AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



339 



l§oinetliing About Bee-Escapes — 

 Tlie -^ Handy " Escape. 



Written for the AmeHcan Bee Journal 

 BY B. TAYLOR. 



I send a sample of my "Handy bee- 

 escape." I have within the past three 

 weeks taken off at least 150 supers of 

 honey with these escapes, using 40 of 

 them for that purpose. I have on one 

 day put 30 of them upon hives on which 

 there was from one to four 24:-section 

 supers, and by the evening of the next 

 day they would all be so completely 

 cleaned of bees that we could take our 

 spring wheelbarrow and carry every 

 super to the curing-house without delay 

 or stirring up the bees of a single hive. 



In the house-apiary, especially, the 

 honey can be taken without the bees 

 seeming to know that their treasures 

 are disturbed at all. It will be seen 



Taylor's "Handy''' Bee-Escape. 



Fig. 1.— Part of escape board showing opening for 

 the metal escape. 



Fig. 2.— Metal escape to be inverted over one end 

 of the opening in the escape board. 



that this escape is the most simple of 

 any yet brought to notice, and is so 

 small that but one bee can enter it at a 

 time, and as I see in reading the bee- 

 journals that there is much talk of the 

 need of an escape that would enable the 

 the bees to get out in large numbers at 

 the same time, so the supers would be 

 emptied quickly, I thought I would give 

 my experience with escapes. I recently 

 received a sample escape from Mr. E,. J. 

 Stead, of Ontario, Canada. His is made 

 of 5 little gates of zinc, and if all of 

 them were opened at the same time, it 

 would make an opening %x2}i inches. 

 That this escape will clean the bees 

 from supers I know without trying, as I 

 had experience with a similar device 

 many years ago; but as Mr. Stead's de- 

 vice lets the bees escap^ on the outside 

 of the hive, into the open air, it would 

 not work in my house-apiary, as the 

 bees would be let out into the house — 

 the very thing that is to be avoided. For 

 out-door work it has this objection, that 

 you first have to put the board contain- 

 ing the escape under the supers, and 



then after waiting one-half hour, you 

 must go and give each hive attention 

 the second time. With the Handy es- 

 cape, the Por>3r, and that class, you 

 have only to put the escape board under 

 the supers, and they require no further 

 thought, the bees going directly down 

 i*:;to the hive, which I am quite sure is 

 a better way than to let them out of the 

 hive, to find their way back again. 



When I first saw Mr. Stead's machine, 

 it at once called up an early experience 

 of my own — early in the sixties. I was 

 moved to find some way of getting rid of 

 the immense horde of drones in my api- 

 ary, that would, on an afternoon when 

 they flew out for their daily exercise, 

 roar like a great waterfall. At that 

 time all our brood-combs were built from 

 comb-guides, just as the bees elected to 

 have them, and some of the hives would 

 contain quite one-half drone-comb, and 

 as the hives were quite large, there 

 would be a multitude of male bees that 

 would make all profit an impossibility. 

 To catch and destroy these surplus 

 drones, I invented a trap made nearly 

 exactly like Mr. Stead's escape. This 

 trap was composed of many little gates 

 of tin placed side by side in a strip of 

 wood the whole width of the hive. They 

 were made so that the worker-bees could 

 get inward under the ends of the gates, 

 but the larger drones could not return, 

 but could get out without hindrance. I 

 expected to go to the hives the next 

 morning after tbey were on, and catch 

 and kill the whole herd that would be 

 clustered on the outside of the hive, and 

 kill them by throwing them into a pail 

 of water. 



I put some traps, one day, on such 

 hives as had the most drones, and was 

 greatly pleased to find at evening the 

 hive fronts covered by gallons of the 

 desired dead-beats. The next morning 

 I dipped the black mass from the front, 

 of a hive, and hurled them into the tub 

 of water. I sized them under, and they 

 were soon dead. But on examining 

 them closely, what was my disappoint- 

 ment to find I had killed more worker- 

 bees than drones ! My traps were a 

 practical failure ; they would catch the 

 drones, but the worker-bees are on good 

 terms with them, at this time of year, 

 and will stay out with and feed them for 

 weeks. 



I have long ago ceased to rear a useless 

 herd of male bees — there is not enough 

 of them now in my yard to attract notice 

 on the fairest afternoon. Full sheets 

 of brood foundation was the means to 

 this profitable end. 



I made some of these traps of many 



