of 4 > 4 stuff, covered with concrete, 

 and made of heart ])ine, furnishetl the foun- 

 dation. About half way up from the 

 ground, zinc cups surrounded the ui)rights, 

 each cuj) being about Xyi inches wide, and 

 yi inch deep. These were kept filled with 

 cotton-seed oil. To prevent flying bees 



alighting in the oil and being lost, Mr. 

 Ijongstreet devised a pair of fenders for ev- 

 ery i)ier, made to drop down in front of the 

 cups when in use, but capable of being 

 raised for cleaning or refilling of cups. So 

 long as weeds and grasses were scrupulous- 

 ly kei)t cleaned aw-ay from the piers the de- 

 vice worked to a charm; no ants were found 

 inside the house; bvit let the owner forget 

 them for a few weelvs, and the pests swarm- 

 ed through the house as much as ever. For 

 this need of constant watchfulness, and 

 also because tlie nocturnal ants are much 

 less common than formerly, Mr. Longstreet 

 now places liis extra colonies in apiaries 

 outside of the house, shown in the last 

 view, and finds that they now do as well as 

 inside. He will not, therefore, build anoth- 

 er house of this sort. But it served its day 

 and did it well. The bears, too, have prac- 

 tically all disappeared from that immediate 

 section. 



Before finally settling on the coast Mr. 

 Longstreet "trekked" three times from in- 

 land to the shore, moving his bees each 

 way. They were in two-story hives, the en- 

 trances closed with screen wire, the tops 

 also covered with the same material, with an 

 empty super between the toji screen and the 

 hive to give clustering space for the bees. 

 They were moved without accident, and the 

 migrating paid hnancially. 



Mr. Longstreet, Sr., used, and the son still 

 uses, the Betsinger hive, size 15x9>^. 

 Many of the original frames, brought from 

 New York, are still in use in good condition 

 in the apiary of the son. Twenty-seven 

 years of continuous use for frames is a good 

 record. Years ago the apiary was Italian- 

 ized with stock of the Root strain of Ital- 



