136 FORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 



didn't consult my wife about ordering- the 150 excluders. 

 As I grow older I may learn caution, and experiment on 

 a smaller scale, but being only just turned of seventy too 

 much should not be expected of me. 



PLEASURE OF EXPERIMENTING. 



As an offset, to the mischief done by experimenting 

 on too large a scale, I may say that one of my keenest en- 

 joyments is the working out of problems connected with 

 bee-keeping. There is never a time, summer or winter, 

 when I am not cooking one, or more schemes, plans or 

 projects connected with the business. Good it is that my 

 pastor (his name at present is the Rev. A. J. van Page) 

 is a very interesting preacher, else it would be a harder 

 task than it is for me to keep my thoughts from wander- 

 ing off upon some new scheme for getting better queens 

 or whiter sections while he is trying to tell me how I 

 ought to live. No doubt more money could' be made at 

 bee-keeping if everything in the business were fully set- 

 tled and we knew beforehand just exactly the right step 

 to take in any given case, but there wouldn't be nearly the 

 fun in it. 



BROOD IN SECTIONS. 



It may be asked why it is that I have so little trouble 

 with queens laying in sections, while some others are 

 much troubled in that way. Possibly the thickness of top- 

 bars may have something to do with it, but it may be that 

 the amount of foundation in sections has a bearing on the 

 case. Some use small starters in sections, while my sec- 

 tions are filled as full as possible with foundation. When 

 drone-comb is absent from the brood-nest, there seems 

 such a desperate desire for drone-brood that I have known 

 the queen to leave the brood-nest and fill with eggs a 

 patch of drone-comb two or three frames distant from the 



