.ITLY 1, 1014 



Pliil Shallard's substitute for an auto truck. 



between tlie eiuls of (he hives and the walls 

 of the vans. The pick-up train took the two 

 vans in tow at 1 a. m., and after going 60 

 miles it was 8:30 a.m. At this stop the 

 assistant and myself gave the bees water by 

 sprinkling it over the wire screens. Th" 

 bees drank very greedily of it. We finished 

 the journey by 12:30 p.m., and gave the 

 bees more water. Owing to the lack of car- 

 riers the bees could not be unloaded and 

 carted to the home farm till the second 

 night of their arrival at tlie goods yard. 

 They were watered once again before they 

 left the vans. When the bees started to fly 

 next morning they carted out one double 

 handful, on an average, of dead bees. The 

 weather was extremely hot, and the small 

 black ants attacked a couple of the weakest 

 colonies, and they swarmed out within two 

 liours of when they started to fly. I did not 

 know the ants were at the:n. 



Last Christmas eve I moved 12 single 

 stories on the same journey, but these had 

 no water en route till they were unloaded 

 into the goods-shed at 1 p. m. Then I sprin- 

 kled them with water and carted them that 

 aftei'iioon to the home apiai'y, 12 miles from 

 the railway station. Next morning I looked 

 to see how they had stood the trip, and 

 found one colony with 90 per cent of the 

 bees dead in it (this was the strongest, and 

 had received the most water) ; and the meat- 



ants (iron-stone ants) had paralyzed the 

 rest. In the other 11 colonies 1 found a 

 large percentage of the bees dead. I formed 

 a good many nuclei last week, and filled one 

 side of a drone comb with water for each of 

 them. One nucleus seemed to generate a lot 

 of lieat in the hive, and the bees died. The 

 combs and dead bees were all clammy and 

 damp as though the hive had been filled with 

 steam. The nuclei were all closed, and made 

 bee-tight, so that the bees would not all 

 leturn to the parent hive when released, and 

 [perhaps this caused one of them to suffocate. 

 The heat this summer has been ranging to 

 lOti degrees with hot winds. This climate is 

 subject to very swift weather-clianges. The 

 altitude is somewhere about 2-100 ft. above 

 sea-level. There is no scrub, no clovei', and 

 no lucerne within range of 90 per cent of 

 the apiarists here, and they must depend 

 entirely on bush timber for the crop. When 

 it comes drouthy weather they get but a 

 small crop, and the last two seasons have 

 been very hot and dry, so that not only 

 myself but others have not extracted a sin- 

 gle pound of honey. There is i^lenty of 

 bloom, but no honey in it, and I guess it 

 would puzzle almost any one to get a crop 

 under these conditions. 



Three years ago I moved 300 colonies for 

 my father on the north coast, early in the 

 spring, with a wjigon and horses. These 



