GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



January, 1017 



r 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



some day selling all of his own honey and 

 more besides, from his own doorstep. 

 Wouldn't it be fine if he could? Mother 

 is convinced now that it pays to advertise 

 and has even got over the feeling that " it 

 isn't done by the best families." So we 

 have accomplished more than all the profit 

 by widening her horizon a little. 



I forgot to tell you that Rob has promis- 

 ed to take me to the state convention next 

 month — the beekeepers' convention of 

 course. I'll tell you all about it later. I'm 

 curious about it. 



Your loving sister, 



Mary. 



Two Years of It 



In 1915 a neighbor gave me two late 

 small swarms. I put them in boxes, but 

 got no honey that season. 



The following December I commenced to 

 get ready for the next season. I sent for 

 five ten-frame hives and other supplies, 

 and when they arrived I had a good deal of 

 pleasure in putting them together and 

 painting them. I put on three good coats 

 of white i^aint, and painted black numbers 

 on the front. I was very proud of them. 



I wintered the two colonies without any 

 protection on the south side of a building. 

 One of them came thru all right, but the 

 other starved some time in February. I 

 sent for a three-frame nucleus of thre.e-^ 

 banded Italians, including a queen, from 

 Texas, which arrived May 11. These I 

 put in one of my new hives; and as the 

 days went by I learned to handle the frames 

 and find the queen. 



In the first part of July I caught two 

 stray swarms in hives I had put up in a 

 tree just back of my barn. This made 

 four colonies. I then sent for an Italian 

 queen; and when she arrived I took three 

 frames of sealed brood and placed them in 

 an empty hive, putting this hive on the 

 stand of the colony of bees in a box hive. 

 (This colony had not swarmed.) I intro- 

 duced my queen and she was accepted. 

 The colony in the box hive that I moved 

 away lost all of its flying bees and was 

 robbed out later in the fall. The queen 

 that I introduced began laying; and about 

 the time all the bees in the hive were 

 Italians I found no brood in the combs ex- 

 cept the few cells of drone brood about to 

 hatch. A week or ten days later I examin- 



ed the combs again and found quite a 

 patch of larvae and a few cells of sealed 

 brood. I do not know whether the queen 

 quit laying and began again, or what the 

 trouble was. 



The three-frame nucleus that I bought 

 in the spring increased rapidly and began to 

 work in the supers August 5. They made 

 65 sections of honey from starters. There 

 were also 15 sections about full of combs, 

 but containing little honey. I put these 

 over another colony, the bees of which 

 carried the honey down into the brood- 

 chamber, leaving me the 15 bait sections 

 for spring. The nucleus and the express 

 cost about $5.00, the hive ^3.00. I sold 

 the 65 sections at I2V2 ets. each, so the 

 nucleus paid for itself and for the hive 

 the first year, and I have a good strong 

 colony left with a brood-chamber full of 

 honey. When I started with this nucleus 

 (here was only one frame that had a full 

 slieet of foundation. The other frames 

 had only starters. 



November 19 I put the bees away for 

 winter. On the fronts of the hives I tack- 

 ed thick paper. Each inner cover had a 

 hole in it, and between this and the outer 

 cover I put a piece of old quilt. I then 

 carried the hives to a strawstack facing 

 southeast. I pulled out enough straw to 

 make a space large enough for the hives, 

 pushed them in, and packed all around 

 ihem clear to the front with straw. 



I weighed all of the hives as I took them 

 away. The ones I bought in the spring 

 weighed 86 pounds, the others 76 and 65 

 pounds respectively. An empty hive, bot- 

 tom and cover, weighs about 38 pounds. 



I keep the bees about 40 feet from a 

 public road. If any one should be stung 

 would I be liable for damages? Is there 

 any law in this state compelling me to 

 keep the bees a certain distance from the 

 road? Howard C. Pfaltzgraff. 



Dumont, Iowa. 



[It is not always safe to judge the 

 amount of stores by weighing hives, combs, 

 bees, and all, for the hives vary in weight 

 as do the combs. Furthermore, the colonies 

 vary in strength. We should say, how- 

 ever, that there are stores enough; for even 

 if there were ten pounds of bees in each 

 hive, and the combs weighed a pound apiece, 

 that would leave nearly twenty pounds in 

 two of the colonies and nearly thirty in 

 the other one. The one weighing in all 

 only 65 pounds might run short before 



