172 THE BEEKEEPERS' REVIEW 



flying about the car. I was the object of much attention, a reg- 

 ular "Daniel In the Lion's Den" to most of my audience as we 

 stopped at the towns enroute. We arrived at Milford at 2 A. M. 

 the following morning and after some inquiry, found a drayman who 

 had had some previous experience in handling bees and willingly 

 offered to help me draw the bees to the farm, at the edge of town. 



The heat having been so extreme we found upon unloading 

 that some of the bees had smothered and part of the combs had 

 melted down, allowing the honey to run over the floor of the car, 

 starting a "rough and tumble" melee among the bees which were 

 loose as well as among the bees of a gentleman whom I was not 

 aware kept bees in my new home, until I arrived there with mine. 

 My newly made neighbor beekeeper finding his bees were having 

 an exciting time started out to look up the cause and finding us 

 carting our bees from the car to the farm, very kindly came over 

 and helped me stop the robbing, or, rather, get it under control, 

 as they kept at it at intervals for a number of days. My neighbor, 

 Mr. Osborn, gave me an idea to stop robbing of which I had not 

 learned before and which was a great help. It is this: with a 

 paint brush or in fact if a brush is not handy, an old rag, brush some 

 kerosene oil on the entrances of the hives being robbed. It seems 

 to stop the robbing in almost every case in a few minutes. 



This experience in moving and the loss of so many bees was 

 not without its lessons, however, as on October 20th I went to 

 Lapeer to ship 100 colonies of the bees of the late R. L. Taylor, 

 most of whose bees I had purchased, the balance working on shares. 

 In getting these bees from Lapeer to Milford, I had several inter- 

 esting as well as amusing experiences. I had decided to build cheap 

 frames of %" x 2" material covered with wire cloth for the tops 

 of the hives and had been informed that there was a saw mill there, 

 where I could have these pieces cut, but upon arrival there found 

 that the mill had gone out of business so had to saw them by hand, 

 tack on the wire cloth and drill in four hundred holes in which to 

 place screws to fasten them to the tops of the hives. This work 

 naturally took longer than I had planned and in fastening up the 

 hives I found many of them quite badly decayed, necessitating a 

 further patching up, but finally I had all loaded in the car at 11 

 A. M. Saturday and arrived in Flint at 5 P. M., 20 miles away, fast 

 traveling. We lay over in Flint until 12 p. m. and it took an 

 extra freight from 12 o'clock Saturday night until 6:30 A. M. Sun- 

 day to get to Milford, 30 miles, more fast traveling. When I left 

 Lapeer I had expected to arrive in Milford, only 50 miles away, by, 

 at least, 5 P. M. Saturday, so had made no preparation for a night's 



