56 
A YEAH AMONG THE BEES. 
G inches higher than the hole or window. A piece of wire- 
cloth is stretched across the window and nailed on the lath 
at each side, and on the wall at the bottom. This makes the 
wire-cloth run some 6 inches above the window, there being 
a space of % of an inch between the wire-cloth and the wall of 
the building at this upper part. The bees on the inside fly 
to this window, crawl up to the top of the wire-cloth and fly 
back to their hives ; the robbers never try to get in at the top 
of the wire-cloth, but always lower down. 
I have no shop, only at the home apiary, so elsewhere I 
have to use other means to get the bees out of supers. By 
taking time enough each super can be cleaned as fast as 
taken off. Usually, however, I pile them up on an inverted 
wooden hive-cover, throw a robber-cloth over the top, and 
then give them a tremendous smoking from below. Enough 
are taken off each trip to make a load home— I am talking 
uow about the final clearing off. This will make 3 or 4 piles 
of 6 or 8 supers each. Wife generally does most of the 
smoking of these piles, going from one to the other, keeping 
them closed up below, except while blowing in the smoke, 
and leaving one corner of the robber-cloth open for the bees 
to escape while she is plying the smoker. This constant 
blowing the smoker uses up fuel very rapidly, and soon it 
will be filled with burning coals giving out much heat and 
but little smoke. 
One day when her smoker was in this condition, she broke 
some small limbs off an apple-tree under which she was 
working, and breaking them into proper lengths, stuffed them 
into her smoker. If I had noticed what she was doing, 1 
should have told her it would not burn ; but it did burn, and 
made the densest kind of a smoke till burned up. Of course 
under ordinary usage it would go out ; but with a hot fire to 
begin with, and constant blowing, it is just the thing, where" 
a strong and continuous smoke is wanted. The fuel I 
generally use was recommended to me by the late Mr. Jesse 
Oatman— rotten apple-wood. The best is where a dead apple- 
tree is allowed to rot where it stands. A pile of trimmings 
