MANAGEMENT OF OUT-APIARIES 49 



are well along in the super next to the brood-chamber, while the most 

 of them are beginning work on the foundation in the one above. Four 

 or five are quite well advanced in these, and with such the supers are 

 exchanged, the one being nearly completed set over that having less work 

 done in it, with a super of empty sections on top of the two. In this 

 case this top super was of no value, as the season was so poor that 

 the bees did no work in it. However, in this race for honev we can not 

 tell how things are going to turn out, and I hold to the idea that it is 

 always better to do a little work for naught than to have a loss of 10 to 

 25 pounds of honey from each colony through any inattention of mine. 

 Forty minutes to an hour sufficed for all that was necessary to be done at 

 this time, and the whole gave me an excuse for an enjoyable outing with 

 the auto. This was visit No. 8. If greatly pressed 'for time this visit 

 could be dispensed with without experiencing any great loss in honey in 

 the average year. 



CHAPTER IX. 



A SIMPLE V7AY TO PUT ON ESCAPES WITHOUT LIFTING. 



It is now September 8th, and the honey season for 1905 is ended, 

 as no surplus is ever secured in this locality from fall flowers. And it 

 has been one of the most singular seasons I have ever known as to 

 poor weather at the time of the blossoming of our honey-producing flora. 

 It was mostly wet, cool, or very windy, during the time of clover, bass- 

 wood, and buckwheat bloom, our three resources for surplus honey, and 

 quite generally fine "and warm outside the time they were in bloom. 

 We often have poor bee weather during the time one of these sources 

 for honey is in bloom, and once or twice I have known it thus during 

 two of the sources of supply; but to have it poor during all three puts 

 the season of 1905 at the top, along the line of bad weather, during the 

 expected harvests from all sources, and giving it the name of the "poor- 

 est season ever known" among my beekeeping neighbors. Enough thin 

 nectar was gathered to keep their bees rearing an abundance of brood, 

 resulting in much swarming, and hives light in stores for winter; but the 

 surplus crop with them was very meager. 



I now go to the out-apiary for the ninth visit, and the chief work at 

 this time is to put an escape-board between the brood-chamber and the 

 supers of the whole 28 colonies. To do this best, one of the escape- 

 boards is placed by the side of each hive, before I commence, when I 

 take the piece of wagon-spring used to pull the staples out at the first 

 visit (a long stout chisel will answer in place of the spring), the smoker 

 and a wooden wedge, 1% inches wide by one foot long, the same being 

 two inches thick at the big end, and go to hive No. 1, row 1, stepping 

 to the back side of the same. The point of the wagon-spring is now 

 pushed between the supers and the hive, or between the supers and the 

 queen-excluder, where one of these has been left on, as with the tiered-up 

 hives. I now bear down on the "handle" end of the spring, enough so a 

 crack is made of sufficient size to insert the point of the wedge, pushing 

 the wedge until a Vs-inch opening all acros? the ba?k ig made, when puffg 



