BEGINNING WITH bees 
123 
smoker. The dealer will be glad to give 
full instructions on how to handle them, 
and the chances are that Mr. Beginner 
will be able to get some honey the first sea¬ 
son. Beginners’ outfits cost all the way 
from $35.00 to $50.00. Where more than 
one colony is purchased the price might 
be $100.00. One can make a very nice 
start with one colony, a couple of extra 
hives, book of instruction, a veil, and a 
smoker. 
After midsummer a beginner should 
buy nothing less than a full colony. If, 
however, he has had some experience he 
can buy two pounds of bees or a three- 
frame nucleus, and build them up to a 
fair colony by October 1 if he is not too 
far north. 
If the beginner has colonies a little weak 
during the late summer, he would do well 
to buy a pound of bees from the dealer to 
strengthen all such. But before he lets 
some strange bees into another hive he 
should follow instructions under the head 
of Uniting. That is to say that the queen 
should be caged, and both the old bees 
and the new should be smoked before they 
are put together. See Introducing and 
Uniting. 
In some cases beekeepers will be located 
remote from any express office. In that 
case the bees in package form can be se¬ 
cured thru the mails. As a rule, however, 
experience shows that shipments come thru 
more successfully by express. 
Parcel post mailing cage for bees without combs. 
No beginner should attempt to make 
any start with bees without instruction 
books of some sort. Of course the reader 
of these lines will have all he can read be¬ 
fore he takes up any other work. But he 
would do well to subscribe for some bee 
journal, as most of the journals now" have 
beginners’ departments that are very help¬ 
ful. By subscribing for a journal he will be 
free to submit his individual problems to 
the editor for solution. If the reply is not 
published he will get an answer by mail. 
Before one does very much with bees he 
ought to take up the course of reading sug¬ 
gested in the Foreword at the beginning 
of this work. The initial article immedi¬ 
ately following the Foreword—The A B 
C of Beekeeping —will give him the gen¬ 
eral bird’s-eye view of the subject. 
Wilson and Fracker’s 20 colonies started from tw'O-pound packages. 
