42 A YEAR'S WORK IN AN OUT-APIARY 



weather which came between the blooms, either in clover or basswood, 

 a far different showing in honey would have been the result. Now that 

 the basswood bloom is past, it is coming good weather again. While 

 this can make no difference with me now, yet I am very glad to have 

 It come, as it is cheering to the hearts of the farmers who have had 

 an uphill time in securing their hay and winter wheat, much hay spoil- 

 ing on account of the continued wet. Again I am off on the road to the 

 apiary, carrying with me another supply of supers, for the buckwheat 

 bloom is still ahead. As I go, my heart is made light through seeing 

 the many fields on the hillsides and valleys covered with their waving 

 grain, basking in the sunlight, while the pearly streams, being nearly 

 at full bank from our recent rains, make sweet music in their joyous 

 journey toward the river. The pasture lands are nearly as green as 

 in June, while, generally, at this time of the year they are brown and 

 bare. The farmhouses nestle among the green branches of the trees, 

 giving prospect of garnered fruit through the half-grown apples, plums, 

 and pears, discernible among the sun-kissed leaves. Surely all nature 

 is happy — why not I? I have done my best with the bees; and if a 

 meager crop is the result, through no fault of mine, I should be happy 

 with what I get. 



With such scenes and thoughts as these, the time passes almost too 

 soon; and before I am hardly aware of it the horse is turning in at the 

 farmer's roadway leading toward the bee-yard. With the horse stabled 

 before a manger of rain-cured hay I enter the apiary. Each colony hav- 

 ing sections on is looked after, fixing them now so they are supposed 

 to be all right till the end of the buckwheat harvest, which is the end 

 of the surplus-honey season in this locality. The wheelbarrow having i 

 an empty hive, bee-escape, and super of foundation-filled sections, is 

 again brought into use, when all the fully completed supers are set 

 on the empty hive, and the others on the empty super, the same as 

 with my last visit. If a super is found having two-thirds or more of its 

 sections completed I think it best to take off the same, as those finished 

 will lose in price, if left on the hive, from coloring. With those having 

 a less number finished I used to take out those finished and supply their 

 place with sections filled with the extra thin foundation; but of late 

 years the extra work involved in this has made me mostly abandon the 

 plan. Such sections will sell for more money than they will if left on 

 till the end of the season; but I am not sure that they will sell for 

 enough more to pay for the extra work required in thus taking them. 

 Of course, the whole super can be freed from bees with the escapes, 

 then taken home, and the sections which are filled sorted out, the others 

 being repacked in the supers and taken back to the apiary again; but 

 this makes still more work, and an extra trip to the apiary. 



These things are all right where time hangs heavily on one's hands; 

 but with the overworked apiarist, having from three hundred to five 

 hundred colonies in five or six out-apiaries it is better to put all supers 

 not more than two-thirds full back on the hives again. Any super 

 which has been worked in, yet not sufficient to be taken off. Is put back 



