GT. EANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July, 1920 



C 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



LJ 



Grace Allen 



SU M M E B. 

 days are cer- 

 tainly gold- 

 en ones for the 

 sideline bee- 

 keeper. For the 

 pro fessional, 

 too, perhaps you 

 will add. A dif 

 f ereut kind of 



gold, dear reader, a different kind of gold. 

 The reason summer seems to me so especial- 

 ly a wonder season for the sideliner is that 

 it brings him so much downright joy, most 

 of it the leisurely high joy of the spirit, 

 that has nothing at all to do with profits and 

 only an incidental connection with crops. 

 To the professional honey-producer, summer 

 brings the "busy season" that most busi- 

 ness ventures are heir to, be they agricul- 

 tural or otherwise. There is a constant 

 sense of rush and bustle and getting things 

 done, necessary, vital things upon the doing 

 of which his very income depends. It 

 means steady, old-fashioned hard work and 

 lots of it. 



But to the sideliner, the backlotter who 

 has perhaps only half a dozen to a score of 

 hives, the springtime hangs out the latch- 

 string to the mysteries of the hive, and sum- 

 mer opens wide the door. These are the 

 days when, over all the land, there are men 

 a little tired with the burdens of office or 

 factory, who are growing eager-eyed and 

 refreshed among the quiet ancient marvels 

 of the apiary; when dream-hearted women, 

 weary of egg beater and dusteloth and darn- 

 ing needle, lean rapturously over some fra- 

 grant dusky hive and lose themselves in 

 wonder and content. 



The delights of thus keeping bees as a 

 sideline are innumerable. Added to the 

 thrill and splendor of the swarm almost cer- 

 tain to issue in either May or June, are 

 countless other delights scarcely less excit 

 ing. A queen never ceases to send a thrill 

 thru your true bee-lover. I remember one 

 day when Mr. Allen and I were working to- 

 gether; he had just set off the last super and 

 was inserting a tool under the excluder, 

 when I squealed, "There's the queen!" 



"Well, what in thunder is she doing 

 there?" he demanded, as we watched her an 

 instant on top of the excluder that was sup 

 posed to be keeping her below. I didn 't 

 know, but having raised brood twice, 

 thought likely I'd raised the queen, too, the 

 second time. .Deciding to clip her at that 

 opportune moment, I tried to pick her up. 

 No indeed, she allowed no such liberties. A 

 swift hop or two, and she took to wing. We 

 waited breathlessly for her return. Not 

 seeing her, we went on down into the brood- 

 chamber, looking for — whatever we were 

 looking for, swarming symptoms, I believe. 

 "Ah, here's the runaway back!" Mr. Allen 

 exclaimed presently. Again I reached for 

 her, there on the comb. This time she took 

 almost instant flight. We were much dis- 

 tressed, fearing she might not return the 



S 



LJ 



second t i me. 

 And behold, just 

 then, across an- 

 other comb an- 

 other queen 

 came walking, 

 quiet, sedate, 

 digni fi e d, one 

 wing clipped, 

 "Oh, that other 

 is no laying queen! " we shouted in the glee 

 of sudden understanding. " It 's a gay, 

 flighty young thing that must have emerged 

 in the upper story from that first brood 

 raised. " 



"From some cell you failed to cut last 

 week?" came a suggestion from across the 

 hive. "From some cell I failed to cut and 

 am glad of it!" I admitted happily. In 

 such slender, unlooked-for happenings your 

 true backlotter finds almost unlimited joy, 

 even tho they result occasionally from his 

 own apiarian sins. 



Greater skill is always his watchword, 

 however, and little by little he progresses 

 in his methods, probably trying in turn 

 every system described in the journals. 

 Like all the rest of them, we have clipped 

 queens and we have not; we have let them 

 cast the first swarm; we have cut cells every 

 week to prevent them; we have used the 

 Alexander method of swarm control and 

 the Fowls' adaptation of it; we have given 

 them the run of a story and a half and two 

 stories and seen them swarm anyhow. This 

 particular summer, feeling the necessity of 

 holding the force together at almost any 

 cost of mere labor, we kept cells cut out 

 again, examining the brood-chamber comb 

 by comb during May, then compromising in 

 June on the method we undignify with the 

 title, the tipsy method, tipping hives up, you 

 know, to look for queen-cells on the bottom. 

 It won 't locate them every single time, but 

 it comes pretty close to it — close enough, 

 I'm thinking. Moreover, if the brood- 

 chamber consists of two bodies, then tipping 

 the upper one alone will suffice time after 

 time. If there are no cups along the lower 

 edges of those upper brood combs, I don 't 

 believe there 's one chance in one hundred 

 that they are starting cells below — pro- 

 vided, of course, the queen is occupying the 

 upper story. Sometimes she isn't; it is 

 given over entirely to honey. Even then 

 they will sometimes choose the lower edges 

 of those upper combs to build queen-cells 

 on. But even if I find rows of cups there, 

 if there are no eggs in them, I don't bother 

 to tip up the lower chamber. And I recom- 

 mend this tipsy system to any sideliners who 

 may more or less have discarded their old 

 leisurely ways in order to keep as many bees 

 as tliey can manage in the time at their dis- 

 posal. If you are practicing cell-cutting 

 at all, it saves lots of time. 



The reason we were so very keen to pre- 

 vent swarming this year, that we were will- 

 ing to look thru or under each brood-cham- 

 ber once a week, is because such a heavy 



