May, 1917 GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



^ FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



355 



as they are strong enough and give tliem a 

 comb-honey super. The bees being used to 

 going above go right to work. We just 

 drifted into this method some six years ago 

 in Colorado. Where our honey-liow is in 

 mid and late summer we have never failed 

 in getting a crop of comb honey with the 

 exception of one year here two years ago 

 when the grasshoppers took everything. 



I do not know whether this plan is old 

 or new ; but, as I said, we just worked into it 

 gradually until we proved it a success, if 

 the honey-flow came at the right time. We 

 always try to get the best breeders and use 

 a different breeder from a different yard 

 each spring. It is our experience that we 

 can get more honey from a hundred and 

 fifty colonies of bees put in the very best 

 shape we know how, than we can with from 

 300 to 400 stands kept in the slipshod man- 

 ner. Our bees are 32 miles from home and 

 in two yards. I use a Ford car with truck- 

 body. We used to use a one-ton track, but 

 it was too ex^Densive for our long runs. We 

 like the Ford for our work the best. 



Hornbrook, Cal. Ray D. Tait. 



Can Bees be Kept in an Attic? 



Why, certainly ! I did it, and had a 

 gorgeous time, with the accent on the gorge. 

 Also, I wrote it all up for the Atlantic 

 Monthly in two articles — " The Beattitudes 

 of a Suburbanite." and " A Crisis in 

 Royalty," which you'll probably find on file 

 in the public-librai'y shelves. But in case 

 you don't — ^or haven't one — I'll epitomize. 



I began with one hive, as a raw beginner 

 too. And my wife was dumfounded when 

 that liive came home by express ! She 

 wasn't wholly reconciled to the unconven- 

 tionality of the idea, either. It seemed al- 

 together too much like " bats in the belfry," 

 and " what would the neighbors say ?" for 

 we lived on a much-traveled street in a sub- 

 urban city. To settle that point right now, 

 altho that first hive fronted on that same 

 street, it was years before any neighbor 

 except " next door " knew anything about 

 it ; but when fall came, and we had 18 

 pounds of nice comb honey for our own 

 winter eating out of that one hive, the 

 household had a sudden change of heart. 



So next year I enlarged operations, fitted 

 out a little attic room for it, and began 

 business with a boom. That I'm not doing 

 it now hasn't anything to do with the attic 

 l)oint, but to a civic situation which I shall 



write up later, and, most of all, to a bull- 

 headed Irish city forester and his spray- 

 tank. But of that, no more just now. 



My experience and luck led me into a 

 combination that was pretty ideal. I had 

 a room, dark as a pocket. I put a skylight 

 in the roof, with a movable copper-wire 

 mosquito-frame in it. That gave all the 

 light needed. Then I set stanchions 

 around the two sides next the slanting roof 

 — a corner room — with mine own fair fin- 

 gers, and a stout bench at the right height, 

 so that three supers could be tiered up on 

 a hive yet not touch the roof-slani. The 

 hives were on that bench, and each had a 

 wire-net frame above the super, under the 

 cover. Thus I need only lift off the cover 

 to see what was doing in that super. The 

 bees couldn't get out to bother me, and my 

 looking didn't bother them. If any did 

 escape in handling, they soon flew up to the 

 skylight and out thru a bee-escape. When 

 the thermometer went up to the high nine- 

 ties, that room always was reasonably cool, 

 with the foot of space between roof and 

 hive and the open skylight for ventilation. 

 In wintering, the skylight was closed, and 

 two or three peels of newspapers tacked 

 outside of each hive permanently sealed it 

 from cold save Avhat came in at the entrance. 



Now, that entrance was a gem — a tri- 

 umph. They were " Danz " hives; en- 

 trance the full width of the front, normal- 

 ly. So I made a broad flat trough, as 

 wide as the hive, about four inches high, 

 outside measurement; wire net stretched 

 across the top, at the hive end; an extra 

 cleat across left a slot into which a zinc 

 storm-door could be slid that would narrow 

 the entrance to 6 inches by half an inch 

 high. Another just like it at the outer end 

 of the trough could also be closed blind, if 

 for any reason I wanted to pen them in for 

 a few hours. In winter it had a storm-door 

 like the other, thus keeping out a lot of 

 useless cold. 



Now, that trough was about 3 feet long, 

 more or less, and went horizontally right 

 thru the sloping roof to the outer air. I 

 built a port-hole casing round it, with an 

 outer slope sharply down to keep rain out, 

 and with that slope sanded after painting, 

 to give foothold up the 6-inch rise, one 

 trough to each hive, 8 inches apart. 



What did I gain by it? First, the bees 

 had the whole slope of the roof below the 

 ports for an alighting-board; and they 

 used it too. Next (to them) they were hiv- 

 ed in a cliff, in a singularly convenient 



