BACKLOT BEEKEEPING 
85 
ate any inconvenience of this kind, which 
fortunately occurs only about once a year. 
After bees have been confined for the win¬ 
ter, on their first flight they discharge their 
liquid feces on the white linen if it hap¬ 
pens to be on the line at the time; but a 
rinsing of the clothes will make them as 
clean as before, and a pail or box of 
honey will do wonders in advance by 
sweetening up feelings that would other¬ 
wise be sour. The neighbor should be ad¬ 
vised not to hang out her clothes just after 
the bees are set out of the cellar in the 
spring. Or better, the beekeeper should 
not put the bees out till after wash-day. 
and yet out of all these thousands of little 
apiaries it is only about once in four or five 
years that we hear of a single case of trou¬ 
ble, and only once in about 25 years that 
resort is had to the courts. See Laws 
Relating to Bees and Bees as a Nui¬ 
sance. 
The danger from stings may be averted 
by reading carefully the articles on Api¬ 
aries, Robbing, Stings, Bee-smokers, and 
Manipulation of Colonies —particularly 
the last named. There is no good reason 
why any backlotter should stir up his colo¬ 
nies to a furious stinging. If he will care¬ 
fully inform himself by reading the arti- 
Thos. O’Donnel’s apiary, which lias proved a success, altlio kept within the city limits' of Chicago. 
But the objection may be made that bees 
may sting the neighbor’s children. While 
this may happen, such occurrences are not 
common. If one will follow the plain and 
simple directions with regard to handling 
bees, there will be no trouble. Indeed, 
there are backlot apiaries in all of our 
large cities (and even on the roofs of some 
large office buildings)—hundreds and hun¬ 
dreds of them; and when we consider the 
backlot apiaries in the smaller towns, their 
number can be measured by the thousands; 
cles mentioned, his next-door neighbors will 
never know he has any bees except as they 
may see the hives and the bees flying out to 
the fields. If he will take the further pre¬ 
caution to give those neighbors a box of 
honey now and then, they will be willing to 
overlook any occasional annoyance result¬ 
ing from a lack of experience and misman¬ 
agement. 
Every backlotter should, if possible, visit 
some practical beekeeper. He can get more 
information of a practical sort in an hour 
