426 
The RURAL NEW- YORKER 
March S, 1924 
One Coal 
a Day- 
Saves $1.40 
in 200 Days 
A shovel full ft day saved 
means $21.00 
You run your furnace about 200 days a year. Egg Coal 
costs $14.00 a ton, one lump weighs about a pound, a 
shovel full about 15 pounds. 
The Sterling Furnace is so scientifically constructed and so 
carefully installed that it is guaranteed to get more heat out of a 
given quantity of fuel, to never leak gas, or send out dust. It will 
save you anywhere from two to three shovels 
full a day. (This is a low estimate.) Figure 
4^/ out how long it would take a Sterling to 
qN pay for itself yet give clean, healthful heat 
while doing it. 
Call on the Sterling Dealers or write today 
and tell us how you heat your home. Our 
engineers will send you a printed form of 
questions and answers and will advise you 
just what kind of a furnace you need to get 
winter comfort most economically. 
Sill Stove Works, Rochester, N. Y. 
Write today for booklet 
_ Save Coal with a 
Sterling 
□ 
Edmonds’ 
Poultry ° 
Account D 
Book 
A complete record. 
Easy to keep. Start 
any time ; results 
shown any time. 
Price, postpaid, $1. 
FOR SALE BY 
The Rural New-Yorker 
333 West 30th Street, New York 
“lore Potatoes’* 
POTATO PLANTER than 
by any other method of 
planting. Work perfectly ac¬ 
curate, A simple, strong, 
durable machine. Write 
for CATALOG, price, etc, 
A. J. PLATT, MPR. 
BOX A. STERLING. LSJut 
Keep More of Your 
Milk Check Home 
Grow plenty of High Protein Clover 
Hay or Alfalfa and save several 
Dollars on each ton of feed by using 
the lower protein concentrates. 
^CALCITE brand A 
MICHIGAN LIMESTONE 
^OVER 99% PURE 
MICHIGAN LIMESTONE 
is washed and dried before pulverizing and is Guaranteed 99 °/o 
Pure Carbonate of Lime. Insures a good clover crop. Reducing 
production cost of Milk is equivalent to getting more money for It. 
Write for 48-page book, “Folks and Fields Need Lime” 
MICHIGAN LIMESTONE & CHEMICAL CO. 
BUFFALO, N. Y. 
THE HOPE FARM BOOK 
This attractive 234 -page book has some of the best of the Hope Farm 
Man’s popular sketches—philosophy, humor, and sympathetic 
human touch. Price $1.50. For sale by 
RURAL NEW-YORKER 333 West 3Qth St„ New York 
How I Learned to Manage Bees 
Early Interest.—The R. N.-Y. has 
been coming to our house since my earliest 
remembrance, I think it must have been 
about 1884 that my attention was called 
to an article on bee-keeping by G. M. 
Doolittle of Borodino, N. Y„ which set 
me to thinking hard, and gave me what 
is known as bee fever. When our min¬ 
ister, who afterwards became my father- 
in-law, found I was interested in bees, he 
lent me “Langstroth On the Honey-bee,” 
which I thought the most interesting book 
I had ever read. I used to take it to the 
field where I was plowing, and read it 
while resting the horses. I could not read 
ginning with bees, he said, “Young fellow, 
I have enough capital to run out 10 just 
like you.” As I went to see him in the 
most friendly spirit, this took me com¬ 
pletely by surprise. However, a soft 
answer turns away wrath, and I did not 
get excited but kept sawing wood. Re¬ 
sult, the next Spring this man had lost 
most of his bees and we knew him as a 
bee man no more. We heard he had 
sunk .$4000 that he had borrowed of his 
mother, which was about all she had. 
Moral, it is better to begin at the bottom 
and crawl up than to begin at the top and 
fall down. 
Bee Farm in Schoharie Co., N. Y. 
it evenings, as I had to go and see this 
girl. 
First Experience. —At this time near¬ 
ly every farm had a few colonies of bees 
in box hives. We had nine, so on Deco¬ 
ration Day, 18S5, I induced a bee man of 
considerable experience, who lived a few 
miles away, to come and help transfer 
these bees. He brought along 10 frame 
Langstroth hives, empty frames, and 
frames of brood comb. He smoked a hive 
a little, then turned it bottom up and set 
an empty hive on top, then began drum-' 
Further Experience. —Now as I look 
back I can see that 1885 must have been 
an unusually fine season for honey, for 
notwithstanding our transfer of the bees 
we secured from the nine colonies 1100 
lbs. of extracted and 125 lbs. of comb 
honey. I was much elated, and looked 
forward to great riches in the near future, 
and began to wonder how anyone could 
be so stupid as to spend their time plow¬ 
ing or haying. I read everything I could 
about bees. About the first of August 
my man came up and showed me Low to 
Another Apiary 
ming on the sides until most of the bees 
left their home, then he cut down with a 
hand saw close to the side in two sides, 
then pried off the sides with a cold chisel 
and proceeded to cut out the combs and 
fit the brood in the empty frames, tying 
them in with common packing string. He 
said the bees would soon fasten every¬ 
thing and after a few days we could re¬ 
move the strings. As there was not 
enough brood to fill a hive he finished with 
brood combs> then set the hive on its old 
stand and ran in the bees that had been 
drummed out of their old home. I went 
out to help with mosquito netting over 
my head and carefully tucked under my 
coat, and with binding gloves carefully 
tied down at the wrists. He looked at 
me a minute and said. “Young man, if 
you expect to get far in this business 
take off those gloves.” So I took them 
off; result, my hands soon swelled so I 
could not shut them. Soon, however, a 
| sting would no longer swell much. (I now 
avoid most of the stings by wearing gloves 
with the ends of the fingers cut off.) 
Pride Goetii Before A Fall. —That 
same Spring a young man moved a large 
yard of bees into our territory about a 
mile from us. I called one day when he 
and his helpers were at work in the yard, 
thinking I might learn something, and I 
did. As soon as he found out I was be- 
in an Orchard 
divide my colonies, so that we went into 
Winter with 23 colonies. It was a hard 
Winter, and the bees were not well pro¬ 
tected and d.id not have enough stores, so 
next Spring we had two live colonies, 
just alive. However I bought two more 
and spent all my spare time with them. 
We did not get much honey, but went into 
Winter with 22 colonies, wintered all, and 
that Fall sold 2200 lbs. comb honey. 
Foul Brood. —All was well now for a 
year or two, until I had 50 or 60 colonies, 
then I began to notice some of the brood 
did not hatch and had a peeulior odor, 
and my bee man said I had American foul 
brood. As soon as I found out how to 
treat it I would shake out a few swarms 
into new clean hives on sheets of founda¬ 
tion in the evening as soon as the bees 
stopped flying; then I would boil the hives 
in a large kettle, then boil the brood 
combs and all. Next morning would take 
the wax and make into foundation on a 
plaster of paris mold and proceed as be¬ 
fore. Result, a clean yard. But the next 
Spring we found the yard reinfected from 
our neighbor’s bees. But I had inherited 
a streak of persistency from my great- 
aunt’s sister, and we kept up the fight 
for five years. By that time all the bees 
for a number of miles had died out, my 
bee man had died, and his bees died out, 
(Continued on Page 448) 
