1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



53 



Entrances 



By J. F. Diemer 



THE article by Arthur C. Miller, 

 in the August 'number of the 

 American Bee Journal is respon- 

 sible for the trouble and expense it 

 cost me to devise an entrance that 

 opens and closes like a barn door, 

 on rollers. While Miller's article 

 had more to do with the inside 

 workings of the hive and the appro- 

 priateness of a side entrance than 

 with the entrance proper, it gave me 

 the idea of the one shown in the 

 picture. Perhaps this picture de- 

 scribes this entrance better than I 

 could, but I will say that it may be 

 opened to any extent desired, from 

 $ix3 inches for winter use, to the full 

 length of the hive, as, for example, 

 when the IS pounds or more of busy- 

 bees, in a 3-story hive are gathering 

 20 pounds of honey per day, worth 

 30 cents per pound, and doing this 

 every day for 20 days, and board 

 and clothe themselves, as usual. This 

 would amount to $120 per colony, 

 and 300 colonies would furnish the 

 poor beekeeper almost enough to 

 live, with the present high cost of 

 living, would it not, sir? 



Some folks may doubt this, and I 

 have my doubts, also. But this large 

 entrance, during a large flow, may 

 help to keep a large swarm of bees 

 from coming out when the poor bee- 

 keeper is largely engaged elsewhere, 

 and help to solve the swarming 

 problem. 



But where this entrance shines 

 most is in moving bees. Just nail on 

 a frame with screen over the brood- 

 combs, using four 3-penny nails, 

 partly driven in, so they will pull 

 out easily. If the bottom-bar is 

 nailed to the hive-body all you need 

 to do then is to push the door shut. 

 Two minutes is plenty to get a 

 colony ready to be moved. Load them 

 on your Ford truck, if you can 'ford 

 to own one, toot your horn and away 

 you go. 



The hive shown in the picture, on 

 the 1st of October, contained, by ac- 

 tual weight, 81 pounds of honey, 12 

 pounds of bees and a good queen. I 

 have 32 here in the home yard, run- 

 ning about the same. They were 

 formed by the "demobilization" of a 

 lot of nuclei. 



My bees are well supplied with 

 stores. I left most of it on the hives, 

 on account of the quality. I am just 

 going to make them eat it, and per- 

 haps they will gather better honey 

 next year. 



The space between the bottom- 

 board and the frames is seven- 

 eighths of an inch. I don't use the 

 cumbersome alighting board, as I 

 think Miss Bee can fly right into the 

 opening and save walking. Under- 

 stand that I have used this entrance 

 only since the 1st of October, but it 

 looks good to me. The winter en- 

 trance is at the corner of the hive, 

 where I believe it belongs, as the 

 dead bees, in winter, falling near the 

 center of the hive, won't cork up the 

 entrance. Of course this plan ruins 

 the hive-body for anything but a 

 lower brood-chamber, but what's the 

 difference, when the handiness of 



Diemer's adjustable entrance. 



the entrance is considered? For a 

 hive-stand I use old supers, same size 

 as the hive-body, in length and 

 width. 



Liberty, Mo. 



The First American Fighters in 

 Europe 



By a Roumanian now in America 



WHILE at a great distance 

 around my home there was 

 not a single flower to be 

 found, as August had closed its shop, 

 a few miles from my beehives there 

 were thousands of trees of blossom- 

 ing Sophora Japonica. 



My poor bees were starving, while 

 over there, not so very far, tons of 

 honey needed to be cared for. 



And what fine workers my bees 

 were! Yet the best of them were 

 Americans. I had bought, from the 

 United States, a golden queen. She 

 should have been — maybe she was — 

 a republican, like all these queens 

 and kings we see in this country. She 

 was the finest and noblest queen I 

 ever saw. Her daughters were all 

 like herself; strong, fine, golden, 

 wonderful, hard-working girls. Well, 

 full-bred American girls ! 



But if they were hard working 

 they were sometimes very hard 

 stinging, too. I had at that time, as 

 pupil, a young peasant, a prospective 

 teacher, who came for a couple of 

 months to work with me in order to 

 learn some of the tricks I used in 

 bee culture. This young fellow came 

 one day, running as mad toward me, 

 crying as loudly as he could : 



"Look out, sir! They are after me. 

 Take shelter!" 



"What's the matter with you?" I 

 asked, believing he had gone crazy. 

 "Who is after you?" 



He howled : 



"The Americans are coming. The 

 Americans are after me. Take shel- 

 ter. Heavens! Where is the water 

 barrel?" 



Before I could understand what 



the connection was between the 

 Americans and the water barrel, my 

 pupil had jumped into the large bar- 

 rel we had there ready in case of 

 fire. The young man ducked, and 

 when his nose came up blowing 

 water in the air like a whale, I 

 grasped the situation : 



The finest golden colony of Ameri- 

 cans was after his skin. Taking a 

 sack I covered the barrel and took 

 the big smoker, which we called, on 

 account of its size, the "Dadant" 

 smoker, I easily chased the bees 

 away; but I couldn't convince the 

 prospective teacher to come out of 

 the barrel until I started to smoke 

 him out under the covering of the 

 sack. He came out of the barrel as 

 though from a dugout, asking: 



"Are the Americans still around? 

 My! what she-devils they are!" 



Surely this lad was the first one in 

 Europe to know what Americans 

 are like when they get angry. The 

 poor fellow had run like a Boche, 

 perhaps quicker. And he seemed to 

 enjoy the barrel; yet this made me 

 glad to have only one pupil, because 

 at that time barrels were pretty dear 

 and scarce. 



Since then the young man dis- 

 played great care about that special 

 refuge. Americans are able to make 

 you like even water barrels some- 

 times. 



****** 



I had arranged all there was to be 

 done in order to move the bees from 

 my place to the other location. We 

 had spoken to a moving van pro- 

 prietor who liked bees and wanted 

 to help us. So he was to come one 

 evening and haul them over. Un- 

 fortunately, I was called to town for 

 an hour. That hour lengthened to 

 half a day. So I telephoned to my 

 pupil to start the whole thing alone. 

 He seemed happy to be entrusted 

 with this business and assured me he 

 would do his best. 



Coming home in the evening, I 

 was just thinking about my bees, 

 when I saw, some hundred yards 

 from my home, people running, fight- 

 ing the air with their fists, and oth- 

 ers with their coats over their heads. 

 Some of them were weeping, but 

 nearly all were swearing like 

 heathens. 



Then I saw a cart which looked 

 queer in the darkness. The horses 

 before the cart were jumping up and 

 down as though they were rocking. 

 A man was hanging on their bridles 

 and was carried away by them to- 

 ward the darkest part of the street. 

 There he permitted his horses to 

 start a race across the town, while 

 he threw himself on the ground, 

 covering his head with everything he 

 could reach. Near the cart was a 

 man in my pupil's clothes, but he had 

 a strangely contorted face, frightful 

 to behold. 



As this monster saw me he spoke 

 in a well-known voice: 



"Oh Lord! the Americans, sir; the 

 Americans have broken loose !" 



It was my pupil, but the Americans 

 had made of his clever, bright face 

 something like a Chinese idol's hide- 

 ous figure. 



