Novkmukr, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULT U 1{ E 



671 



M 



C 



E T HODS 

 of winter- 

 ing differ 

 wide 1 y, even 

 among commer- 

 cial producers, 

 a n d still more 

 among s i d din- 

 ers, who u n - 

 doubted 1 y r u n 



the whole gamut from tlie best to the worst. 

 You see, some people who keep bees as a 

 sideline are so busy, so constantly busy 

 with their own work that the bees receive 

 but scant attention — sometimes none. 

 Others, with a main Avork that leaves them 

 considerable leisure, may spend most of it 

 with their hobby in the back yard. In this 

 class we naturally find some of our most 

 skillful beekeepers. Individuality and per- 

 sonal bias probably show more strikingly 

 among backlotters than among profession- 

 als. And in this matter of wintering, liow 

 we do differ, from doing nothing at all. 

 not even attending properly to stores, to 

 the most laborious and expensive methods 

 of packing. 



Midway between these two extremes 

 stands Geo. Bowersox of Portland, Ind.. 

 who says his method is a complete success 

 - — with him. He uses small, single - hive 

 jtacking cases, with an air shaft from the 

 entrance, which is reduced to % by 4 

 inches. I can't see, myself, much value to 

 this air shaft, and wonder if he wouldn't 

 have as good results without it. "Get the 

 bees in shape early, as to stores, ' ' he writes, 

 "and give them plenty of time to seal 

 down the cover good and tight. It is my 

 opinion the Lord aimed for them to have 

 a tight sealed roof, or he wouldn 't have 

 made them quite so handy with the glue- 

 l»ot. Put newspapers on the hive, and 

 i-rowd on outer cover. Set hive on plat- 

 form, no packing iinder it at all. Put win 

 ter case down over all. Pack with hay or 

 long grass. Put cover on and entrance 

 block in place. Tip the whole outfit up 

 four inches at the back. Don't fail in this. 

 I think the tipping at back and the air 

 shaft are the secret of the success. I win 

 tered 100 per cent this year, as usual. T 

 never lost a colony from wintering in my 

 life. There are lots of things T have nevei 

 sepu, and two of them are moldy combs and 



dysentery. ' ' 



» » * 



While we were working hard the Satui 

 day afternoon before the State Fair. ]nit- 

 ting up our exhibit, there came strolling 

 along a man with apparently nothing to 

 do, but considerable to talk about. He 

 drew up a chair, settled dywn and soon had 

 a little group gathered into a sort of round 

 table discussion of things in general. Bees 

 were merely introductory. The story of his 

 entire experience with them ran somewhat 

 like this. 



"A good many years ago, wlifii 1 had a 

 big farm in East Tennessee, a man came 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



LJ 



Grace Allen 



S 



LJ 



to me one 

 spring and ask- 

 eil if he could 

 p u t some bees 

 on my p 1 a c e. 

 'Ask my wife,' 

 ] said, 'If she 

 ddesu't care, I 

 don 't. ' W i f e 

 s a i d it would 

 be all right so 's he didn't put them too 

 ni'ar the house. So he put 'em out the 

 other side of the orchard. Well, I had 

 a nigger 'd worked for me for years, and 

 pretty soon he began to kick about the 

 bees. 'They sure is cross bees. Boss,' he 

 said. 'Is they yours?' I told him no, they 

 belonged to another felloAv. He kept on 

 kicking about them for a good bit, but 

 after a while he quit. I never paid any 

 attention to them myself, just managed not 

 to go around where they were. Along in 

 the summer sometime T asked the nigger 

 if the bees had quit bothering him. 'Yes,' 

 he said, 'they's right quiet now.' Some- 

 time in July the owner came driving out. 

 'Did I get any honey f he wanted to know. 

 'Blest if I know,' I told him. 'Go on out 

 and see.' He went out, and he came back. 

 'Who killed all my bees?' he wanted to 

 know, and he was good and mad. 'What 

 you mean, who killed your beesf I said 

 back, right quick. 'There's not a live bee 

 out there.' he said. And he was right 

 about it. That rascal of a nigger had gone 

 out there at night and packed the o])ening 

 of every hive full of wet mud, and smoth- 

 ered every bee. I just couldn 't help it, 1 

 had to laugh to think about it." 



There may have been a humorous angle 

 to the incident, but needless to say our 

 sympathies ran along a different line than 

 our narrator 's. 



There were two hives of live bees in the 

 apiary section at the Fair, one of them in 

 our own exhibit. On Thursday evening, the 

 superintendent of the Agriculture Depart- 

 ment came to us to say that the Fair man- 

 agement was having a most embarrassing 

 experience with the bees flying around the 

 grounds, and wouldn't we please shut them 

 up? The Chero-cola men and the cider men 

 were the angry hosts of great swarms of 

 them, he said, and declared they wouldn't 

 pay for their concessions if the bees 

 weren 't called off so they could do a nor- 

 mal business; the women selling lunches 

 complained that bees were eating all the 

 meringue off the i)ies and frightening cus- 

 tomers away, and ])eople were getting stung 

 .•ind threatening to sue the Fair manage- 

 ment. W^e replied that full colonies of bees 

 were among the entries listed in their cata- 

 log, last year as well as this, that there 

 were only Italian bees flying from the ex- 

 hibits, whereas there were plenty of blacks 

 and hybrids arouiul the pies and cider, that 

 there were only two hives being shown 

 anyway (except the one-frame observation 

 hives, which were closed), whereas about a 



