1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



763 



In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.— Gen. 

 3:19. 

 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself .—Matt. 19:19. 



" Lord, lift me up and let me stand 

 By faith on heaven's tableland." 



I want our readers to take a jump with me 

 from Southwest Florida to Northern Michi- 

 gan, back to the old "cabin home." I 

 reached there when the cherry-blossoms 

 were just opening. I took along with me 

 two queens, daughters of the Caucasian on 

 the island To care for them I got a colony 

 of hybrids and divided it into three parts, 

 making an equal division as nearly as I 

 could. The colony was in an eight-frame 

 Langstroth hive, so that two of the three 

 nuclei had three Langstroth frames each. 

 The third was in a twin hive with the di- 

 vision-board removed. I made this arrange- 

 ment in order to see which nucleus would do 

 best— the one in the twin hive or the two 

 with full-sized Langstroth frames. Just as 

 I got the bees nicely arranged and well to 

 work, so that each nucleus would fix its lo- 

 cality, a snowstorm, together with a hard 

 freeze (the first week in May), came on. 

 The nucleus in the little hive contained so 

 many bees they could hardly all get inside 

 when it was a warm day. I put enameled 

 cloth on top of the frames, with the Nepon- 

 set cover to keep every thing warm and 

 dry, and the result was these bees were out 

 an hour earlier gathering pollen. Of course, 

 the conditions were better to economize the 

 animal heat of the cluster; for the other 

 two on three Langstroth frames each were 

 in full-sized hives, and I had no arrange- 

 ment in the way of a tight-fitting division- 

 board to keep them tucked up. I think 

 there is no question that bees will gather 

 honey and rear brood to much better advan- 

 tage, especially in the cool spring months, 

 by having their hives as nearly air-tight as 

 we can make them, and just large enough to 

 contain the bees. 



After the cold snap was over I made the 

 little hive two- story, and right here I want 

 to tell you all that that twin nucleus hive, 

 two stories, with Caucasian bees, would 

 make the prettiest plaything for a child that 

 could well be imagined, or for older people 

 who wish to get a start in bee-keeping. 

 With such a small hive you could get some 

 very nice honey in the little frames in the 

 upper story. On pages 665 and 666 Prof. E. 

 F. Bigelow has suggested the same thing. 

 The hive would be more simple and more 

 easily handled, it seems to me, by having 

 the honey stored in the frames instead of 

 using section boxes, separators, etc. ; and I 

 think it would be a splendid adjunct to the 



garden or dooryard of any one who wants to 

 keep just one little hive for the fun of it. 



Near the cabin are five beautifully shaped 

 early cherry-trees. One called the Ohio is 

 about the handsomest tree I ever saw. The 

 head is trained so low that, while standing 

 near the trunk, my face was just about in 

 the center of the mass of bloom; and the 

 perfume from its blossom, together with the 

 music of the humming of the bees— my own 

 bees— gave a combination that actually made 

 me say out loud, " Praise God, from whom 

 all blessings flow." 



Mrs. Root was not with me on this trip; 

 but with the new "uncooked food" for a 

 regimen I got along very well indeed. It is 

 true that, after three or four days, I felt a 

 longing for meat of some kind; but a can of 

 chipped dried beef, from the country store 

 near by, made a ration completely to my 

 notion: and when one of the neighbors sent 

 in a plateful of fried fish, smoking hot, I 

 think I never tasted any fresh fish before 

 equal to it. You see I have not yet got 

 quite down to so rigid a diet as my friend 

 Terry has. Now, here is another advantage 

 of this "uncooked" plan that I had not 

 thought of before. There are no remnants 

 to be given to the chickens, nor wasted. 

 Your rolled wheat, nuts, and fruit can all 

 be saved over for another meal, and there 

 is nothing untidy about it. You can get 

 dinner in about four minutes, and you can 

 also have every thing out of the way, and 

 the ' ' dishes washed ' ' in about four minutes 

 more. 



Well, I was getting along swimmingly un- 

 til one day in working with the bees, setting 

 out my new trees, flowers, etc., I took off 

 my coat (and fur cap), and worked in my 

 shirtsleeves. It is true I did begin to feel a 

 little warning from the way the cool breeze 

 was taking hold of me; but my coat was 

 some distance away, and I was almost 

 through with my work in that location; so I 

 kept on working in the wind after I had 

 been perspiring quite a little. When the 

 snowstorm came, however, and that cold 

 night after, I was warned by a pain in my 

 throat that I had caught cold. I suppose I 

 had not been on the new diet long enough 

 to be "immune" to catching cold, like 

 neighbor Terry. I was alone in the cabin in 

 the woods, with no neighbors nearer than a 

 quarter of a mile. It was no use to groan, 

 because there was nobody to hear me if I 

 did. I kept a good fire all night in the 

 drum stove; but before morning I felt pret- 

 ty sick, and my throat was swollen to such 

 an extent that I could hardly take even a 

 drink of hot water. Had I kept on my fur 

 cap and warm coat, all this might have been 

 avoided. But there was nothing to do but 

 to make the best of it. For two days I 

 was scarcely able to work at all; and at the 

 end of the third day, although the swelling 

 in my throat had gone down I felt bad all 

 over. I had arranged to have the county 

 surveyors come and run a line through the 

 woods around my forty acres; and I had 

 purchased some wire to str^'tch al )ng the 



