APRII> 1, 1916 



263 



thorax and the finger above, which is as it 

 should be. The right hand is now free to 

 do the clipping. Take off both wings from 

 one side — not too close, however. The ab- 

 domen should not be touched at all; and 

 the less handling the better, as sometimes 

 the bees ball the queen when she is returned 

 to them with the new strange taint. Be 

 careful, too, to return her gently, avoiding 

 dropping her, as she is easily injured. 



The following extract from a letter re- 

 ceived last year from Mr. 0. J. Jones, of 

 Urbana, Ohio, is interesting in this connec- 

 tion : 



" Pick the queen up by the wings with 

 the index finger and thumb of the right 

 hand. Place her on the index finger of the 

 left hand (end of finger) ; she will take 

 hold with her feet. Place your thumb on 

 the three feet next to it. Take the scissors 

 in the right hand and clip one of the large 

 wings. I always clip the right one. Place 

 her back on the frame from which she was 

 taken, not on the tops of the frames yet in 

 the hive. (I have lost some valuable queens 

 by following book directions and placing 

 her on top of frames on account of her 

 running in frightened; or the bees, detect- 

 ing a foreign odor, ball their own queen.) 

 By placing her on the frame yet out, if 

 there is any excitement leave her out until 

 she resumes her normal dignitj'. I have 

 clipped hundreds of queens, and never tak- 

 en a queen in my hands except by the feet 

 and wings." 



Aside from doing these necessary things, 

 don't open the hives and fuss around with 

 them very much. To be sure, that is an 

 excellent way to observe, and to add to 

 your familiarity and ease and experience, 

 and most of us started in that over-zealous 

 fashion, but it is rather hard on the bees. 

 * * * 



We have known all along that this partic- 

 ular neighborhood of ours is not vei'y good 

 bee country, being too thickly built up. 

 There are some stretches of commons, to be 

 sure, but not very large, and constantly 

 diminishing at that, and with too many 

 cows taking advantage of the free pastur- 

 age. There are a few low outlying hills 

 with some slight growth of locust; but to 

 reach pasturage of any extent our bees 

 would have to fly two and a half or three 

 miles. Now, if Prof. Baldwin and the edi- 

 tor are going to limit their flight to a mile 

 or even a mile and a half, we are even more 

 restricted than we thought, and we can 

 scarcely expect the bees to accomplish very 

 marvelous tilings for us. 



In this connection I remember that Mr. 

 J. C. Parks, of Scottsboro, Alabama, said 



in a letter this past summer that his experi- 

 ence shows the eight-frame shallow supers 

 superior for a poor locality. His bees are 

 located where there is neither clover, bass- 

 wood, nor buckwheat — the main flow being 

 from tupelo, poplar, locust, persimmon, 

 and soui'Avood. It is not, he says, a good 

 honey section. Well, last year he contract- 

 ed a few colonies to eight frames, and these 

 averaged 60 pounds of extracted honey 

 better than the colonies in ten frames. Mr, 

 Parks wisely declines to draw too positive a 

 deduction from this experience, but is suf- 

 ficiently impressed to make the experiment 

 next year on a larger scale. All of his 

 supers, by the way, are the shallow variety, 

 but most of them ten frames. I know this 

 past season we wished several times that 

 we had shallow supers, for it was a poor 

 year, and hence many of the large frames 

 were only partly filled. 



Another unfortunate thing about our 

 particular neighborhood is that there are 

 so many little apiaries scattered through it. 

 You see this used to be a " half-in-the-coun- 

 try-half-in-the-town " section ; and tho the 

 town keeps elbowing the country further 

 and further out, the -simple countrylike 

 ways are still in vogue. Nearly every fam- 

 ily has its own little home, its own little 

 garden, and a few hens. Then a goodly 

 number keep a cow, some of them a pig or 

 two, and still others a flock of geese or 

 ducks. The ducks and geese and the pigs 

 and cows have the run of the commons — 

 likewise the streets! so it is not strange that 

 bees are often added to other interests. 



Of course the worst feature of so many 

 such small yards is the carelessness and 

 ignorance often shown in their handling, 

 and the consequent danger of disease get- 

 ting a hold. Noticing one row of hives 

 while on a rambly walk one day last week 

 we wandered into the yard to introduce 

 ourselves and chat beetalk a bit. We learn- 

 ed that right there, within fifteen minutes' 

 walk of our own home, they had had foul- 

 brood troubles, but which kind or when, or 

 what was done about it, we did not ask, 

 being such utter strangers. But I shivered 

 all the way home. 



Then a few days later came Gleanings 

 with Mr. Crane's encouraging article, " Eu- 

 ropean Foul Brood not Formidable to the 

 Efficient," page 985, Dec. 1, whereupon I 

 gritted my teeth and made big plans for a 

 thoroly efficient future; for if just plain 

 efficiency or practical proficiency or any 

 other ish-ency can strengtiien our defense, 

 there should be no deficiency, but adequate 

 sufficiency, of genuine efficiency — that's 

 simple common sense. 



