ADVANCED SEE-CUI.TURE. 



69 



late, is that they need no fastening when 

 an apiary is moved. An apiarist who is 

 seeing to practice moving his bees to se- 

 cure better pastures, must have hives, 

 fixtures and other arrangements suitable 

 for that purpose. It ought not to take 

 more than two or three minutes to pre- 

 pare a hive of bees for moving. 



Some localities are blessed with white 

 clover, basswood and fall flowers; and, 

 by the way, the man who is to make a 

 specialty of bee-keeping, ought to seek 

 such a locality; but many who are already 

 engaged in bee-keeping are permanently 

 located, have friends and relations living 

 near, and prefer not to move away even 

 if the profits would be increased thereby. 

 Then, again, it is difficult to find a first- 

 class locality for clover or basswood that 

 is equally good for fall flowers. And the 

 better the locality the greater the danger 

 of its being overstocked by its verj- at- 

 tractiveness bringing together so many 

 bee-keepers. 



Years ago, movable frames, or combs, 

 were invented. In the last few years 

 many of us have been learning to accom- 

 plish many things by handling hives in- 

 stead of combs, and the expression, 

 "readily movable hive,'" has been coined. 

 Now we are beginning to talk about 

 readily movable apiaries! — those that, 

 with a day's warning, can be picked up 

 and set down twenty miles away where 

 a "honey shower" is passing. 



I scarcel}' feel like advising a bee-keep- 

 er to move his apiary to some other lo- 

 cality with the hopes ois^coTia^ 3. greater 

 yield than it is possible to secure at home, 

 when the yield at home may be a fair 

 one, but when a bee-keeper has only 

 white clover, or basswood, or fall flowers, 

 from which to secure surplus, yet lives 

 only a few miles from one, or both, of the 

 other sources, it does seem to me as 

 though he ought to consider the advisa- 

 bility of moving his bees to these other 

 fields when the harvest is ready for the 

 laborers. To me this seems like a more 

 promising field for experiment than that 

 of planting for honey. Instead of spend- 

 ing time and money for seeds, land and 



cultivation, let us move our bees to where 

 Nature has already scattered the flowers 

 with a lavish hand. 



There is another form of migratory 

 bee-keeping that has long been the 

 dream of apiarists, that of starting with 

 an apiary in the South at the opening of 

 the honey season, and moving northward 

 with the season, keeping pace with the 

 advancing bloom, thus keeping the bees 

 "in clover" during the whole summer. 

 The difficulties to be overcome are those 

 of transportation. There is no single 

 line of railroad running north and south 

 for a sufficiently long distance to make a 

 success of migratory bee-keeping. When 

 shipping bees by freight, on the migra- 

 tory plan, the delays at junction points 

 are sometimes not only vexatious but 

 disastrous. It is for this reason that 

 longing eyes have been cast at the Miss- 

 issippi river and her steamboats and, 

 once, C. O. Perrine tried moving several 

 hundred colonies up the Mississippi on a 

 barge towed by a tug. The plan was to 

 run up the river nights, and "tie up" 

 during the day to allow the bees to work. 

 There were several reasons why the plan 

 was a failure. The start was made too 

 late in the season, and accidents to the 

 machinery of the tug caused delays. In 

 order to overtake the bloom it became 

 necessary to confine the bees and run 

 day and night. The confinement for so 

 long was very disastrous to the bees. 

 Those who aided in the enterprise believe 

 that, rightly managed, moving bees up 

 the Mississippi to keep pace with the 

 bloom, might be made a success. Mr. 

 Byron Walker, who has had much ex- 

 perience in bringing bees from the South, 

 greatly favors the Mississippi plan of 

 practicing migratory bee-keeping. He 

 would not put the bees on a barge and 

 tow the barge with a tug, but would load 

 the bees upon a regular steamer running 

 up the river, setting them off at some de- 

 sirable point, and then shipping them by 

 boat to another point farther up the river 

 as the flow began to wane. In the fall 

 he would take bees back to the South for 

 the winter. 



