Sfifi 



GLEANINGS tN BEE CULTURE 



May, 1921 



He Made Millions 

 — for Others. 



AN ITEM is going the rounds of the press 

 to the effect that Dr. C. C. Miller, at the 

 age of 85, after 

 having tried 14 

 different kinds of 

 work, went into 

 beekeeping; that his wife, in 1861, caught 

 a swarm of bees and hived them in a sugar 

 barrel. The story goes on to recite that he 

 became so much interested that he made 

 beekeeping his life work, and then adds, 

 "Now he sells 20,000 pounds of section 

 honey yearly, and is worth nearly two mil- 

 lions of dollars;" that "he has been stung 

 4,000 times; has become immune to stings, 

 and has invented a successful treatment 

 which brings him a considerable income. ' ' 

 Like many other newspaper stories this 

 one is founded on a scintilla of truth. Dr. 

 Miller did make a humble start, and did 

 become interested in bees until he became 

 one of the greatest authorities in the world. 

 He did sell 20,000 sections of comb honey 

 in one year when he was 85; but that was 

 the only year when he produced so large 

 an amount from so small a number of colo- 

 nies- He did not ' ' invent a successful treat- 

 ment" for stings. 



Dr. Miller, like most beekeepers, had his 

 ups and downs. He made a comfortable 

 living; he enjoyed the outdoors; but that 

 he was worth ' ' nearly two millions of dol- 

 lars" is a joke. We wish it were so. His 

 great asset in life was his ability to teach. 

 While he did not make ' ' millions ' ' for 

 himself, he enriched his fraternity by many 

 millions. He showed how to keep bees bet- 

 ter. His ideas were sound. His book, 

 "Fifty Years Among the Bees,'' is as fas- 

 cinating as a novel- His modest ' ' Stray 

 Straws" sparkled with gems. They were 

 nuggets of gold. His constant look heaven- 

 ward inspired thousands of lives, making 

 better people as well as better beekeepers. 

 He always said, when there chanced to be 

 a poor honey year, ' ' I have enough to eat. 

 I am comfortable. I can get along if I do 

 not get a drop of honey. ' ' This was be- 

 cause he was looking ahead. 



Now, then, since he did not make millions 

 for himself, but did make millions for his 

 brother beekeepers all over the world (for 

 his influence went beyond the United 

 States), shall we not show our appreciation 

 by contributing to the Dr. C. C- Miller Me- 

 morial Fund, mentioned on pages 8, 137, and 

 233, on his birthday, June 10 next? Amounts 

 all the way from ten cents up will be re- 

 ceived and credited to the fund. The good 

 doctor, if he were alive, would aj^preciate 

 more, we feel sure, a fund built on a large 

 number of small gifts than a fund created 

 by large ones. It has been suggested that 

 each beekeeper on June 10 next be pre- 

 pared to send in his contribution to the Dr. 

 Miller Memorial Fund. If you are afraid 

 you will forget it, send it now after read- 

 ing this. 



We are sure that there are thousands 

 upon thousands of beekeepers who have 



been helped by Dr. Miller. If he did not 

 make millions for himself, yet he has helped 

 to make millions for others, and those oth- 

 ers will doubtless wish to have some part 

 in his memorial- 



IN THESE days of short cuts and whole- 

 sale methods in beekeeping, the labor of 



finding the 



To Take Away the 



Queen Without 



Having to Find Her 



queens to 

 make colonies 

 queenless for 

 swarm control 

 or in requeening the apiary is sometimes a 

 burdensome task. On page 275 of this issue 

 F. G. Eauchfuss tells the readers of Glean- 

 ings how to take away the queen from each 

 colony in the apiary without the labor of 

 finding them. 



This important article should be carefully 

 studied by every reader of this journal, for 

 it not only outlines a system of swarm con- 

 trol for comb-honey production, which prob- 

 ably involves less labor than any other sys- 

 tem evet devised for this purpose, but it is 

 also full of suggestions which the ingenious 

 beekeeper will find useful in many other 

 ways. 



By the method outlined by Mr. Eauch- 

 fuss, the queens are taken away from the 

 colonies just previous to swarming time. 

 This can be done without seeing a single 

 one of the queens that are taken away, and 

 the labor involved is largely in connection 

 with the giving of the first comb-honey 

 supers. The whole operation of removing 

 the queens by this method is so simple that 

 the queens of an entire apiary can be re- 

 moved within a few hours. This method of 

 dequeening and requeening with young 

 queens for the control of swarming has been 

 used for many years by Herman Eauchfuss 

 and his son, F. G- Eauchfuss, and it has 

 enabled them to operate a series of widely 

 scattered apiaries near Denver, Colo., in 

 the production of comb honey by the car- 

 load. 



The plan fits in well with the present- 

 day tendency in comb-honey production of 

 building up the colonies to rousing strength 

 in two-story hives, and then at the begin- 

 ning of the honey flow reducing to a single 

 story to induce the colonies to send a large 

 force of their younger bees into the supers. 

 Instead of bringing about a tendency to 

 swarm when this is done the colony is put 

 into a condition comparable to the parent 

 colony in nature, except that its full work- 

 ing force is retained, and such colonies sel- 

 dom attempt to swarm during the same sea- 

 son. 



The simple method of inserting a queen- 

 excluder between the two stories of 

 brood in which the queen is working, in 

 order to confine her to one of them, then 

 later looking for young brood instead of 

 looking for the queen, and taking away the 

 chamber whicli contains the young brood, 

 can be used to dequeen colonies for (irdinary 



