1152 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 1 



13 considered by some important; and that is, 

 a statutory provision giving bee-keepers un- 

 der certain conditions a monoply of prescrib- 

 ed territory. I would not have referred to 

 this subject had not my attention been call- 

 ed to it by reading a recent article in Glean- 

 ings on the subject which we are now con- 

 sidex'ing. If we could only secure such spe- 

 cial privilege for the specialist, wouldn't we 

 have a beekeepers' Utopia for such as are 

 fortunate enough to have control of the ter- 

 ritory? How we could surround each village 

 and city with members of a big trust that 

 would have a "dead sure" thing on prices! 

 We could even give pointers to Standard Oil. 

 How we could enjoy nectar "fit for the gods 

 to sip," to the exclusion of the right of the 

 farmer to supply his table, that his wife, his 

 children, and friends might taste the sweets 

 extracted from the flowers produced by the 

 sweat of his brow! With what Pecksniffian 

 exultation we could rejoice and be glad that 

 our neighbors were not permitted to indulge 

 in the luxuries in which we, by our special 

 privilege, were reveling! Surely this would 

 discount all the other appliances for the 

 bee-keepers' use that I can think of. 



A government owning the soil can lease it 

 for any legitimate purpose, even for bee- 

 keeping, and no one should complain. An 

 individual should have the right to lease his 

 pi'emises for any legitimate purpose, even 

 for keeping bees, without being obliged to 

 ask his neighboi's' permission. But in a 

 country like ours, where the land is held in 

 fee simple by the individual, who is guaran- 

 teed all the right, title, interest, claim, or de- 

 mand, in law or equity, and all the rents, is- 

 sues, and profits thereof, I think it very im- 

 probable that any law-making power. State 

 or national, will ever grant a special privi- 

 lege such as tjhat mentioned above, for any 

 business whatever. With all due respect f(^r 

 the opinions of others, let us dismiss this 

 proposition as being too ridiculous to waste 

 more time in discussing. 



Lake Geneva, Wis. 



SYSTEM. 



The General Lack of it Amonff Bee-keepers ; 

 Faulty Arrangement of Hives; Keep- 

 ing Hive Records on Pieces 

 of Section Stuff. 



BY I^PSLTE BURR. 



1 left the "Pearl of the Antilles" in Janu- 

 ary, 1906, and since then have traversed this 

 United States of ours from south to north 

 and from east to west and back again. This 

 time I wish to speak of the "faults" of bee- 

 keepers and system, and the "lack of sys- 

 tem." 



Down on the island of Cuba there is a pret- 

 ty good bunch of real bee-men. Most of 

 them have knocked around the world for 

 several years, and h^ve picked up a lot of 

 knowledge. The one great trouble down 

 there is. they get lazy. It is too much trou- 

 ble to go over the apiaries as often as they 



should during the summer months, and, as 

 a result, the colonies are not as strong as 

 they should be in the fall. Then during the 

 honey-liow it is easier to let the bees plug 

 the breeding-combs full of honey than t<» 

 keep them open, and the result is that, by 

 the time the flow is over, the working force 

 of most of the colonies has dwindled down 

 to a corporal's guard of bees. The real trou- 

 ble there is not so much the woi'king system 

 as it is the human system. 



In California the trouble is on the other 

 hand. There it is the working system. The 

 first thing noticed by a man from the tropics 

 is the lack of shade. The Californian seems 

 to have a horror of natural shade; and as 

 they also have some very hoc w eather they 

 have to protect the hives to keep the combs 

 from being melted by the sun. The most 

 common kind of protection met with is a 



'oM. 



6 - 9cnr^ 



7/10 (D-K- 

 7/20 9<^ ($V^ 



7bo.,O.K^ 



CA/%^^ 



%o. CsJii ci(rv<n^. 

 ^-»t*<. % jr. jLyI 



73 





6. 9y\\m)dMtJi(/\ 



7/ia. x/f SjLiituM^ 



'730 J^c^^,^^, 



HIVE RECORDS KEiT ON PIECES OF SECTIONS. 



stone weighted double-cover combination 

 that takes up as much time to take off and 

 put on again as is necessary to work the col- 

 ony. 



When it comes to arrangement of the hives 

 in the apiaries, inconvenience is generally 

 carried to the limit. The system generally 

 practiced is to place the hives in squares 10 



