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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 4, 



failed to come, and hope for the future constrained me to con- 

 tinue improving my stock and waiting for the good time 

 coming. 



One year, following the directions in the books, I raised 

 the supers wheu the sections were almost full of honey, and 

 placed empty ones under. The season was near the close, 

 and the sections were not finished. I had a fine lot of bait 

 sections for the next year, and I've been baiting with them 

 all along since then, occasionally getting some of them flu- 

 ished. This spring I had about 80 colonies to begin with. 

 Swarming began early, the bees being in excellent condition 

 from a good fall crop last year. There were a number of 

 after-swarms, souie quite small. I also reared some fine 

 queens, and superseded less desirable stock with them. The 

 black locust and apple bloom was abundant, and poplar prom- 

 ised much. But just as the latter came into bloom the cold 

 weather came, and some of the recent swarms had to be fed. 

 Theu the weather became much better in lime for buck- 

 thorn, honey-locust, etc. Now the linden is white with bloom. 

 There is a large crop of honey in my supers to-day, most of it 

 unsealed yet, and if the weather continues favorable, I hope 

 for an abundant harvest. 



SECOND-SWARMS PREVENTED. 



It may be too soon to report it a success, but I'm going to 

 risk telling how I've prevented second-swarms so far. You 

 know a laying queen of this year's rearing is not inclined to 

 swarm — in fact, it is the exception for her to swarm however 

 populous her colony. Well, just as soon as a swarm is hived, 

 I place it where the old colony stood, and give it the supers. 

 The brood-chamber of the old colony is then placed on top of 

 a hive having a youug laying queen, and she attends to the 

 queen-cells immediately. 



I have given this treatment to 15 or 20, and " nary " a sec- 

 ond swarm from them. The large quantity of sealed brood 

 hatching out makes a populous colony before you are aware of 

 it. You can then reduce it to a single-story hive by taking 

 away such frames as have the least brood — taking from both 

 upper or lower story — and add your supers in time for the lat- 

 ter part of the harvest. The frames taken away can' be used 

 to advantage in building up nuclei into good colonies, etc. Or 

 another way is this : Some of my nuclei with laying queens 

 were in half depth supers with shallow frames, and brood- 

 rearing was only commencing. Put this on top of the old 

 brood-chamber, and I find the queen generally descends pretty 

 soon, leaving the shallow frames for honey almost exclusively. 



SWARMING DISCOURAGED. 



I find the suggestion some one made in some of the papers 

 a year or two ago (rather indefinite, isn't it?) — that raising 

 hives up considerably from the bottom-board discourages 

 swarming — is excellent. And in this connection I am going 

 to tell something else at the risk of making my article too 

 long. I recently visited an old friend of mine on Cumberland 

 Mountain, where he is surrounded by " the forest primeval," 

 and bees revel in honey. He has large hives, made of n..'- 

 inch and 2-inch lumber, frames above and below. He had 

 then 36 colonies, all blacks, each hive named. They are ar- 

 ranged on a platform, well ventilated, with quite an extensive 

 shed over them, so broad and roomy that he can work under 

 it without stooping, and the sunshine enters only early in the 

 morning and late of an evening. He tells me he has very little 

 swarming. In four summers they have increased only from 

 IS to 36. He has a window to the upper story, and never 

 cuts out any honey until the outside frame is sealed, and 

 then only half the amount therein at any one time. He says 

 they must have plenty for their own use. With this manage- 

 ment he sometimes averages 50 pounds of comb honey. Does 

 not this speak well for large hives, ventilation and shade ? 



Gainesboro, Tenn., June 14. Lewis K. Smith. 



All About Georgia.— Any reader of this paper de- 

 siring information about the resources of Georgia, the Empire 

 State of the South, by sending his name and address on a pos- 

 tal card to Hon. R. T. Nesbitt, Commissioner of Agriculture, 

 Atlanta, Ga., will recieve free a handsomely-illustrated 

 pamphlet, postage paid. Valuable to farmers and teachers. 



Carjadiar) Beedorrj^ 



A Con§ideration of Bec-$ting§. 



' Never shake the bees off a frame having queen-cells 

 on it. Nor in any way suddenly jar it ; for queen-cells are 

 much more liable to injury while on the frame than when 

 taken from where they wore built. — Doolittle. 



A sting in the neck which I got yesterday afternoon, and 

 which makes me more stiff-necked than I am by nature, be- 

 sides giving me considerable pain, suggests a topic for this 

 article on which I can write feelingly. In the last edition of 

 the Encyclopedia Britannica, article " Bee," by John Hunter, 

 late Honorary Secretary of the British Bee-Keepers' Associa- 

 tion, the following passage occurs on being stung by bees : 



" Bee-kaepers who meddle much with their bees soon be- 

 come accustomed to stinging, and do not suffer much. Exper- 

 iments have been made to ascertain the number of stings 

 required to inoculate the blood, and it has been stated that 

 about 30 at the rate of three or four a day, will suffice, after 

 which the effect of the bee-poison is trivial. Persons unac- 

 customed to the poison, however, often suffer severely." 



This reminds me of Mr. Gladstone's rule to chew beef 35 

 times in order to make it digest easily. There is beef that 

 you may chew any number of times, and it will still be indi- 

 gestible. So there are some people who never get used to a 

 bee-sting. I am one of them. " Well," some one says, "if 

 that is the case, why do you keep bees ?" That is an inperti- 

 nent question, which I am under no obligation to answer, un- 

 less by saying, " Mind your own business." 



We have bee-keepers who are very fond of boasting 

 that they can handle bees freely either without getting stung, 

 or without suffering if they are stung. That is nothing to be 

 proud of. They are pachydermatous, i. e., thick-skinned ani- 

 mals. As they did not make their own skins, they are not 

 entitled to any credit for their being thick. But I have known 

 cases in which such persons have suffered great inconvenience 

 for want of protection. A bee-keeping friend and neighbor of 

 mine in the long ago. Judge M., used to laugh at mo for wear- 

 ing a veil and gloves. He despised all such precautions and 

 boasted that he could do anything among bees, with bare face 

 and hands. One day he went out to look at his apiary just 

 before going down to his law office after dinner. By some un- 

 lucky accident his foot slipped and he fell against a hive, 

 knocking it over. Out came the bees with a rush, " in multi- 

 plied thousands" as he told me afterwards. Fortunately his 

 apiary was in a grove of evergreens, that branched, as all 

 evergreens ought to do, close down to the ground. He had 

 the presence of mind to drop to the earth, and crawl under 

 the friendly shelter of a large evergreen, where he was kept a 

 close prisoner until nightfall. Every time he tried to get out 

 the Philistines were upon him. The best he could do was to 

 improve the time in thinking out some intricate law cases. 

 But after that he had no more to say in ridicule of wearing 

 veil and gloves. , 



I once heard Mr. D. A. Jones at a convention make fun of 

 the idea of using any protection. He said no man should pre- 

 tend to be a bee-keeper who could not handle bees bare-faced 

 and bare-handed. Some time afterwards, I was visiting his 

 apiary. It was not long after his return from the East, and 

 he was showing me Italian and Holy Land colonies, opening 

 the hives to let me see the queens. Naturally, I wanted to 

 see the Cyprians also. Somewhat reluctantly, as I thought, 

 he undertook to open a Cyprian colony. The first frame he 

 drew out, the bees came at him like yellow devils. He stood 

 his ground for a little, but soon set the frame down beside the 

 hive and ran for dear life. 



I notice that some of our best bee-keepers always wear at 

 least a veil in the apiary. Mr. Heddon not only wears one 

 himself, but provides them for visitors. 



While on this subject, 1 will say that I have never yet 

 found the ideal bee-veil. I thought I had when Mr. Hutchin- 

 son published that lovely picture of himself wearing one that 

 ties with strings around the waist. But I soon found that the 

 beauty lay in the bee-keeper more than the veil. The bees 

 will crawl up my back and get inside the veil, no matter how 

 tightly I tie the strings. A bee-dress, cool and airy, and abso- 

 lutely impervious to bees is yet to be invented. I cannot 

 resist the temptation of transcribing here some portions of a 

 chapter on " The Bee-Dress," from an old bee-book by John 

 Keys, my edition of which is dated 181-4. 



The veil is to be made of " thin boulting cloth," sewed to 

 the brim of an old hat when reduced to two inches and a half 

 in width. The cloth is to hang down a foot in breadth all 

 round the head. "A broad tape is to be prepared, long enough 

 to tie the cloth, close round the neck under the chin. But as 

 the nose, chin and neck would be liable to be stung through 

 the meshes, therefore, to secure those parts, some oiled linen 



