DEf'KMBER, 1922 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



777 



^ FROM THE 



FIELD OF EXPERIENt^E 



mous wasp nest, about four feet long and 

 large around. 



"The Mexican cut into it, and it con- 

 tained some of the prettiest, clearest honey 

 I ever saw. It was fine, too. The priests 

 call it 'virgin honey.' 



"And the 'avispas' did not sting at all!" 



I enjoy every number of Gleanings. 



Laredo, Texas. Eobert Hardin. 



CAN A WOMAN KEEP BEES? 



A System of Management Worked Out to Avoid 

 Heavy Work 



Ask that question of Miss Nina Scott, 

 Henry County, Missouri, and you will not 

 only get an emphatic "Yes," but you will 

 also get a look which, translated, would 

 mean nothing milder than "Why not, I'd 

 like to know?" For Miss Scott speaks 

 from experience. 



"Whatever there is to do about an api- 

 ary, a woman can work it out so she can do 

 it herself, if she really cares for the bees. 

 Of course a great deal of it is quite hard 

 work, but no harder than washing, or iron- 

 ing, or sweeping. I would rather spend 

 four hours lifting one frame after another, 

 looking for queens and clipping them, than 

 to spend four hours sweeping. 



' ' Beekeeping is agreeable work for a 

 woman, I think. It is something she can 

 manage alone and do all the work, if there 

 is nobody to help. I do all the work about 

 my bees, except that my sister runs the ex- 

 tractor for me. There is a good deal of 

 heavy lifting, and that is hard for a woman, 

 but she can learn to adapt the work to her 

 strength." 



The real reason Miss Scott says "Pooh! " 

 when you mention the hard work connected 

 with beekeeping, if I judge rightly, is be 

 cause she is so interested in what she is do- 

 ing that she doesn 't know that she is work- 

 ing. To her, beekeeping is more like play 

 than work. Here is how she looks at it: 



"Beekeeping is the most fascinating work 

 in the world. Bees are unselfish and peace- 

 able. They live and work for the colony. 

 They are sensible; if they are running out 

 of honey, they cut down on brood-rearing. 

 If their queen is failing, they start queen- 

 cells to raise another. A bee tamping pol- 

 len down in a cell with its hind feet is fun- 

 ny, and so is a swarm coming out. And 

 there is always something to learn about 

 bees." 



A year ago, before the Missouri Apieul- 

 tural Society, Miss Scott told some of her 

 first experiences with bees. "I learned what 

 little I know from books, magazines and ex- 

 perience — mostly experience," she said. 



"I didn't get along very fast. I .almost 

 had to take in washing to support the bees 

 the first two years. I expected the most 



impossible things; I thought the white clo- 

 ver honey flow lasted all summer, and e.x- 

 pected the bees to draw out full sheets of 

 foundation when there was no honey flow. 

 But I experimented and learned. I tried ar- 

 tificial cell cups and grafted larvae for 

 queen-cells, and so on. I was prouder of 

 the first artificial cell cups, with grafted lar- 

 vae, that I got the bees to accept and 

 build out, than I have ever been of anything 

 since." 



Then the beekeepers, old timers and would- 

 be beekeepers asked questions, "How do you 

 place your hives V How do you keep rec- 

 ords? How do you control swarming? Etc., 

 etc." Answers were forthcoming. And that 

 those who did not hear her may have the 

 benefit of her experience, I am setting down 

 some of the main points responsible for Miss 

 Scott's success: 



"I use ten-frame hives, and full sheets 

 of foundation wired, in both brood and ex- 

 tracting frames. In the supers, I use eight 

 frames to a ten-frame super, spacing them 

 wide apart so that the combs will be built 

 out thicker. Then they are easier to un- 

 cap. My extracting-supers are half -depth; 

 two of them are as deep as a hive-body, 

 and they are heavy enough. I use some full- 

 depth supers to get foundation drawn out 

 for next year's increase and to replace my 

 crooked or unwired combs. Full-depth su- 

 pers are too heavy. My hive-stands are 

 made of pieces of 2 x 4-inch stuff, three and 

 one-half feet long, set up on edge. Fif- 

 teen-inch cleats are nailed on the ends to 

 hold them on edge and the right distance 

 apart. 



"Each hive-stand holds two liives, facing 

 south. Hive-stands are about 34 inches 

 apart. That makes two colonies just the 

 right distance apart. Then there is a wide 

 space, then two more hives on a stand. I 

 think the bees can more readily find their 

 location wlien the apiary is broken up into 

 groups of several hives each. 



"To keep mice and moles from working 

 up under the hives, I put a piece of tarred 

 felt roofing down beneath each hive-stand. 

 Let this extend several inches beyond the 

 stand, to keep down the grass tliat can not 

 be cut with a lawn-mower." 



Every hive in the apiary lias a number. 

 Miss Scott keeps a colony record. The num- 

 bers for hives are cut out of cardboard, each 

 piece of cardboard about the size of a pos- 

 tal. These cards are dipped in linseed 

 oil, then dried, painted white, and tlic num- 

 ber is stenciled on the card with black 

 paint. A screw eye is put into the buck of 

 each hive, and the number is hung to this 

 by punching a small hole in the card. 



In the record book there is a page or so 

 of space for each colony. Take Colony No. 

 27, for example. In the book is this rec- 

 ord: 



