1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1023 



so much. He apparently does not think it 

 pays to waste time in sauntering over the 

 yard, scratching his head, and thinking what 

 to do next. It is all planned out ahead; and 

 all he has to do is to make those poor arms 

 and legs not only get busy but keep busy. 



I have traveled many thousands of miles, 

 and have seen bee-keepers east, north, and 

 south work their bees. I have seen Cogg- 

 shall in his kick-off -super act; I have seen 

 some of his lightning operators at work; 

 but I must say that Quirin, if the other fel- 

 lows are lightning, is greased lightning. How 

 long he will be able to keep up this rapid 

 clip no one knows. 



Now, having watched the man at work let 

 us look into his methods. He is, first of all, 

 a queen- breeder. The mere fact that he can 

 raise 3000 queens and do his other work 

 shows he must be extraordinarily expert. I 

 asked him whether he had used the baby nu- 

 clei. He said he had; but the larger-sized 

 boxes of bees gave him better results. It 

 took less of his time. He would rather have 

 a little more invested capital in the size of 

 the baby nucleus, and less work, than a 

 smaller box of bees and more work. His nu- 

 cleus consists of two frames made by cutting 

 an L. frame in the middle on a perpendicu- 

 lar line. Each half is then inserted in 

 another frame, and two of them together 

 are put into a box of the right dimensions 

 to receive them. Two of these boxes were 

 combined, end to end, into one long one. If 

 you can imagine an ordinary Langstroth 

 two-frame nucleus box which you cut into 

 halves transversely by means of a partition 

 you will get some idea of the nucleus that 

 he uses. Why he did not combine these two 

 boxes side by side so that the cluster of one 

 compartment would warm the cluster of the 

 other I did not think to inquire. When I 

 questioned him about the very small baby 

 nuclei not running satisfactorily he said it 

 was merely because they would not hold lay- 

 ing queens, and brood would fail to mature. 

 The larger boxes of bees would hold their 

 own queens, and mature brood, and that has 

 been just the experience of the Root Co. 

 during the past summer. But we shall have 

 more to say on this subject in a future issue. 

 A sort of birdseye view of Quirin's queen- 

 rearing yard, as well as his honey- producing 

 yard at home, is shown in the larger illus- 

 tration. The photo was taken from the 

 tower of the windmill, looking toward the 

 west. The long boxes scattered here and 

 there, each containing four half-sized Lang- 

 stroth frames, are seen in the foreground. 



The other views show snapshots of him 

 while at work at his Castalia yard, where 

 he has some 40 colonies, all in quadruple 

 tenement Langstroth hives— four colonies in 

 a hiye, with only a thin cross-partition sep- 

 arating. He uses the ordinary super for 

 comb honey, and these are placed in the up- 

 per story of the tenement hives. The 

 warmth from the four clusters and the large 

 protecting- case over and around the supers 

 he regards as an important factor in honey 

 production. 



At each corner of the hives, as will be 

 seen, there is a sort of bar or fender that 

 projects out. The purpose of this is to di- 

 vide the flight of the bees. 



In one of the views he is shown in the act 

 of shaking the bees out of the super; and I 

 much regretted that there was not a moving- 

 picture photographer there to catch Quirin in 

 his greased-lightning act. He uses no bee- 

 escapes, but shakes the bees out in front of 

 the entrances of the hives from which the 

 supers came. At the time of my visit (the 

 fore part of August) the bees were working 

 briskly storing honey in the supers. The 

 hives are located under a row of apple-trees 

 directly facing quite a pool of water which 

 is fed from one of the monstrous springs 

 that are found in that vicinity. At Castalia, 

 it will be remembered, where this yard is lo- 



H. G. QUIRIN. 



cated, is a sight that is well worth the trav- 

 el of a hundred miles to see. It is called 

 the "blue hole." A river of water comes 

 out of the ground, apparently from nowhere; 

 and as one looks down into the hole he seems 

 to be looking into a bottomless pit. I am 

 told one can see objects quite distinctly 60 

 or 70 feet below the surface of the water, 

 so clear is the water. There appears to be 

 an immense river under ground somewhere 

 here, and in some places this water wells up 

 to the surface. Quite a good-sized stream 

 or trout-brook is fed by the aforesaid pool. 

 Mr. Quirin, notwithstanding he has had a 

 yard for several years located near this pool 

 of water, had never seen it. He knew that 

 people were coming from hundreds of miles 

 to view this natural wonder. Why had he 

 not gone to see it? Because he had been 

 too busy. But as I|was there that day, and 



