GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July, 1917 



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Beeki 



eeping as a 



Grace Allen 



LJ 



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SIDE LINERS 

 e V erywheie 

 will do well 

 to catch the 

 spirit of earnest 

 i n V e s t igation 

 and keen obser- 

 vation contained 

 in Mr. Crane's 



last faragraph. page 453, June. While 

 the point forcibly brought out is that " the 

 best time to study wintering is in the 

 spring," the still broader truth is inferred 

 that the best time to study any problem is 

 before you are finally compelled to make a 

 definite and perhaps quick decision. 



Perhaps even more important is the idea 

 of examining conditioi s with great care and 

 ascertaining their causes. "Why is this?" 

 should be the question the beekeeper con- 

 stantly asks his bees. This I feel to be 

 fully as true of the sideliner as of the 

 professional ; for while there is not so great 

 a financial consideration involved in the suc- 

 cess or failure of his apiary, there is usually 

 a great lave for the work and a keen enjoy- 

 ment of it, which should prove a stimulant 

 for the close study that brings about an ever 

 increasing knowledge and skill. Let us 

 keep our bees, not with our hands and hearts 

 only, but with our heads as well. 



Side Line 



1 



TU 



Louis A. Cameron, 1....t,i,..i, >,,.,,,, i,.^., uu en- 

 thusiastic side-liner who has read Gleanings ever 

 6ince the days of " Rambler." 



I certainly in- 

 terrupted a little 

 family difficulty 

 the other day. 

 There Avas her 

 1 a d y s hip, the 

 queen, walking 

 in state across 

 one of the first 

 combs I looked at ; there were sealed queen- 

 cells, with one already hatched, and on the 

 floor a ball of bees. 



" I would think you were balling your 

 queen if I didn't know you weren't," I told 

 them as I broke up their party to learn who 

 was the honor guest. It was a young queen, 

 evidently the one just hatched. Not want- 

 ing to breed from this mother queen, I 

 killed the young one at once, whereupon the 

 persistent bees proceeded to ball the re- 

 mains ! But why did they let her hatch, I 

 wonder, and then give her this reception ? 



When I asked Mr. Louis A. Cameron, of 

 Bloomington, Texas, if I might use his pic- 

 ture, the one with the oranges and the baby 

 orange-tree, since he had none with the bees, 

 he wrote, " The tree and oranges look all 

 right, but how about my homely Scotch 

 mug?" Well, that's not how I classify the 

 nice kindly face of this sideline beekeeper 

 of Texas. 



Mr. Cameron says he has been reading 

 Gleanings since the days of " Rambler," 

 and that he is a " bee crank," not ha^jpy un- 

 lets he can hear the cheerful hum of the 

 bees. His father was a beekeejier before 

 him. " One of my earliest recollections," 

 he writes, " is of hearing the old conch shell 

 blow, as it said, ' Bees are swarming! Come 

 quick !' " When his father discarded his old 

 box hives he got a new kind with a row of 

 drawers on each side of the brood-chamber. 

 " I forget the name of these hives," he says, 

 " but they should have been called ' Moth- 

 breeders ' for there were so many places the 

 bees could not get into." They always had 

 plenty of honey in those days, and his 

 father still had bees when he passed over at 

 the noble age of eighty-eight, "eyes and 

 brain bright and clear to the end." 



Mr. Cameron's start was the purchase of 

 eight hives, in Illinois, six of them very 

 large old box hives. He arranged for a 

 beekeeper to transfer the bees for $5.00, 

 then changed his mind and wisely decided 

 to do it himself. With the customary pre- 

 cautions of a beginner he made elaborate 

 preparations for this big event, making a 

 (cut for the work, and assembling hammer, 

 (-(ild-cliisel, veil, gloves, and smoker, wrap- 

 ping-cord, etc. The gloves promptly got 



