228 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



profitably kept in one place*, and, although 

 poor seasons are common, good ones are not 

 rare. Seasons of total failure are very few. 



Our climate is such that there need 

 never be any loss of colonies except that oc- 

 casioned by the death of queens during the 

 fall and wintei months. 



A specialist should own at least .'iOO hives. 

 If he has the requisite knowledge to manage 

 them intelligently and the energy to do most 

 of the work himself, there are comparatively 

 few seasons in which he would not get liber- 

 al returns from the capital invested and the 

 labor performed, and occasionally there 

 comes one of those extraordinarily bounti- 

 ful years when the bees bring in honey as 

 though there were lakes of it from which to 

 gather. In such seasons an intelligent api- 

 arist should clear ten dollars to the hive, 

 which, if there are 500 or 1,000 hives, gives 

 him a snug little sum with which to tide 

 himself and bees over the years of absolute 

 failure. Instead, however, of feeding the 

 bees when the years of absolute failure do 

 come, a majority of the apiarists get dis- 

 couraged and neglect them at the very time 

 when the most attention is needed. The 

 past two seasons have been poor ones, and 

 owing to neglect, two-thirds of all the bees 

 in this district have perished. If the coming 

 season (1893) should be a bountiful one, (It 

 is — Ed.) but few of the apiar sts will have 

 bees enough left to be in a position to profit 

 much by the opportunity. 



Another reason why so many bee-keepers 

 realize but little from the apiary is because 

 they know but little about the management 

 of bees. They own no bee books and take 

 no papers relating to the pursuit. Putting 

 a swarm in a box and taking the honey there- 

 from when it has been filled constitute 

 about all they know. Some, too, have such 

 exaggerated ideas of the amount of help re- 

 quired to run an apiary that a good part of 

 the proceeds from the crop has to go to pay 

 for the harvesting of it. On visiting some 

 apiaries the proprietor and his dollar-a-day 

 helper will often be found comfortably 

 seated in some shady nook killing time by 

 talking politics and swapping yarns, yet be- 

 lieving that they are at work, because now 

 and then a glance is bestowed upon the api- 

 ary to see if any swarms are out. 



* In 1884 an apiary of 700 liives, belonging to 

 Mr. Robt. Wilkin, averaged 130 pounds of ex- 

 tracted honey and that too wlien surrounding 

 them within one and two miles distant were api- 

 aries aggregating l.:iOO hives more. 



Sometimes two men are employed to assist 

 in extracting a crop which, if the owner had 

 been energetic, he could easily have taken 

 alone. 



As I think over the bee-keepers of my ac- 

 quaintance I do not recall one (myself in- 

 cluded) who, I believe, gets, by a third, one 

 year with another, as much honey as he 

 should. The reasons for which are, we keep 

 too few bees and do not give even these few 

 the best attention. 



To sum up — the best advice I can give 

 bee-keepers, with the help of the bee- book 

 and papers learn how to do the right thing 

 at the right time, then banish laziness and 

 do it. 



Newhall, Calif. Dec. 5, 1892. 



Uncertain Behavior of Great Masses of Bees. 



— Problems for Experiment. — Escapes 



That Turn Bees Into the Open Air. 



B. 0. AIKIN. 



" One boy is a boy, two are half a boy, and 

 three no boy at all." 



P' 



)OSSIBLY,one, 

 two and three 

 colonies of bees 

 are the same, yet I 

 am by no means 

 ready to give it up 

 — that a great mass 

 of bees can be 

 profitably worked 

 together. I know 

 that I have never 

 had all the colo- 

 nies in my apiary 

 do good super-work even the best of seasons. 

 In fair seasons perhaps one or two colonies 

 in ten give me satisfactory work. 



Where we have a fall honey flow we can 

 mass bees far beyond what we do in a sum- 

 mer flow, and no swarming results. 



I believe that we can and ivill control 

 swarming, although I am not sure that we 

 have all the details yet. Cut out cells once 

 and prevent swarming, do it two or three 

 times until the fever is on good and strong, 

 and the bees will often the next day after 

 every cell is destroyed ! 



Last year we could do but little in the way 

 of experiments. This year is still worse. 

 Not two per cent of our bees have even tried 

 to swarm. For two years the " far-famed " 



