OEORQE W. YORK, Editor. 









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39th YEAR, 



CHICAGO, ILL, SEPTEMBER 21, 1899, 



No, 38, 



Mr. F. L. Murray and His Apiary. 



I began bee-keeping in the spring of 1892, with four 

 colonies in S-frame Langstroth portico hives. I was work- 

 ing for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Com- 

 pany as a telegraph operator and station agent the fall of 

 1891. A Mr. Reed (from whom I bought the bees) got me 

 interested in the subject, and I agreed to buy four colonies 

 from him in the spring, and work up. So in the spring of 

 1892 I quit the railroad and went home to learn the art and 

 mysteries of bee-keeping. 



I increast the four colonies to 12, and had 200 pounds of 

 nice honey in pound sections for my experience that sea- 

 son. I have been working with the bees more or less ever 

 since. 



In the spring of 1892 I also began raising fanC3' poul- 

 try, and find it works very nicely with bee-keeping, for I do 

 not agree with Mr. W. Z. Hutchinson, who says, "Carry 

 all the eggs in one basket, and carry them no carefully they 

 will not break." I would prefer to have mine in more than 

 one, so if one basket gets tipt over I will still have some 

 left, for the best of us is likely to get tript up some time. 



I have now 160 colonies in two j'ards. My sister (Mrs. 

 "White) and son Lynn, aged 13, are also greatly interested 

 in bee-keeping, and give me what help is needed, for, like 

 "Rambler," I am living in single 

 blessedness. 



The illustration herewith shows 

 part of my home yard, which is run 

 for comb honey ; the out-yard is run 

 for extracted honey. I use the 8- 

 frame dovetailed hive in both yards. 

 In the out-yard I use three hive- 

 bodies, with a queen-excluder be- 

 tween the second and third bodies, 

 and do all my extracting from the 

 Uiird story. With this method I do 

 not have any swarming to speak of, 

 and do not visit the out-yard except 

 to extract, or do any other necessary 

 work with bees. 



The home yard is wintered in a 

 cellar, built expressly for the bees in 

 the yard, which winters them as 

 nearly perfection as they can be win- 

 tered in a cellar. The out-yard is 

 wintered in clamps 16 feet long, each 

 holding 10 colonies packt in chaff, 

 which is my favorite way of winter- 

 ing and springing bees. The cov- 



ering is not taken off until settled warm weather has come, 

 and they get the spring protection needed this far north 

 that the ones in the cellar do not get, and those colonies 

 wintered out-of-doors packt in chaff are always in better 

 condition than those wintered in the cellar with no spring 

 protection after putting them out. 



Of course, there are two serious drawbacks to wintering 

 out-of-doors, and they are the labor involved in packing 

 them, and the extra brood consumed to keep vip sufficient 

 heat. 



I lost quite a number of colonies in the out-j-ard last 

 spring by unavoidable tieglect. About the time in spring 

 when we had our first warm days, and the entrances should 

 have been cleaned out, and colonies lookt after, m^- father 

 died, and it was impossible to get away to attend to them, 

 so what I lost smothered by not having proper ventilation. 

 I have always had mj' share of the honey crop in this sec- 

 tion of the State (when there was any honey to get). The 

 crop thruout the State, as nearly as I can learn, is a light 

 one this season. 



As a rule, when a person gets the bee-fever how enthu- 

 siastic he gets over it, if he has a love for Nature, for in 

 becoming a practical bee-keeper, and studying the busy in- 

 sects he is interested in, and the tlora of the country, it puts 

 a person more in touch with Nature and the mysteries that 

 surround us in our daily work than any other pursuit I 

 know of; for bee-keeping is noble, and is a higher inspira- 

 tion than any other branch of agriculture. 



With our present methods of handling bees, and our 

 facilities for shipping the honey crop (when we get one), it 

 is a round of pleasure from taking the bees out in the 

 spring to putting them away in the fall. I always feel 

 grateful to the veteran bee-keepers for the services ren- 

 dered the present generation, for there is no other industry 



Mr. F. A, 



Murray's Home Apiary — Showing Winfering-Cave, 

 Bee-Tent, Sivarm-Catcher, etc. 



