94 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



March 



ger, since there is a current of air 

 as soon as the car is on the move. 



A still better and safer plan, 

 when the bees are to be handled by 

 people who may not be aware of 

 the danger of smothering them or 

 of tearing the screen and allowing 

 them to escape and perhaps cause 

 accidents, is to nail over the screen, 

 at each end. strips an inch in width 

 and thickness, and over these strips 

 nail a board which will thus protect 

 the screen and also shade the bees 

 from the direct rays of the sun in 

 case the hive was exposed to them 

 at anv time. The ventilation then 

 comes over the screen from both 

 sides A similar protection may be 

 used at the bottom. There is then no 

 danger of the bees being smothered 

 by the too close piling of the hives 

 on one another. 



After trying various plans ot tas- 

 tening the frames to prevent jarring, 

 the writer prefers the use of paper, 

 as suggested by J. L. Byer of Cana- 

 da Where the Hoffman self-spacing 

 frames are used, it is an easy matter 

 to move, since the frames will be 

 sufficiently rigid without special 

 preparation. Loose hanging frames 

 would very quickly be loosened by 

 the motion, and disaster would at- 

 tend the moving if they were left 

 unfastened. If a pile of old news- 

 papers is handy, one can prepare a 

 hive in a verv few minutes by crush- 

 ing a small roll of paper into the 

 spaces between the tops of the 

 frames. It is surprising how solid 

 they will be if paper is placed be- 

 tween the frames at each end, and 

 how nicely they will take a long 

 journev. The apiary shown on the 

 big truck in the illustration was 

 moved fifty miles, without the loss 

 of a single colony or damage to a 

 single comb. 



In loading the hives on the truck, 

 the frames should be placed cross- 

 wise of the car, as the jar will be 

 from sidewise motion. In loading a 

 freight car the frames should run 

 < ndwise of the car, since the jar will 

 come from bumping the cars from 

 the ends. 



If one has new hives and good 

 moving screens, it is a simple matter 

 to close up the hives in preparation 

 for moving. If the hives are old 

 and the screens do not fit well, news- 

 papers come into play to close up 

 all holes, and serve the purpose ad- 

 mirably. It is well to put on all 

 moving screens the afternoon before 

 the bees are to be moved, and leave 

 the entrances of the hives open as 

 usual. After the bees have stopped 

 flying at night, the entrances can be 

 closed, and the bees will be ready 

 for an early start the following 

 morning. 



When releasing bees in a new spot, 

 it is very important that they should 

 realize the change of location, so 

 they may reconnoiter, in a manner 

 similar to the first flight of the young 

 bees, and learn the location of their 

 new abode. When they ha 

 tranM distances they real- 



ize the unnatural conditions and make 

 the usual circles about the entrance. 

 But if carried only a short distance 



with much care, and if they have 

 been set down upon their new stand 

 at night, some of them may, the 

 next day, take flight without looking 

 behind." To avoid this we use a 

 slanting board or some other ob- 

 struction in front of the entrance, 

 so that they may at once notice that 

 things are not as they were. After 

 the first flight there will be no dan- 

 ger. 



Efficiency in Beekeeping 



By Morley Pettit. 



THERE is a word to conjure by 

 in production. It nearly won 

 the war for Germany; humanly 

 speaking, it will win the war for the 

 Allies. That word is Efficiency. 



The idea has revolutionized manu- 

 facturing and business. It is now 

 revolutionizing beekeeping. What is 

 it? 



A negro went to the bush for 

 wood. He stopped his mule-wagon 

 ten feet from the pile while he load- 

 ed it, walking back and forth. When 

 he had enough in the box for his old 

 woman to get dinner, he drove home. 

 That was not efficiency. To drive 

 close and eliminate carrying, to load 

 well and avoid extra trips would be 

 a step in that direction. 



Every task requires certain opera- 

 tions and each operation certain mo- 

 tions. To study to reduce the num- 

 ber of operations and of motions, 

 thus saving time and energy, is 

 the mechanical side of efficiency. 

 Every thoughtful beekeeper is doing 

 it more or less. He calls the result 

 "short cuts." Sometimes they are 

 not the surest way home. 



Carried to its extreme, efficiency 

 makes machines of men. Repeating 

 the same operation day after day 

 and week after week destroys con- 

 structive thought and separates the 

 daily task from the joy-of-doing 

 which should accompany it. In bee- 

 keeping this cannot be. Seasonal 

 changes make it impossible. Vary- 

 ing conditions make even good sys- 

 tem difficult, but all the more desir- 

 able. Systematically performed, the 

 daily tasks of beekeeping become a 

 joy of constructive thought and of 

 purposes accomplished. Even when 

 seasonable conditions spoil results, 

 plans and preparations immediately 

 go forward to "next year," when bet- 

 ter returns are expected. 



At its worst, commercial beekeep- 

 ing is a series of little pottering jobs 

 doni to scores or hundreds of colo- 

 nies. At its best, it is a system by 

 which each colony is intelligently 

 given necessary attention at regular 

 intervals being determined by the 

 beekeeper's judgment of seasonal 

 weather and colony conditions. The 

 beekeeping expert is the doctor and 

 each colony is a patient. The doctor 

 musl have his science and his system 

 and then vary the application of 

 them to individual needs. He may 

 employ several pairs of unskilled 

 in the process, to lift and 

 fetch and carry, but his part cannot 

 veil done by rule or prow. 

 In other words, beekeeping effi 

 is very different from me- 



chanical efficiency. Very few opera- 

 tions in the actual care of bees have 

 been successfully standardized or 

 reduced to rule of thumb. That is 

 where the novice fails when he reads 



how Mr. does so and so. He 



tries to do likewise, misses import- 

 ant points which Mr. probably 



observed unconsciously and failed to 



record, and mentally charges Mr. 



with incompetency. The real reason 

 for his failure might be charged to 

 lack of experience. It might also 

 be charged to lack of analysis and 

 proper expression on the part of 



Mr. . 



When beekeepers learn "experi- 

 ence" instead of, or experience with, 

 methods, they learn to judge the 

 methods of others and to devise 

 methods which will suit their own 

 conditions best. They also learn to 

 vary from colony to colony and 

 from day to day, yes, and from sea- 

 son to season, the application of 

 their standard methods according to 

 conditions which are found to exist. 

 This "experience" is known to be 

 of paramount importance, and ac- 

 cording to tradition, is to be had 

 only after many yearj of unprofit- 

 able labor, by allowing a very small 

 apiary to grow only as experience 

 grows. However that may be, it is 

 the fundamental knowledge on 

 which all successful beekeeping prac- 

 tice is based. Not many who have 

 obtained it by the laborious process 

 are able to reduce it to language. 

 They are like the old cook who was 

 asked for the recipe of a certain de- 

 licious cake she made. "Wall, Honey," 

 she said, "if you-all put in the things 

 that I put in, and mix them the way 

 I mix them, you'll have as good cakes 

 as 1 make." They attempt to convey 

 their experience in terms of methods 

 and appliances, and they succeed to 

 a limited extent in the hearing of 

 other experienced beekeepers. 



If all the experience or knowledge 

 of bees and the conditions related to 

 their "keeping" now in the minds, 

 mostly subconsciously, of success- 

 ful beekeepers were reduced to lan- 

 guage abstracted from unimportant 

 details of multifarious methods, if 

 this were published and every honey 

 producer led to read and digest it, 

 the development of the industry 

 would be phenomenal. 



Let me put this in another way. 

 Beekeeping is keeping bees — delicate 

 insects, extremely complex organ- 

 isms, highly sensitive lo stimuli such 

 light, temperature, humidity, elec- 

 tricity, vibration, air currents, odors 

 to .1 thousand phases of environ- 

 ment not named or not determined. 

 Their activities are subject to these 

 and to numerous physiological and 

 colony conditions which multiply 

 variations of behavior and compli- 

 cate control. 



Man lias not learned to change ap- 

 preciably bee-nature by breeding. 

 The multitude of individuals and the 

 href life-span of each precludes any 

 attempt at training bees, were such 

 a I liiii); possible. In common par- 

 lance my bees do not "get to know 

 me." I try to know something about 

 them. The extent of my knowledge 



