BEEKEEPING FOR WOMEN 
have it. As long - as these are present 
within half a mile of an apiary of bees 
it would be impossible to keep them clean. 
In such a case the owner of the bees can 
well afford to hunt out every bee-tree in 
range. Merely trapping the bees out of 
the trees would not be sufficient. He 
would have to get permission to cut down 
the trees and burn up the logs or limbs 
containing the cavity. 
BEE-TREES MENACE TO QUEEN-BREEDERS. 
It should be explained further that if one 
is trying to Italianize his apiary the pres¬ 
ence of black bees in the woods will serious¬ 
ly interfere with pure mating. When bees 
build their combs naturally in trees they 
build an excessive amount of drone comb. 
The blacks will, therefore, raise drones out 
of all proportion to the number raised in 
hives of Italians where only combs from 
foundation are used. It is not any exag¬ 
geration to say that one colony of blacks 
on natural combs will raise as many drones 
as 40 or 50 colonies of Italians whose 
combs are built from all-worker founda¬ 
tion. It would, therefore, pay and pay 
well to get all the bee-trees of blacks or 
hybrids, even if there were no foul brood 
or no financial gain in the honey or bees 
so secured. 
BEEKEEPING AS A SPECIALTY.— 
See Beginning with bees, Profits in 
Bees, and Specialty in Bees. 
BEEKEEPING FOR WOMEN. 
[Tt is presumed, of course, that no ordinary man 
would be entirely competent to write on a subject 
of this kind. In looking about for some woman to 
do this, the author could think of no one more able 
than Mrs. Anna B. Comstock, author of a charming 
work for beginners on “How to Keep Bees.’’ Mrs. 
Comstock is the wife of Prof. J. Henry Comstock, 
of Cornell University, and both of them are ento¬ 
mologists. We engaged her to write the following 
article.1 
Two questions invariably pop up at us 
when this matter of feminine beekeeping 
is discussed: One is, “Why shouldn’t a 
woman keep bees?” and the other is, “Why 
should a woman keep bees?” Like most 
other questions these may be answered 
more or less rationally with proper consid¬ 
eration. 
Taking the “why shouldn’t” question 
first, we are bound to confess that nowa¬ 
days there is no effective reason why a 
woman should not do almost any thing 
1011 
that she takes into her enterprising little 
head to do. But quite aside from the con¬ 
sideration of woman’s prowess, there are 
one or two reasons that might deter some 
of the faint-hearted fair from undertak¬ 
ing - beekeeping. There is no use trying to 
gloss over the fact that there is a great 
deal of hard work and heavy lifting in the 
care of a profitable apiary. The hard work 
is really no objection, as most women of 
whatever class are doing it anyway. But 
lifting heavy hives is certainly not particu¬ 
larly good exercise for any woman, altho 
I must confess that I have never lifted 
half so strenuously when earing for the 
bees as I used to on the farm when we 
moved the cook-stove into the summer 
kitchen, accomplishing this feat by our 
feminine selves, rather than to bring to 
the surface any of the latent profanity 
which seems to be engendered in the mas¬ 
culine bosom when taking part in this sea¬ 
sonal pastime. 
There are at least two ivays of obviating 
this feminine disability in beekeeping. 
One, practiced successfully by several 
women, is thru the use of a light wheel¬ 
barrow, which almost solves the problem if 
the bees are wintered out of doors and do 
not have to be carried up and down cellar 
stairs; the other method is to get some man 
to do the lifting and carrying.* It may be 
the husband, the father, the brother, the 
son, or the hired man; but as this work 
can be done at a time which can be planned 
for, it is not so difficult for the men of the 
establishment to give the help needed. I 
am sure my husband would say that I am 
quite enthusiastically in favor of the man 
solution of this problem; but his opinion 
does not count for much, because he loves 
the bees so enthusiastically I have to beg 
for a chance to work with them at all, al¬ 
tho he virtuously points out the hives to 
people as “Mrs. Comstock’s bees.” 
Another “shouldn’t” reason might be 
that women are afraid of bee-stings. This 
falls flat, from the fact that women are not 
a bit more nervous than men in this respect. 
This year when I was struggling to hive a 
swarm from a most difficult position, an 
interested man stood off at a safe distance 
in a most pained state of mind. He was a 
‘Some frail women remove all liopey, ope comb 
at !v time, 
