386 



GLEANIKGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



tree. At this juncture the smoker I had ordered 

 arrived; and after a mental effort I resolved to give 

 them a frame of brood from another hive. No 

 soldier, it seemed to me, had ever undertaken a 

 more daring- euterpiise than that appeared to me. 

 Not one of our hives had ever been opened after 

 they were set upon their stand. After a big- dinner 

 to make me stolid, good-natured, and brave, with 

 smoker, hatchet, butcher-knife, a Isettle of tire and 

 smoking-wood, and my woman, I, in my shirt-sleeves, 

 made the charge. We had always put our honey- 

 board next to the frames, and of course they were 

 sealed down tight. I had a tussle to get the board 

 loose, killing a number of bees in the operation. 

 An old apiarist would have enjoyed the scene, if I 

 did not. Thei'e was 1 on my knees, blundering 

 away, my partner standing with the smoker pointed 

 like a cannon upon the cK voted stockade; and every 

 time a bee would show its head, discharging the en- 

 tire volume of that battery upon it. We pretty 

 much smoked them out, and I worried a frame out 

 of the center. I put it and the bees, which were 

 then hanging to their favorite limb, into the hive. 

 You may well believe that I was discouraged when 

 those contrary little bugs swarmed out that after- 

 noon, after all I had done. After I had about con- 

 cluded to let them have their own way, however, 

 they felt satistied, and quietlj^ returned of their own 

 accord. I had no more trouble with them on that 

 score. 



I quickly learned to do many little jobs with the 

 frightful little insects, that 1 would once have 

 thought impossible. But my tribulations were not 

 over. When white clover bloomed, and the bees 

 began to cluster heavily in front of the hives, I was 

 In a great flurry to get section boxes on. I had to 

 teach myself every thing; or, rather, I and "my 

 woman" had to teach me, and the headwork of the 

 latter was no small item; but I got them on— and 

 then?— and then for eight long weeks I watched and 

 waited for some favorable sign. Those " onery 

 bees" ivouM "lie out;" and when I would smoke 

 them in they would lie up. They would settle them- 

 selves complacently in the section boxes, and fairly 

 laugh at me as I looked anxiously for some fruit of 

 labor on the part of the world-famed busy bee. Oc- 

 casionally a colony would swarm, often having two 

 trials of it. This failure to do any thing during 

 what is usually the best season, the secret of which 

 was the extremely wet weather, was very discour- 

 aging. I began to think that I could not make ex- 

 penses, light as those expenses were. 



About the last of July, one old colony began to 

 work on some of the starters next to the glass. It 

 made me smile. In two days they quit it. That 

 made me droop. In a few days a swarm came off. 

 Ithen took another look, when, oh joy! two boxes 

 of the next row showed comb nearly to the bottom 

 of the box. That marked a new era in that sum- 

 mer's history of my apiary. Soon another and then 

 another commenced work, until 14 colonies were 

 busy in their upper stories. The honey season had 

 begun at a time when, as I understood, it usually 

 begins to fail. For two months the bees labored, 

 and achieved as I believe blacks seldom do. I re- 

 alized about COO lbs. of comb honey, almost all in 

 section boxes, and I would no doubt have obtained 

 more if I had not hampered them all with separat- 

 ors. How I did watch thier progress! From two to 

 live times per day I would raise the caps, peep in, 

 and calculate. How supremely pretty those boxes 



of white comb, when sealed, looked ! and how I did 

 smile! Thus far I have sold about 450 lbs. at an av- 

 erage of about 20 cents. 1 extracted about 90 lbs. 

 from surplus combs, selling the most of it in lots at 

 12)4 cents. 



BEES WILL STING. 



At least, miae will sting me. It is true, that in 

 the early part of the season I seemed to learn that 

 there was scarcely any of the difficulty and danger I 

 had so dreaded. I got along swimmingly. I would 

 open hives, and take out and look over frames with- 

 out veil, smoke, or stings. I felt proud of my suc- 

 cess, but feared at the same time that a good begin- 

 ning would make a bad ending, and so it proved. 

 Later in the summer, although in the busiest of the 

 season, they got to stinging me most viciously when 

 walking quietly through the apiary. They grad- 

 ually drove me to the use of the veil when remov- 

 ing and putting on section boxes, although I learned 

 to be easier and geutler with them all the time. Of 

 course, their rabidness reached its climax upon the 

 sudden failure of the honey-crop. As they could 

 not get at my face, they would plant their firebrands 

 in my wrists as thick as grass, and once they sent 

 me in to my partner, whimpering, "Mother! won't 

 you help me pull these stings out?" Already this 

 season I have had my face and eyes bunged up twice, 

 as if somebody had been fighting me. 

 NEW swarms; their extra energy and industry. 



New colonies store a great deal more honey than 

 those that stay at home. New swarms were at work 

 in the section boxes after filling the brood-chamber, 

 when old stocks that had not jet swarmed were 

 idling in the boxes and outside the hive. This year's 

 colonies produced twice as n r.ch section honey as 

 those in the old hives, with their brood-chamber full. 

 An after-swarm brought me as much as some old 

 colonies; and when fixing them up for winter I 

 found a great deal more in the brood-frames of the 

 new stocks than in those of the old. Can this be be- 

 cause it is the young bees are left at home at swarm- 

 ing? I think it is because the swarm sent off just 

 learrs through necessity to be industrious. 

 heart's-ease, or smartweed. 



A variety of smartweed, I suppose it is the English 

 variety, if the indications of the last year hold good, 

 must be a flrst-class honey-plant. The wet season 

 kept some fields from being cultivated at all, and in 

 them and fields of corn, where the farmers could not 

 keep the weeds down, there was a remarkable 

 growth of this plant. I think that my bees gathered 

 as much as, or more, from it than any other flower, 

 and furnished honey for six or eight weeks. The 

 quality of the honey is excellent. I never saw comb 

 or scaled honey of a purer white, and I am not at all 

 sure that I can tell it from white clover by the taste. 

 I am wicked enough to hope that the immense crop 

 of last year has so thoroughly seeded the earth, that 

 the farmers can not get rid of the weed this year. 

 In connection with this I would say, that when a 

 frost, about the 20th of September, suddenly termi- 

 nated the honey-season, considerable white clover 

 was yet in bloom, smartweed blossoms were falling, 

 and Spanish-necdlc honey was about gone. The 

 yield of the latter lasted only about two weeks. 

 Honey gathered from plants earlier than white clo- 

 ver, in this locality, is not good. I can eat that from 

 Spanish needle and goldenrod, but spring honey I 



can not " go." 



questions. 



How high above the ground should hives bo set? 



