1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1329 



affairs; therefore, we may conclude that the 

 second queen would be of no advantage 

 whatever, 

 loamosa, Cal., Aug. 2. 



BEE KEEPING IN THE WEST INDIES. 



How it Differs from American Methods; 

 Brood- rearing in AVinter ; Negro Labor. 



BY A BUTSCHE. 



Although an article from the West Indies 

 is not very likely to interest the i-eaders of 

 Gleanings particularly, there are certain 

 items which, thanlis to our continued warm 

 weather and long honey-tiow, we can more 

 easily test than can be done in colder cli- 

 mates. 



We notice, for instance, that there are 

 quite different opinions prevailing concern- 

 ing the use of queen-excluders. Some, like 

 Mr. Greiner, claim that excluders consider- 

 ably interfere with the crop of honey; others 

 find them useless, as their queens never lay 

 in the supers. The only reason I can assign 

 for the fact that some bee-keepers have no 

 trouble with brood in the supers is that their 

 colonies, on account of winter losses and 

 short honey-seasons, are never really strong. 

 Our colonies slacken brood-rearing in De- 

 cember and January. The result is that, dur- 

 ing the logwood How in February, they are 

 not strong enough to rear brood in the supers, 

 although they will draw combs and store 

 honey in two or three full-depth supers at 

 one time. But when we come to June and 

 July, talk about queens not going into the 

 supers I Have I not met them crawling over 

 the top- bars of a fifth full-depth super with 

 eggs and brood all the way down to the bot- 

 tom-board? A man here, after using exclud- 

 ers for one season, would no more dream of 

 keeping bees without them than of keeping 

 bees in box hives. Talk about Mr. Green 

 having from one to twelve queens trespassing 

 in the supers! I'll bet my life that, if I were 

 to remove all my excluders, in less than 

 three weeks there would not be a single 

 broodless super in any of my apiaries. 



Another item that interested me very much 

 was the numerous hive-lifting devices brought 

 out of late. I can see no earthly advantage 

 in them in a country like this, where you 

 can get a dozen iron-headed Congo niggers 

 to carry you a house 15x20, three miles 

 away, on their heads, for 10 shillings 6 pence. 

 And then, what about the danger of one of 

 those hive-lifting devices toppling over with 

 five heavy full-depth supers hanging at the 

 end of ity A man would be a fool if he ven- 

 tured to set one of those engines agoing be- 

 fore making his testament. I 'think hive-lift- 

 ers would just make matters worse. There 

 are so many things already a poor fellow has 

 got to hold with only two hands that I do not 

 see how I could operate a hive-lifter unless 

 it could be done with the teeth If God in 

 his wisdom had wished the generality of men 

 to be bee-keepers, I should not be surprised 



if he had given us a third hand. He might 

 even have judiciously added another pair of 

 legs, especially if he had meant us to keep 

 hybrids 



Bee fever is a comparatively new malady 

 here. The place was first infected when Mr. 

 Moif ison passed here lecturing oil bees. I 

 happened to be in New York at the time; but 

 on my return, some months later, I uncon- 

 sciously caught the disease by passing one 

 day round the corner of the building in which 

 Mr. Morrison had been lecturing. 



Mr. Alexander's articles leave one simply 

 dumbfounded. Several queens in one colony 

 at the same time! I think it was a pretty 

 well established custom in hive politics that, 

 when one queen came to the throne, she in- 

 variably killed her sisters, and even mother, 

 to reign undisturbed, exactly as a sultan of 

 Turkey would strangle all his brothers at his 

 advent in order to cut short all plotting to 

 dethrone him. We all have been accustom- 

 ed to look upon a hive as a perfect specimen 

 of the most absolute monarchy. If Mr. Alex- 

 ander goes on like that 1 should not be sur- 

 prised if, one of these good days, all of us 

 poor bee-keepers should wake up million- 

 aires. He seems to be wielding the magic 

 wand, for at each stroke there is something 

 more extraordinary turning up. 



How strange there should be at the present 

 time so many bee-keepers with endless as- 

 sociations and publications, especially in 

 France and Germany, where, 20 years ago, 

 one might have roamed about the country 

 for months without ever stumbling over a 

 hive! In all my wanderings I have met a 

 hive but once before keeping bees myself 

 It was in Brittany (France), during the dreary 

 years of my ologies, as Mr. Crane puts it. I 

 think there were three or four straw hives 

 near a big patch of buckwheat. How it did 

 us fellows good, after pondering for months 

 over the tedious works of Francis Bacon. 

 Thomas Aquinas, and others, to get a lesson 

 of more pi'actical and more wholesome phi- 

 losophy from a hive ! 1 guess some of us pre- 

 ferred the merry hum of the bees to the 

 clumsy mediajval Latin, which was the only 

 language we were allowed to speak then. 



The great trouble in bee-keeping here is 

 the insatiable stealing propensity of the nig- 

 ger. He will take any thing and every thing 

 loose about an apiary, such as covers, bot- 

 tom-boards, stands, etc. There is nothing 

 the West Indian nigger won't take, from an 

 old hoi'se-brush to an old bottle of medicine. 

 The hive alone he lets stand — on its own 

 merits, I suppose. Bee-stings are evidently 

 not much to his taste. It is even ti'ouble to 

 get help at extracting time, especially when 

 one keeps hybrids as I do. The screaming 

 and wailing that fills the air round an apiary 

 on extracting days is enough to remind one 

 of a Russo-Japanese battlefield. 



Our average yield here is about 120 lbs. 

 per colony. Our honey sells from 20 to 28 

 shillings per 112 lbs. This would correspond 

 to about 5 to 7 cents per lb. in American 

 money. 



Castries, St. Lucia, West Indies. May 10. 



