1606 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 1 



his wrath if they brought them home. He 

 called them up and laid down the law thus: 

 "Boys, I want you to remember that it is 

 contrary to my orders to go fishing on Sun- 

 day tinder any circumstances.'" He added, 

 however, but without quite so much empha- 

 sis, " But if you should go fishing, and catch 

 any fish, by all means bring them home." 

 The latter part of the order would rather in- 

 dicate that the old deacon, as well as the 

 boys, was fond of fish. — A. I. R.] 



BEGINNINGS AND FAILINGS IN BEE- 

 KEEPING. 



Failure Due to Not Being Posted; a Hint to 

 the Would-be Inventors of Hives and Ap- 

 pliances; the Importance of Good Queens. 



BY C. W. DAYTON. 



The home-made utensils and the methods 

 for doing the work the majority of bee-keep- 

 ers use fall behind in perfection to what has 

 been attained in extractors, engines, founda- 

 tion and fasteners, smokers, knives, etc., dur- 

 ing the last few years. 



1 might mention, for example, a bee-keep- 

 er who uses for a capping-box a five-gallon 

 tin can after having the top removed with a 

 can-opener. He has handled the product of 

 75 to 300 colonies thus for a number of sea- 

 sons. It was from his five-gallon can that I 

 obtained the idea of metal to scrape the 

 knife on. I saw that his knife worked bet- 

 ter than my own scraped on wood. Anoth- 

 er man uses a hive for an uncapping-box, 

 and lets the liquid honey drain out the en- 

 trance into any handy receptacle. Another 

 merely spreads the cappings out on boards 

 and permits the bees to sip them dry, while 

 anottier wheels the extractor through the 

 apiary and stops beside the hives to extract, 

 letting the caps fall into the extractor until 

 the honey and cappings begin to interfere 

 with the baskets, when it is emptied out into 

 a barrel. 



There was some favorable appearance 

 somewhere in each of these affairs which led 

 to their adoption; but they should be com- 

 prised in a specially devised capping-box. 



Now you may say that these specimens do 

 not represent the majority of bee-men. But 

 i belive they represent far more than the 

 majority. It is often estimated that not 

 more than one bee-keeper in ten takes a bee- 

 paper. Ten years ago I knew of twelve bee- 

 men in a certain locality, each having above 

 50 colonies of bees, and yet not one took a 

 bee-paper, and to-day I know where each 

 one is, and they have not one hive of bees 

 all together. If I should set an apiary there 

 now, there would be no competition except 

 a dairyman who has kept about 50 colonies 

 for 15 or more years, and he has been a read- 

 er of the bee-papers. Nearly all of the twelve 

 1 mention sought to make bee-keeping a spe- 

 cialty, and I doubt that more than two of 

 them ever had their names on the subscrip- 



tion-list of any bee-paper. Had they read 

 the papers they would have known how 

 capping-boxes ought to be made, and their 

 advantages and drawbacks, wastes, etc., and 

 "taken time by the forelock " and prepared 

 the box as it ought to be, and had it in wait- 

 ing when the honey season arrived. If they 

 do not get the books and papers, and read 

 and study upon such things, how are they to 

 know? Can we expect an ignorant man to 

 invent a whole outfit out of his own head in 

 one year? They take to papers more readi- 

 ly than books; but that does them but little 

 good, since they learn in such small pieces, 

 and they do not know how nor where to at- 

 tach them together, and they can not sort 

 out and arrange what is in the books, be- 

 cause there is so much of it together that it 

 would require experience from end to end 

 of the actual work in order to do it. 



A half-hour or less snatched from the noon 

 hour, or while resting a work-team, or a 

 thousand and one other nicks of time which 

 occur to every worker, will suflice to make 

 one master of any trade or profession there 

 is going if followed out for a reasonable 

 length of time Time, that commodity so 

 many complain of having too much of, is the 

 principal element, as it enables the digestion 

 of his reading to go on night and day. The 

 one who would become a good bee-keeper 

 would make a good almost any thing, as it 

 depends upon the pei'severance and obstacle- 

 climbing which train the nerves and strength- 

 en the sinews to any attainment. There is 

 no real short way except by chance. 



The twelve bee-men failed because a part 

 of their management was left to chance. 

 They could "drive" a good bargain in buy- 

 ing bees or supplies; they could move bees 

 safely from one place to another, or prepare 

 honey-receptacles in the requisite order, and 

 they possessed abundant strength to harvest 

 the crop; but all these did not bring success. 

 In good seasons they divided the colonies to 

 make increase, allowing the divided colonies 



to rear their queens from broody Then when 



a poor season followed, these brood queens 

 were preserved instead of taking time to re- 

 place them with new queens from choice stock, 

 thus retaining the poor queens until the sec- 

 ond season. Let the season be never so good, 

 and this class of queens seldom build a colo- 

 ny up to good working strength; and if they 

 are helped by taking brood from the best 

 colonies the brood is no better than wasted, 

 while it pulls the good colonies down to the 

 level of the poor. In a poor year, colonies 

 having such queens are not worth feeding. 

 I simply let them starve out unless I am able 

 to change their queen. The advantage of 

 specially reared queens can not be appreci- 

 ated nor realized unless the good and poor 

 are seen working side by side. 



I stated that the cause of their failure in 

 business was the failure to rear queens. If 

 they had studied the books and papers they 

 would have found more stress laid upon the 

 rearing of queens than upon any other part 

 of the management; and as they read or stu- 

 died they would have become impressed that 



