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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Mar. 21, 



would be much finer, and then in this Interesting pursuit 

 pleasure and profit would go hand in hand. 



One encouragement to the careful, thorough, painstaking 

 apiarist is that the business has become a losing one to all who 

 are doing their work in a careless manner; atid, then, poor, 

 neglected, deteriorated bees are passing away, and, by the law 

 of the survival of the fittest, are giving place to those carefully 

 bred up to the standard required by the age. The tendency 

 is to greater knowledge, better methods, better bees, and more 

 intense work, all along the line. Mehoopauy, Pa. 



Some Habits of Bees. 



BV J. W. 80UTHW00D. 



The natural habits of bees are to build comb which con- 

 tain — worker cells in which to store honey and rear worker- 

 brood, drone-cells in which to rear drone-brood, and when not 

 in use for this purpose, to also store honey, (at least they 

 make use of it for this purpose ); and at certain times queen- 

 cells, in which to rear queens. 



In every colony of fair normal condition worker-cells are 

 far in excess, so far as numbers are concerned, of either, or 

 both other kinds, as the queen in such a colony can and does 

 so, nearly if not quite, keep up with the comb-building as to 

 supply the cells with worker-eggs, with the exception of a 

 sufiBciency to be stored with food for the rearing of the brood. 

 When the queen is able to thus supply the cells as fast as 

 built, the bees, it appears, conclude she is all right. But 

 when she is too enfeebled by age or otherwise, or if the colony 

 is large, and the amount of comb space too large, compara- 

 tively, with her ability to that of the comb-builders, then she 

 falls behind, and the bees seem to take knowledge of it, and 

 think she is failing, and therefore contemplate supersedure. 

 And as drones are one-half longer time-.in being reared than 

 the queen, and being necessary for the fertilization of the 

 forth-coming virgin queen, provided the failing of the queen is 

 such to bring about this condition of affairs, they build 

 drone-comb so as to be ready for the emergency, should it 

 come. When this condition exists, we may expect drone-comb. 

 Those who have used wide starters in brood-frames, one-half, 

 one third, or even less, when hiving swarms can testify. 



There must not be given the comb-builders more frames 

 to draw out than the queen can keep pace with in supplying 

 with eggs while the combs are being built, neither should we 

 give wide starters so as to place them ahead of the queen in 

 her egg deposit, unless we desire drone-comb. Of course, if 

 full sheets are given, the cell foundations are all forced, and 

 the bees, thus thwarted, will draw the cell-walls and fill with 

 honey instead of waiting for the queen to fill them with eggs. 

 Their habits are such as to always have a few queen-cells. 



Monument City, Ind. 



A Visit to Florida and Her Bee-Keepers. 



BV WM. A. SEL8ER. 

 (Continued from page 08.) 



Hawk's Park, just a few miles south of New Smyrna, is 

 the seat of the honey industry of the whole State. It is on 

 the banks of the Hillsboro river, which is very narrow at this 

 point, and the little islands, as well as the east bank of the 

 river, are a perfect bower of mangrove trees. Here Mr. W. S. 

 Hart is one of the most successful honey-producers of this 

 section. His hives, about 100 in number, are located under a 

 bower of grape-vines. His honey-house which adjoins his 

 apiary is two stories. The second story is where he does his 

 extracting; he runs the honey into a tank, where it runs out 

 at the bottom in a very small stream into an adjoining build- 

 ing, which is covered with glass, the sun shining directly 

 through upon a large frame of metal. By a curious device, 

 the honey gradually runs over this and evaporates all water 

 out of it, coming out at the lower end and running into the 

 story below directly into barrels, where they are bunged up 

 and stored away ready to be shipped out. His way of hand- 

 ling hives is too well known to take up space to mention here. 



Mr. W. H. Mitchell, the next place, is also a very success- 

 ful bee-keeper. His crop was about 50 barrels from 60 or 70 

 colonies. He tiers up in three stories, extracting from the top 

 story. As each story became full, he would lift up and place 

 the empty frames over the brood-frames of the first story. 

 Here is also Mr. Hill, Manager of the South Florida Apiary 

 Company, where they expect in time to have about 2,000 

 colonies of bees, having about 200 now to start with. The 

 President of this Company is Mr. F. R. Correll, of Titusville, 

 Pa. Mr. Hill's apiary is run largely for comb honey. 



Across the river from this place, on the peninsula, are two 

 old bee-keepers by the name of Brown, living in the hammock 

 land. They have two separate houses and are "baching" it. 

 They had quite a lot of bees, but the winds and tides of the 

 year before destroyed most of their colonies. This is a beau- 

 tiful location, with the Ocean beach on one side and the river 

 on the other. Just south of this place is the apiary of Mr. 

 E. M. Storer, also located on the peninsula and a very success- 

 ful bee-keeper. 



About 12 miles north of New Smyrna is located the 

 apiaries of Mr. J. B. Case, the celebrated queen-rearer of 

 Florida, who tells me his bees gather honey all the year 

 around, except a few weeks in mid-summer. I found him 

 pleasantly located on the river bank and working with his 

 wax, and his loved companion doing some sewing in an adjoin- 

 ing room. Mr. Case took considerable pains to explain to the 

 writer about his queen-rearing process. He works by the 

 Doolittle process, and says that the wax should never be 

 allowed to get too hot, or the cups will be tough ; and, in order 

 to keep them moist, in making a lot up ahead, they should be 

 kept in a covered tin box. He had several shades of wax and 

 explained that the color of the wax depends upon the color of 

 the nectar the bees are gathering. 



Coming south again, I passed the apiaries of Mr. E. J. 

 Moore, and also Mr. E. G. Hewitt, who has 90 colonies and 

 makes all his honey into wines. We fear he is not a good 

 Prohibitionist, like some of our good Philadelphia bee-keepers. 



There are also a large number of bee-keepers just below 

 Hawk's Park ; Capt. Barber among the rest, who has had 

 large yields of honey in the past year, but space will not per- 

 mit to mention the different ones. 



Going south from here to Oak Hill, you pass the apiary of 

 Mr. Olson and Mr. E. A. Marsh, situated in the Pine Land, 

 and their honey is largely from the scrub palmetto. At Oak 

 Hill, Capt. T. M. Adams has 120 colonies, and is one of the 

 oldest bee-keepers in this portion of the State. He has a 

 lovely and beautiful vineyard of the native gr;ipe, and the 

 writer was entertained royally. Mr. Adams does not consider 

 the ant any greater drawback to bee-culture than the wax- 

 moth. This section from New Smyrna about 20 miles running 

 along the coast, covers the largest percentage of bee-keepers 

 in the State. 



A pest, very destructive to apiculture is found along the 

 coasts, in the shape, of a big red ant, which, unless watched 

 very carefully, will destroy whole colonies of bees and take off 

 their stores. They operate by biting the wings of the bees, 

 very often so annoying them that they will swarm out at any 

 and all times, as well as carry away all the honey. They are 

 nocturnal in their habits, and, if watched very carefully at 

 night, they can be traced to their nests and destroyed. The 

 apiarist, by going through the apiary at night and listening for 

 a few seconds at each hive, can detect their presence by a 

 peculiar noise and can trace them to their nests, which are 

 generally under the dead wood. By going around every two 

 weeks, except in mid-summer, in this way, they can be kept in 

 check. The black ant is also of the same nature, but is not so 

 prevalent on the coast as it is inland. 



The mosquitoes are also quite a drawback to apiculture, 

 especially in this section of the State. In summer time they 

 become so thick that it is almost impossible to work out-doors, 

 and people are compelled to leave their work and go and find 

 shelter behind netting. 



Quite a detriment to the honey in this section is its fer- 

 menting so easily, when taken from the barrels. The men 

 say that damp weather is largely the cause of it when the 

 bees are bringing in the honey. The writer is of the opinion, 

 that largely the trouble lies in extracting before the cells are 

 capped. This may be largely overcome, they tell me, by put- 

 ting the honey in very large narrow tanks and letting it stand 

 several days, drawing it from the bottom. 



Quite a few of the bee-men have made mistakes by ship- 

 ping their honey in whiskey barrels. Oak staves will not 

 answer to ship honey in, as the staves contract and the honey 

 leaks out, but it needs a soft wood like cypress. A firm of 

 Columbia, Ga., make a riff stave barrel, which is one of the 

 best barrels for shipping honey. 



On leaving here, one rides a distance of about -40 miles in 

 the cars and comes to the Indian River, so celebrated through- 

 out the world. At this point, Titusville, the river is very 

 wide, fully 3 miles or over at some points. Mr. J. L. Nail, a 

 few miles south at Cocoa, Fla., has 30 colonies, but our poor 

 brother has been confined to his bed for nearly a year with 

 inflammatory rheumatism, and has not had any chance to 

 attend to his apiary. 



After leaving here, one gets into the deep sands of the 

 Indian river coast, where it is too hot to raise oranges success- 

 fully, and where the sands are too deep to employ horses for 



