OCTOBEK, 1921 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



637 



He has reared his own queens, and has de- 

 cided from careful records and observations 

 that his losses of virgins were not to be laid 

 to birds. Many beekeepers, he is con- 

 vinced, lay their ill success in queen-rearing 

 on the birds, when the birds are not to 

 blame. 



He had an interesting experience in the 

 summer of 1920. Some old homemade hives 

 were stacked up by the side of the barn. 

 One day he noticed some bees, evidently 

 scouts, inspecting this stack; and two days 

 later in came a good-sized swarm of hy- 

 brids. He took them from this hive, set 

 them where he wanted them, and requeened 

 them. A few weeks later scout bees came 

 again to the same top hive on the stack, 

 and the next day came another swarm — 

 black this time — ^* ' totally black — from some 

 distant tree. These last were amusing to 

 me; being the pure blacks, they showed 

 traits so different from my three-banders. 

 Wherever there was anything to rob, they 

 were always first. ' ' 



Unfortunately he hns had to fight Ameri- 

 can foul brood for the past two years — 



How Joliii Bietiemau helps his liees meet the snows 

 and winds of winter. 



discouraging work for tlie sideline bee- 

 lover. If it continues in that territory, re- 

 quiring treatment each year, he says he will 

 keep only a few colonies, as " I never care 

 to treat 26 hives with combs again as I 

 did last summer; this is some weary toil.'' 

 A Pair of True Amateurs. 

 In the unforgettable year of 1914, when 

 men 



". . . heard the news, and went dis- 

 couraged home, 

 And brooded by the fire with heavy mind, ' ' 

 Mr. and Mrs. John T. Carlyle, successful 

 stage people living in Detroit, went to East 

 Jordan, Mich., and bought a ten-acre piece 

 of real earth. Their first summer there 

 they started their beekeeping career with 

 two colonies. In the summer of 1920 they 

 had 33 colonies and an equally increased 

 enthusiasm. Every autumn in late Septem- 

 ber, before leaving their summer work-and- 

 play-ground for their winter's work, they 

 pack their bees safely awav in quadruple 



winter packing cases, and face the foot- 

 lights thru the coldest weather with easy 

 apiarian consciences. Then in May, when 

 their season is over, they come back to their 

 bit of earth, where there are greenness and 

 birdsong and silence and sun on the grasses 

 and the miracle of growing things. And 

 they promptly unpack the bees, for "of 

 course," writes Mrs. Carlyle, "our 33 colo- 

 nies come first and foremost. I love bee 

 culture, and almost everything else on the 

 place seems a waste of time compared with 

 the bees." There speaks the true amateur 

 beekeeper. 



And catch the enthusiasm of this: "We 

 have had lots of wonderful experiences this 

 year. During the past two weeks I have 

 extracted (during Mr. Carlyle 's ilness) 850 

 pounds of honey from 17 supers. We have 

 to put the escapes on 9 more supers, as we 

 wish to extract again on Friday. Once we 

 had two swarms at the same time. One we 

 saw issue, and we caught her Majesty and 

 caged her, and hived the swarm by remov- 

 ing the parent hive to another stand and 

 releasing her Majesty in the empty hive; 

 we gave her a frame of brood later to keep 

 the dear nurse bees busy. Upon finishing 

 that swarm in a most scientific manner (we 

 think), there was another great big swarm, 

 something mammoth! We could not get a 

 good negative of it as everything seemed 

 to be moving at once (we included). We 

 had not the remotest idea where it came 

 from. We made a journey from hive to 

 hive and everything seemed to be peace- 

 ful, happy, and busy in all of them. So we 

 shook the swarm from the apple tree into 

 an empty ten-frame hive, and later gave 

 them a frame of brood to keep the nurse 

 bees happy." 



Might not that take even the most staid 

 and unthrilled professional back to his own 

 early experiences, when just to open a hive 

 was exciting and every separate incident 

 was an adventure? 



Then there is their fun of marketing. 

 ' ' We have not sold it to any stores, just 

 to the summer resorts around here. We 

 have a Ford and use that for our 'Honey 

 Trips '• — always taking between two and 

 three hundred pounds with us and always 

 selling out before we return home. It usu- 

 ally takes us about half a day to sell out 

 these amounts" 



Now Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle might go to 

 some resort for their vacations and spend 

 most of their time playing golf. That, 

 however, would mean a considerable expen- 

 diture, whereas the bees may come to mean 

 a considerable income. Moreover, this 

 sturdy simplicity of living brings its own 

 great spiritual income, too, of large satis- 

 factions and renewed reverence and inner 

 peace. 



