1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



189 



do not want extracted honey. We 

 might compromise by putting the 

 brood-combs above the sections, but 

 if we do that the bees will carry 

 down from the brood-combs bits of 

 dark wax to spoil the snow-white 

 capping of the sections, and that will 

 never do. 



The thing to be done is to stop the 

 queen from going with a swarm and 

 from laying until the bees have got- 

 ten over their swarming fever, which 

 will be in about 10 days. Different 

 ways of proceeding may be adopted. 

 One way is to kill the cells, cage the 

 queen and leave her caged in the 

 brood-chamber for about 10 days, 

 then kill all cells and release the 

 queen. 



Another way is to kill all cells, 

 take away the queen with two frames 

 of brood and adhering bees, put them 

 in a hive, as a nucleus, on a new 

 stand, then in 10 days kill all cells in 

 the old hive and return the queen, 

 either with or without the nucleus. 



Later on the colony may take the 

 notion to swarm again, when the 

 treatment must be repeated. But the 

 most satisfactory thing is, after 10 

 days of queenlessness, to give a 

 young queen of the current season's 

 rearing, after which there will be 

 no further thought of swarming by 

 that colony till the following year. 



The reader who is interested in 

 fuller particulars of this subject will 

 do well to consult my book, "Fifty 

 Years Among the Bees," in which 30 

 pages are occupied in discussing con- 

 trol of swarming. 



My Neighbor's Garden 



By C. D. Stuart 



IT happened earlier in the fall. The 

 Magic Girl had been telling 

 stories to the neighbors' children, 

 who never grew tired of hearing 

 about the bees and the wonderful 

 sweets they steal from the flowers 



and store away in their hives, when 

 Jimmie slipped away unnoticed. Soon 

 there was a scream, followed by a 

 great commotion in the literary cir- 

 cle. Mad bees were attacking right 

 and left. The Magic Girl herself ex- 

 perienced her first contact with the 

 Bolsheviki end of the honeybee, even 

 while hustling the children to safety. 

 I rushed to the apiary swearing 

 vengeance on the offenders, if found; 

 if not, then the innocent must suffer 

 with the guilty. A man must protect 

 his family, and a mad bee is no imag- 

 inary foe. Instinct guided me to a 

 colony of blacks that for weeks had 

 refused a queen, but which had re- 

 cently accepted, on probation as it 

 were, a newly-hatched Italian. There 

 on his knees in front of the hive was 

 Jimmie, industriously poking a stick 

 into the entrance, and now and then 



curiously watching the strange be- 

 havior of some bees on the landing- 

 board. 



One glance was sufficient. They 

 were balling something, and the won- 

 der of it was that they had not 

 balled Jimmie instead. A puff from 

 the smoker dispersed the savages, 

 but not before the ball had rolled 

 onto the ground. A large yellow 

 queen limped away, pursued by a 

 worker more persistent than the oth- 

 ers, that still attacked first on one 

 side and then the other, to simulate 

 a large force in pursuit, perhaps, till 

 the queen, overcome, gave up the un- 

 equal struggle. 



Jimmie turned the dead queen over 

 with his stick and listened to my 

 lurid remarks. I might mention that 

 his baptismal name is Tenaka Kuri- 

 hara Ishida, americanized by the 

 Magic Girl to "Jimmie." He was 

 small, almond-eyed, and minus two 

 front teeth, neither of which hap- 

 pened to be the sweet one. 



"Honey all time stay up in air," he 

 offered by way of explaining his pres- 

 ence in the apiary, and pointed wist- 

 fully to the tier of supers filled with 

 honey which had been left over the 

 colony to ripen. Neither was he re- 

 morseful over the fate of his play- 

 mates, while the sight of the Magic 

 Girl's closed eyes and puffed face ap- 

 pealed to his Oriental sense of hu- 

 mor. 'All samee God-Damn-Lady." 

 he observed, no doubt having in mind 

 the corpulent resident missionary to 

 the Japanese in our midst. 



The next time Jimmie's mother 

 came to do up the house, as a matter 

 of personal safety and that of my 

 neighbors, I found it expedient to 

 form a league of two nations, and 

 thereafter accompanied Master Ishi- 

 da to my apiary. It was too late in 

 the season to sustain the. loss of 

 other queens. The days were getting 

 perceptibly shorter and there was a 

 suggestion of frost in the air. It was 

 time to contract hive-entrances, nail 

 down covers and go away somewhere 



