THE CUB A K E V I E W 17 



the vast amount of work required in tlie construction of new comics after each honey 

 crop is talveu, and with the saving to tlie bee-l^eeper of the IS to 20 pounds of honey 

 per pound of comb whicli is calculated as the quantity required to make this. In the 

 old system of bee-keeping also the death of the queen bee or her becoming weak in 

 laying power often reduced the number of bee^ in the hive to such an extent as to 

 result in its complete loss, while in the new system the bee-keeper of even moderate 

 intelligence can ascertain very readily if the queen of each hive is doing her full 

 duty and if she is of that quality and producing capacity which is required to main- 

 tain the working standards of the hive at top notch, and if this is not the case, he 

 can make immediate provision to either instal new queens or to cause the bees them- 

 selves to produce them. The close control that this gives is, of coarse, quite evident 

 to anyone who has had any experience with bees or has knowledge concerning them. 



Also the great readiness by whicli even a cursory examination of the hives will 

 inform the intelligent bee-keeper of the existence of diseases or of injurious insects 

 in the hive is of very great advantage in the new system ; so that taken all in all 

 the very rapid adoption of this system is only natural and it is to be expected that 

 this progress will continue at an even more rapid rate, so that within a very short 

 time practically all the accessible parts of Cuba will contain apiaries founded on 

 modern lines and attended to by bee-keepers whose intelligence is on a plane very 

 much higher than that now in existence. 



When the \^-riter first became acquainted with the honey industry in Culja, the 

 harvest periods were usvially considered as two, one being in May and early .Tune^ 

 this being the main harvest, with a secondary or "cleaning up" period in the latter 

 part of October or early Novembei-. It was the custom under the old plan of allowing 

 the bees to practically fill the log hives with honey and brood combs, very often an 

 overflow resulting from the hives containing the greatest number of l:)ees, so that 

 quite considerable quantities of honey and comli were built on the under, outside 

 portion of the logs where these were elevated from the ground. When this condition 

 became pretty general in the apiary, the Cuban bee-keeper, armed with a long knife 

 and a smoldering rag and with a little basket or receptacle made generally of the 

 lower portion of the leaf of the royal palm, went into his apiary, smoked the bees 

 in the best manner possible with his crude appliances, and took from them that 

 poi-tion of their stores, often, as we have already indicated, including considerable 

 quantities of comb containing brood, that he believed could be safely taken from 

 them, still leaving them sufficient to carry them over a period of scarcity of honey 

 yielding flowers. This, of course, left a great deal to the judgment of the bee-keepers, 

 and their judgments very frequently being made subservient to their financial needs 

 of the moment, more honey was taken than was justified, with the resulting loss 

 in bees and weakening of hives for the next heavy honey flow. The taking of the 

 product in this way also rendered impossible the obtaining of the honey from any 

 one flow, the product being a mixture of the nectar of various honey producing plants, 

 thus again giving to Cuba's honey a nondescript character not subject to classifica- 

 tion, as is the case with the product from the modern hive when attended by an 

 intelligent operator who knows the sources of the supplies obtained at the various 

 periods of the year. In the old system also the increase in the nmnber of hives 

 depended practically entirely upon the method of "sAvarming," in which at certain 

 periods of the year, mostly in May, but sometimes in October, in the strong hives 

 overflowing with bees, new queens were produced and these with a following of 

 working bees abandoned the hive and sought new homes of their own. These swarms 

 were captured whenever possible by the owners of the apiaries and were established 

 in new log homes, but in many cases either their flight was too prolonged or else, 

 due to the absence of the bee-keeper, they left the old hive and were lost. 



As we have already indicated, the product of the hives with this method of 

 harvesting was squeezed out in rough home made leverage presses, often only by 



