Chapter 7 KEEPING BEES

I picked up a number of the Bee-Keeper's Review one day and my eye caught this surprising headline:

"A Boy's Business Worth $1000"

I opened my eyes and read on in astonishment about a boy who started with no more capital than any boy could get together, and, without sacrificing his school or college plans, built up a bee business which he sold for one thousand dollars. In the meantime his bees had not only paid their own board but his as well. If one boy can make a success like that, other boys can. So can girls, for bee-keeping is a form of outdoor work which seems admirably suited to sensible, nature-loving girls.

HOW TO BEGIN

There are a good many ways to begin this like any other business, but there is probably a best way for each person. Fortunately one does not have to begin on a large scale. In my opinion the only way to learn how to keep bees right is to keep them. Experienced bee-keepers advise young people to visit a practical apiary and watch the owner among his bees, taking note of what he does and says. Offer your services if he needs help, asking him to explain what he is doing and what for. Stay a few days or a week if he will keep you and learn all you can. One young woman spent a summer vacation on a farm where twenty or thirty colonies of bees were kept, and helped whenever anything was to be done with the bees. When she went home she took a colony of bees with her, and now she is manager of her own apiary with a larger income than the average teacher and ten times the leisure.

For beginners the cheaper bees are satisfactory. Later, nothing will be too good. A stand of bees can be bought for two dollars or three dollars, but a colony of choice Italians in a modern hive with tested queen may come as high as fifteen dollars. Better have them to sell than to buy at that price.

There are cheaper ways of getting them than buying them. If a runaway swarm which no owner claims, alights in your yard the bees may be yours by right of discovery and if you hive them successfully, by right of possession. This method though practised by some has not the sanction of the golden rule, and is not here recommended. What fun it would be, though, to secure a runaway swarm and make the visitors comfortable in a temporary hive. You would probably find they belonged in the apiary nearest you and ten to one the owner would just as soon you kept them unless they were a very choice kind. He will be so pleased that you were able to hive them that he will offer you something substantial for your work. He may give you the bees, and your bee-keeping will begin "by accident" as did the life-work of the famous veteran apiarist, Mr. A. I. Root.

Make a small beginning. Many successful bee-keepers had less than twenty dollars to begin with. One colony is a start. It is astonishing how quickly bees begin to "pay their way" and this test ought to be applied in all your ventures. Keep a strict account of all your expenditures in supplies, and credit the bees with all the honey you take off and with the new swarms. If I say this often, it is because it must be repeated to fix its importance in the mind. If you make good interest on your money you know it is safely invested. If, however, you charge up your time against the bees you must credit them with the fun you have, the outdoor exercise you get in caring for them and the consequent freedom from doctor bills.

THE BEST PLACE FOR BEES

You will read of keeping bees on a city roof, in a suburban attic, and on boats; but the most natural place for them is in the village or country, where fields of clover, groves of basswood, and patches of buckwheat abound. An orchard or large garden is incomplete without a few hives. The young bee-keeper with these advantages is to be congratulated; the conditions are ideal. All he needs is a liking for bees and spunk.

Before you get the first colony decide where your apiary is to be located. Even one hive must have a place and you must plan for increase. An orchard is a fine place, and the hives should be at least fifty feet from the street or road, because bees do not recognize the laws of the open road and turn neither to the right nor to the left. If necessary to put them next the street or close to a neighbour's garden, there should be tall bushes, a hedge, or a high fence to protect the passers-by. Otherwise your venture into bee culture may make you "bad friends" with the neighbours and even carry you before the justice of the peace.

In very hot weather some shade is necessary for beehives, but too much shade may result in failure. The morning sun and the late afternoon sun are good for bees, but the heat of the mid-day sun may cause the comb to melt and bring disaster to bees young and old. As moving the active colonies is not always safe, it pays to make a plan in the beginning for the whole number you expect to have. This is a case where it is justifiable to "count your chickens before they are hatched." It will not take much imagination to draw a plan on paper locating the principal objects in and near the apiary-to-be, and to sketch in the location of the ten, fifteen, or twenty hives you are likely to have five years from now. If you have no large, deciduous trees to offer ideal shade you needn't give up the idea of keeping bees. With the modern ventilated covers, bees are successfully kept out in the sun, if protected from wind and storms. A grape arbour affords good protection. It should run from east to west. Any trellis with quick growing vines like hops, Virginia creeper, or grapes, will serve well. Grapes give best return as they bear fruit and their blossoms supply honey in season. Where no natural shade is possible a shade board or air-spaced cover supplies the lack. A shade board can be made of any old box material. Lay a couple of sticks across the top of the hive to rest the shade board on and to let the air circulate.

Wind is worse for bees than too much sun. Bless the pioneers of the windy country if, by reason of their forethought, you have a real evergreen windbreak on your place. If you have not this ideal windbreak, a building will serve, or your hedge or high board fence should be on the windy side.

If you start, as many have, with one or two colonies let them face the south or east and leave space enough between the hives to run a lawn mower. As your number increases, your original plan may be changed, but it always pays to make the plan.

Try to consider, in the arrangement of the hives, not only convenience but beauty. If a board fence is necessary, train vines to cover its bare ugliness; a fringe of low shrubs will help make it beautiful. As your apiary grows, experience will teach you how to group the hives to get the best results. Twenty hives grouped in fives under the north side of four big, spreading apple trees would be the ideal I would set for myself if the orchard was ready for occupancy. If I began at the age of fourteen years, I could easily reach this ideal in six years and keep my other duties up, too. By that time I should know whether I wanted to be a bee-keeper or not. A great many people find that the chicken business combines well with some other business or profession. It is surprising that more people do not consider bee-keeping in the same way. Barring accidents, bees are far easier to handle, cleaner, and they board themselves. You can leave them over Sunday without any qualms of conscience and without arranging with somebody to feed and water them. The bees will not get out and scratch up your garden or your neighbour's, but they will do work in the garden that is too fine for your hands to tackle, and your crops will be bigger because of their visits. Chicken owners always sleep with one ear open, expecting night prowlers to appear and carry off their best stock. But who ever heard of a burglar alarm on a beehive? There are honey thieves, but they are not common.

Beehives look best on a carpet of grass, but if you have to be away during much of the summer wide rough boards should be placed in front of the entrance to the hives to keep the grass down. A bee is likely to come home heavily laden and pretty well fagged out with a long flight. If she should settle in a tangle of grass she would be likely to give up the struggle and fail to answer to roll call the next morning. Keep the grass short in front of the hives, then, if you have to cut it with shears, which is not as dangerous as it sounds, once you get used to it. This is best done on cold or wet days when few bees are going in and out. Salt, ashes, or gravel may be sprinkled close up to the hives to kill the grass.

BUYING BEES

Even the people with bees to sell advise beginners to buy from some one in their neighbourhood. It is not safe, though, to move bees less than a mile and a half as they are likely to return to their old location. Buy from an up-to-date apiary if you can, and get standard hives; the old box hives are not worth anything; neither are fancy hives of complicated structure. The entrance to the hive should be closed with wire cloth after the bees all get home in the early evening. If closed in the middle of the day you are cheated. In warm weather the cover should be taken off; in its place should be put the super over which wire-cloth has been tacked. Strips of wood can be nailed on top of this to which the cover can be fastened. By this arrangement ventilation is secured. We once lost a colony shipped by express without any provision for the circulation of air. Night is the best time to move the bees, though it can be done in the daytime; a cold day is best. Remove the wire cloth the first night after placing in permanent location.

Spring is the best season to buy your first colony. The price may be higher but the risk is less. Get a strong colony that has wintered well, which contains, on the average, twenty-five thousand to thirty-five thousand worker bees.

It would be well just here for the beginner to get acquainted with the opinions of the best bee-keepers about the kinds of bees. There are varieties among bees as well as among hens, pigeons, dogs, and horses. Americans like to be "hail, fellow, well met" with all their live stock, and although even the best tempered bee might resent a cordial slap on the flank, there are bee-lovers who tell of stroking their little winged friends with a grass stem. It requires real sympathy to succeed with bees just as it does with chickens or cows. No one can work long with them without becoming intensely interested. Most people learn to love them and find absorbing occupation in studying their ways.

Two races of hive bees are common here, though none are native: German, or black, and Italian. All the books and magazines as well as bee-lovers unhesitatingly recommend the latter as the more good-tempered, being at the same time hardy, prolific, and industrious. Good hybrids, that is, a mixture of black and Italian blood, may do almost as well as pure stock, but pure-bred queens are a necessity to keep the grade up. When you hear of people who gather bees by handfuls into aprons or baskets you may be sure that those concerned are all thoroughbreds.

If there are no bees for sale near by, the best plan is to order from a dealer in the spring what is known as a nucleus. This is a very small colony, about a quart of bees (three thousand two hundred), should be accompanied by a tested queen, and housed in a modern hive with three frames of comb. The queen sets to work laying eggs in the cells, new frames should be added as needed, and if pollen and nectar are plentiful the hive will soon be full of busy young workers. By fall the frames should be stored with the honey needed for the winter.

Your first expense after securing a colony will not be for "mixed grain" or "middlings," but for a smoker, a bee veil and gloves, extra hives for your swarms, honey sections, and other supplies. Don't buy everything that looks useful or is highly recommended by the salesman. Maybe he never saw a bee. Sometimes an old spoon or other cheap utensil can be made into a more useful tool than the one he wants fifty cents for.

The following list includes the supplies you are pretty sure to need the first year:

One colony of bees, in an up-to-date though simply constructed hive. On the whole, the ten-frame hive seems to me to have advantages over a smaller one. A deep telescope cover gives room for two supers on top at once. The only advantage in the chaff hives seems to be that winter protection is not needed for bees housed in them. The obvious disadvantage is their greater cost, size, and weight. Single walled hives are so easily made weatherproof, (see Wintering) that the expense of the chaff hive is not necessary.

Three extra hives.

Two supers; four super covers.

Two to five hundred section boxes for comb honey. You will not need very many of these the first year, but they come cheaper in larger lots.

One smoker. Of the several kinds offered, you may safely choose the one that you have seen used successfully.

One pair bee gloves; one bee veil.

One pound brood foundation, for the new swarms to begin on.

Two pounds thin super-foundation for starters in the honey sections.

One foundation fastener. One experienced bee-keeper tells me that he likes the "Dewey" best. Others prefer the "Daisy."

One Porter bee escape.

One bee brush.

One queen and drone trap. The new Alley trap is made with bars instead of perforated zinc, and works better.

A bee-keeper's guide. (See list of books in the appendix.)

Complete directions for putting together the hives, etc., should accompany the filled order, and the novice should work with one eye on the printed page. A good book on bee-keeping should be included in the beginner's order. Those recommended in the book list in the appendix are all good books for beginners.

BEES AS WAGE EARNERS

Average American boys and girls are a pretty sensible crowd and they don't expect to get much for nothing. If they make money they like to see "for value received" written on it. They may get enthusiastic over the work they undertake, but there is a difference between enthusiasm and gush. Enthusiasm helps you do the hard part of your job. Gush only makes you ridiculous. Is there anything worth doing that doesn't take time and work? The honey-producing business is no exception. But the people who keep bees like their job. "Yes," they say, "it takes thought and energy and some hard work, but it is such fun." The "little people" are so interesting that you forget that it is work. Compared to "butter money," "egg money," and "fruit money," the women of the household regard "honey money" as "easy."

How much can you count on your bees earning? General statements will give you some idea. You may do better or not so well as the average. A good colony ought to turn out thirty or forty pounds of comb honey a year beside what they need for winter, which is fifteen or twenty-five pounds if wintered in a cellar, twenty-five or thirty-five pounds if wintered outdoors.

The best market for honey is the home market, and the price is the best. You get the commission man's profit and the retailer's profit as well as the grower's. The last honey I bought was twenty-five cents a pound. If I bought your thirty pounds at that price you can see for yourself what you would get per hive. The new swarms add to your assets and you are out nothing except for supplies. Compare this with the expense of going into chicken or squab raising. The following is quoted from a good authority: "Two dollars a year clear profit per hive is the very lowest estimate and twenty to thirty hives infringe very little on one's time. This many colonies may easily be managed by a woman or by the younger members of the family."

The United States has to import two and a half million pounds of honey annually, and a half million pounds of beeswax. Will not our bees work just as cheaply as those in foreign countries? Let us have more bee-keepers.

HIVES

Little flat-topped white houses varying in height, standing under the trees in back yards are not an unfamiliar sight to most of us. We say as we pass on the road, "Those people keep bees," and our mouths begin to water. But what do the hives look like inside? They are not mere hollow boxes. Wild bees are content with a hollow tree, but modern domesticated bees require a special kind of furniture.

The first eaters of honey were simply robbers of the wild bees. When man began to domesticate bees, and that was so long ago that we cannot stop to count the centuries, there came to be two sides to the bargain. In return for a share in their stores he kept them in clean quarters, provided abundant pasture, protected them from their enemies and from the weather. The old-fashioned hives were very picturesque affairs; you see them in pictures, and when you travel in Europe you may see them still in use. Those skeps do not encourage doing much with the bees or knowing what is going on in the dark hive. I wonder how the folks ever got any honey to eat. The modern bee-keeper wants to open his hive for a good many reasons. He not only wants honey when the bees have an over-supply, but he wants to know what is doing. He wants to know if his expensive queen is doing her duty; he wants to know if too many young queens are being developed; he wants to know if any diseases or other enemies are present. He therefore must have a hive that permits frequent and minute inspection of its interior.

"But," said one boy, "I don't intend to open my hives and get stung all over." Now who expects to get stung all over? There's no denying that bees sometimes sting, cats often scratch, dogs sometimes bite, goats butt, cows hook, horses kick, and so on. Some method of self-defence is their right, and I doubt if we should find bees so interesting if they did not carry concealed weapons. We certainly respect their rights as we might not if they were defenceless. A bee sting is uncomfortable while it lasts, but people afraid of bees get very little sympathy from me. Rest assured that you will open your hives often and the less said about being stung the better.

Modern hive, showing parts in their correct order

If possible examine at a dealer's or at some apiary an empty hive. Learn the uses and names of the parts. The bottom board represents the foundation, the brood chamber is the living room, and the supers are the attic store rooms. The flat cover is the rain-proof roof. The hive must be a good home for the bees and easily handled by the operator. The bottom board should not rest directly on the ground because of dampness, which rots the wood and is not good for the bees. Some use hive stands, others set the hives on a platform, supported by wooden blocks or on tiles as illustrated here.

Beehives, like cottages nowadays, must have all the modern conveniences, and up-to-date furniture. In the brood chamber there are movable frames into which the bees build the combs where the young are reared. With the introduction of these movable frames by Langstroth, fifty years ago, a new era in bee culture began. The furniture of the second-story rooms consists of rows of little section boxes, empty at first, but ready to be stored with comb honey. When nectar is plentiful and the brood-chambers are full to overflowing with honey, the workers are quick to take the hint and begin to store their surplus in the section boxes.

You will notice that there is just one entrance to the hive. This front door is sacred to the occupants. When going among his hives, the bee-keeper who knows his place keeps to the rear. If you respect their privacy to this extent, the bees will come out in front, rise, and sail off above your head without taking the slightest notice of you.

WHAT GOES ON IN THE BROOD CHAMBER?

Bees are the most public-spirited of creatures. They devote their time to the service of their colony. Their industries are all directed towards one end: the increase of the number of bees in the world. When the hive gets too full of bees, the colony divides and a "swarm" is the result. Thus two colonies are established where there was but one, and the number of individuals goes on increasing twice as fast.

The honey bee, like its wild cousin the bumble bee, passes through four changes of form during its development. These are the egg, the larva, the pupa, and the adult. The queen is no ruler, but she is the mother-bee, and upon her depends the future of the bee colony. Dealers in bees rear some of her young before selling each queen, in order to be sure that she has mated with a pure-blooded drone. These are called tested queens. Their progeny can be depended upon to possess the good qualities of both parents. If the eggs of fine Italian queens develop into nervous, lazy, black-coated, and black-tempered workers, you may safely say, "They take after their father's family." The egg-laying begins in the spring and at the height of honey harvest the queen bee may lay as many as three thousand eggs every day. She hurries over the open comb inserting her body into the empty cells, and leaves an egg stuck fast at the bottom of each.

The worker bees grow from egg to maturity in small, hexagonal, or worker cells. Three or four days in the egg, six days as a footless grub or larva floating serenely in a tiny well of liquid food supplied her by the nurse bees, twelve days wrapped in a silk coverlet of her own spinning, the young worker bee passes through her four stages of growth. At the end of her three weeks some inner impulse tells her to be up and doing, and she obeys the stern call. She cuts a hole in the cap of her cell, sheds her skin for the last time (she did this five or six times during the larval or growing stage), and comes forth. It takes her about one day to dry her "feathers," adjust herself to her environment, and "get busy." She finds many little open wells of unsealed honey, and as nobody pays any attention to her she drinks her fill. A round of duties await her, and she goes at them without being told how. She must do nursing, comb-building, cell-capping, and general housework, and all without the least training. After about a week of this, the young worker goes out to play, and then to work. She is young, inexperienced, and self-conceited, and tries to call attention to herself like any vain young miss. When she brings in her first load of pollen she fairly swaggers with importance. Mr. Root says, "Her first load of pollen is just what the first pair of pants is to a boy baby."

When a bee is a month old, she is in the prime of life. Three or four months of hard work in summer means old age for the workers, but in the bee colony there is no such thing as an old ladies' home. With their wings worn to stumps, their once velvety backs rubbed shiny, they may be seen creeping away from the hive to die, having given their very lives in willing and faithful service of the commonwealth.

Of the unexplained wonders of the development of queens and drones, the mystery of the laying workers, and the other many and varied activities of the hive, we cannot tell much in detail here. Your own book on bee-keeping and larger books of reference will be mines of information. But there are undiscovered North Poles in the bee world, and the young bee-keepers of to-day may be the Greeleys and the Pearys and the Shackletons of this new-old science.

SWARMING

Did you ever wonder why bees swarm? They have no regular dates for doing things. Although they have been known to swarm in May, and even in April, you are not likely to get a swarm before June. Early swarms are the most valuable, therefore you should be ready, for bees are like time and tide. Have the hive fitted with frames and keep it in a cool place. Bees swarm to increase the number of colonies. The date of swarming depends on local conditions and nobody can tell but the bees themselves, and they won't, what these conditions are exactly. If there are too many bees, too much honey stored, thousands of workers hatching daily, many young queens ready to emerge, the bees are likely to swarm. The bee-keeper is on the lookout after he knows the signs and can guess pretty shrewdly whether the swarm will be out in a few days or later. He gets his apparatus together and his hives ready. Bees often "hang out" on the outside of the hive, and we used to think that was a "sure sign," but it often fails.

It is the old queen that leaves the hive, but the bees that go out with her are a mixture of young and old ones. No one knows how the decision is made as to who shall go and who shall stay behind, but there is never any indecision in the community that we can reckon with.

Some hot Sunday you will be roused from your book by the excited cry: "The bees! Look, there they go! The air's full of them. They're swarming. I'll bet they get away. No, they're settling." Meantime, if you are the boy who owns the bees, you are getting ready to hive your first swarm.

It's no joke, for thrills will be chasing up your spine, and if you didn't have so much to do you would be as excited as the rest. But success may depend on your keeping cool. You have probably already instructed the family in modern methods so that no one will be raising a din by beating an old wash boiler, etc. If you have a garden hose handy, let some one play a fine spray on the whirling bees. Nothing brings them to time more quickly. When the bees have settled, place the hive conveniently near them, with a sheet or hive cover in front. Cut the branch on which the bees are clustered and shake them off into or in front of the hive. If well disposed they will go in promptly.

If high trees and no shrubbery is the rule in the vicinity of your hives, you will probably need your long-handled swarm-catcher. Or you will very soon begin the practice of clipping the wings of your queens. When the clipped queen brings out a swarm she hops about near the hive. She may climb into a shrub if one is near by. Why not provide her with a still more convenient forked stick as some bee-keepers do? She climbs up this, calls her family together, and you do the rest. You may prefer to capture the queen in your little queen trap, and place her at the entrance to a new hive which you should place on the stand where the old hive was. The bees will return to their old location when they discover that the queen is not with them. The new hive will receive them and the queen when released will go in with her family. If the bees refuse to stay in the new hive, it may be because the hive is too hot. Prop up both hive and cover to allow extra ventilation.

MAKING APPARATUS

While I do not advise any amateur bee-keeper to try to construct his own hives and frames, I do think it is a fine idea to begin right away to study how to improve the appliances now in use. You will have to discard many of your own ideas as useless when you come to try to apply them to practical use. There are lots of patented appliances for sale that make an experienced bee-keeper smile. He undoubtedly knows a clever boy at home who can rig up a home-made contraption that will cost nothing at all, and do the work better than the expensive tool. A boy that keeps bees will find a knowledge of tools and wood-working of great advantage to him, and a girl's deft fingers will know how to put materials together that a professional would never think of.

In this connection I will here describe a swarm-catcher, devised by a practical bee-keeper many years ago and recommended by an expert in Apiculture of the United States Department of Agriculture. The construction is so simple that I believe I could make one myself! Though home-made, it is interesting to see how thoroughly scientific are the essential features of this device, all based on a knowledge of bee instincts.

This description is adapted from an article by Dr. B. N. Gates in one of the annual reports of the Maryland Bee-Keepers' Association. The accompanying drawing was made from a picture of the swarm-catcher in the same report. The apparatus consists of a box with one end open and supported on a pole. The materials required are nails, a large wire hook, some thin boards, and two or three poles of different lengths. A saw, a bit and brace, and a hammer are the only tools required for making it.

Swarm-catcher that works like magic. Any handy boy can make it

It is bee nature to try to get into some small hole. To take advantage of this instinct the five sides of the swarm-catcher are perforated with holes about one half an inch in diameter. While the framework of the box should be light, it should also be strong and the materials good so that the swarm-catcher will last for years.

A convenient size has been found to be eight by eight by sixteen. A hole to fit the size of the poles should be bored in the centre of the top and one at the bottom. The big wire hook should be screwed into the top far enough from the centre so that it will not be interfered with by the projecting end of the pole. A slot should be cut lengthwise of the top, sufficiently large to allow a frame of honey-comb to be put in so that it hangs down inside to attract the bees. This honey bait is essential to the successful working of the swarm-catcher. You can devise other ways of suspending it to the top inside of the box. It is thought that a coat of green paint on the outside and one of black on the inside induces the bees to enter the box more readily.

A swarm-catcher like this cuts out all the loss of time and danger of losing a valuable swarm of bees while preparations to hive them are going on. And you can practically catch a swarm anywhere with this device. If they light on a stone wall, a tree trunk, or on the ground, you simply brush a pint or so of them into the box, stick the sharp lower end of the pole into the ground near by, and go off and leave them to go in at their leisure. A whiff or so of smoke is needed when you first go up before beginning to wield the brush.

For swarms hanging in the ordinary way from limbs of trees or vines, while the bees are clustering, take a frame from one of the hives and hang it in the swarm-catcher. It is best to take a comb containing developing brood and some honey. This forms a well-nigh irresistible lure for the swarming bees. One look at the pendant mass of bees will tell you what length of pole you need in the box. Put on your veil and gloves and hoist the box up into the tree. Put the open end of the box up against the mass of bees and get as many of them into it or onto it as possible. Catch the branch with the hook on the box and give it a vigorous shaking. This unsettles the rest of the bees and they will be attracted instinctively to follow the rest into the box where the brood cells are. Once the bees are safely clustered in and on the box there is no rush about hiving them. They are safe to be left hanging by the hook within ten feet or so of their original clustering place or with the pole stuck in the ground near by. They are secure there for hours, even for days, but one usually has time to hive them the same day. The swarm should not be left in the hot sun.

Hiving is done in the usual way. After the hive is prepared with combs or foundation, shake the bees from the swarm-catcher either into or in front of the hive. With large swarms it is advisable to prop the hive body up slightly from the bottom board to enlarge the entrance. The "marching in" is a wonderful sight.

An established colony of bees cannot be moved five feet without causing them confusion. Before the newly hived bees have had time to locate themselves and set to work at honey gathering, the hive should be moved to its permanent location. It is not safe to delay longer than twilight of the day they are hived. When once they get a location fixed they return to it and are lost.

If they refuse to be reconciled in a new hive, put in a frame of young brood from some other hive and try them again. They seldom desert an obvious duty like the caring for young.

OPENING THE HIVE

The modern art of bee-keeping was made possible by the invention of the hive with movable frames. Some of the many reasons for opening the hive are:

1. To take off honey.

2. To see if enough honey has been stored for winter.

3. To find the queen.

4. To introduce a new queen.

5. To examine the brood.

Before opening the hive know just what you are going to look for. Get the smoker well going; shavings, punk, excelsior, or chips crowded in make a good smudge; you want much smoke and little fire. Put on your bee veil. For a greeting, blow a little smoke in at the entrance of the hive you are going to open. Loosen the cover which you will find to be glued tight with propolis by the bees. A dull putty knife or screw-driver is a good tool for this job. As fast as you unseal the cracks, blow smoke into them. At this juncture it is well to close the hive for a few minutes to give the bees time to "think it over." The better the grade of bees the less smoke is required. Take your time. Keep your nerve steady and the smoker handy. Loosen the frames and take them out one by one. In order to see what is going on in the frames you must clear off the bees. Do this in such a way that you will not endanger the queen if she should be on the frame. Poke the bees off so that they fall bewildered back into the hive. Set the frame down against the outside of the hive and take out another.

There are cells of three sizes in the brood combs. Queen cells are large, standing out from the surface of the comb quite prominently. The drone and worker closely resemble one another, but the drone cells are the larger. Honey is stored in both drone and worker cells. If you wish to destroy the queen cells to prevent swarming you will find it a ticklish job, even with a sharp, slender knife, not to ruin a lot of comb.

Drone and queen trap at hive entrance

It is often important to locate the queen. If you wish to clip her wings, find her you must. She is usually near the middle of the hive, surrounded by her court, a rosette of workers. She is quite different in shape from the workers. It is well to study her picture before going to look for her. A queen's wings are not much to cut, but you will need a steady nerve if you do it free hand. Many devices are to be had to make the operation less difficult and to insure safety to the rest of the queen. The danger is all to her, for although she is armed she will not sting you. She reserves her sting for some rival in her own class.

Harvesting any crop has interesting features, but nothing has the peculiar charm of taking off honey. Loosen the cover, puff in a little smoke, lift the cover, then the whole super off. Put on a new super and replace the cover. Have your bee brush ready and as you lift the fitted sections out of the super, brush the bees that cling to them down to the entrance to the hive. This is the old way and is fraught with dangers. Moreover, the bees may regard one robbery as sufficient excuse for another. Robbery is a serious matter in the apiary. The modern way is to use the Porter bee-escape. This device obviates all the difficulties and once you have "got the hang of it," you will have no further trouble getting honey from your hives.

STINGS: PREVENTION AND CURE

The bee mittens, the veil, and the smoker are all preventive measures. A good deal depends on the way you behave when working with bees. If you are nervous and anxious you probably will act that way and the bees have a way of understanding and are likely to find you.

Remove the sting by a scraping motion with a knife blade or some hive tool you happen to have handy. If you use the thumb and finger you squeeze the tiny bulb at the outer end of the sting, and inject the poison into your blood.

Experts have little or no faith in cures which are rubbed on. They underestimate the comfort one gets "doing something" for a spot that hurts so mighty bad. So go ahead and put on alcohol or baking soda or ammonia; you can't do a bit of harm that way. In the meantime nature is busy neutralizing the acid the bee punished you with.

Mrs. Comstock, in "How to Keep Bees," gives these maxims for opening the hive:

Have the smoker ready to give forth a good volume of smoke.

Use the smoker to scare the bees rather than to punish them.

Do not stand in front of the hive lest the bees passing out and in take umbrage.

Be careful not to drop any implements with which you are working; take hold of all things firmly.

Move steadily and not nervously.

Do not run if frightened, for the bees understand what running away means as well as you do.

If the bees attack you, move slowly away, smoking them off as you go.

If a bee annoys you by her threatening attitude for some time, kill her ruthlessly.

WINTERING

Before buying your hives you must decide where your bees are to winter. If you have a suitable shelter you can use the ordinary hives; but if your bees are to winter outside, you may decide that you want the great chaff-packed, double hives. As the summer wanes every hive must be examined to make sure that the colony is strong and that the supply of honey is not short. If the season has been a bad one for flowers, or if the region provides few blossoming fields it may be necessary to feed the bees. Special directions are needed and any bee book will supply them. A strong swarm, supplied with twenty-five pounds to thirty-five pounds of honey, will winter without serious loss in a chaff hive. Other protection than that afforded by a good windbreak is unnecessary. In our furnace-heated houses no part of the cellar is cool enough all the time for the bees. The temperature should not go above forty-eight degrees Fahr., nor below forty degrees; forty-three degrees is considered just right. Sudden changes are bad for bees.

Beehive covered with newspapers and waterproof paper for wintering outdoors

Many experienced bee-keepers winter their colonies successfully outdoors with home-made protection. The ordinary hives, with the covers on but with the supers off, of course, are put into winter quarters in this way: Fold seven or eight thicknesses of newspaper over the top of the cover and sides. Make a neat job of this as if you intended to send the box by mail. Use a few tacks if needed. Over this fold a large piece of tar or other waterproof paper. There is a right way to fold the ends of this outer wrapper, and a wrong way. The illustration shows the right way. If the paper is brought down from the top first and round the ends from the sides over that (the wrong way), pockets will be formed which hold snow and water. Nail thin pieces of wood on to hold the folds securely. The entrance to the hive should not be closed as bees come out more or less on warm days in winter. Be sure that the entrance is always free from dead bees.

Another way to protect hives from the cold when wintering outside is to construct a packing case three and a half inches bigger in all dimensions than the hive. Set one of these down over each hive and pack the space between hive and case with any kind of dry packing material, such as shavings, sawdust, cork chips, dry leaves. Any of these materials used wet would do more harm than good. Some sort of shelf or projection should be so placed over the entrance as to keep it open as with other forms of winter protection.

FEEDING

In the spring, bees need water. If the tree blossoms are late in coming out, sirup is often fed to the bees to give them a start. Patented feeding devices are not necessary. A flat tin pan works admirably. The best sirup for all purposes is plain granulated sugar and water, made cold. Stir in all the sugar that the water will hold. Fill the feeding pan with excelsior first, then sirup, and place it in the super. Little ladders leading up to the top of the pan will help the bees get at the sirup.

Feeding is also practised in the fall if the amount of stored honey is short. The feeding of honey is likely to start the bees to robbing. Under no circumstances should "market" honey be fed to bees. Diseases are transmitted by this practice.

PLANTS THAT FURNISH HONEY OR POLLEN OR BOTH

gill-over-the-ground elm }

shadbush maple }

tulip tree dandelion } spring.

willow hawthorn }

grape red bud }

sorrel fruit trees }

clovers (cultivated) fig-wort }

alfalfa locust }

wild sweet clover basswood }

raspberry catnip } summer.

bee-balm horse mint }

blueberry mustard }

chestnut sage }

corn sumach }

buckwheat smartweed }

spider flower milk-weed }

sunflowers golden-rod } fall.

fireweed aster }

rape }

THE PRODUCTS OF THE HIVE

Besides honey, bees make use of wax to construct combs, bee-bread for larv? food, and propolis for glue. If you think the bees gather honey from the flowers you are greatly mistaken. Nobody knows yet quite how honey is made. Chemists say that it has in it water, grape sugar, a little formic acid, some mineral matter, albuminoids, and essential oils. But this list leaves us little the wiser. No chemist has been able to combine these materials into honey. The nectar gathered by bees passes directly into a receptacle, the honey-sack or honey-stomach, which is used for that purpose only. It does not go the same road as the bee's food. The notion that bees swallow the nectar and then unswallow it is as erroneous as it is unappetizing. The flavour, body, and colour of honey depend on the source of the nectar, the age, the amount of chemical change wrought by the bees, and the completeness of the ripening process which goes on in the hive before the cells are capped. Honey is a very wholesome sweet, far more easily digested than cane or grape sugar.

If the making of honey is mysterious, what can we say of wax production? In the height of the honey season we can watch the bees making wax through a glass-sided hive. Mrs. Comstock says: "A certain number of self-elected citizens gorge themselves with honey and hang up in chains or curtains, each bee clinging by her front feet to the hind feet of the one above her, like Japanese acrobats; and there they remain sometimes for two days until the wax scales appear pushed out from every pocket." Sometimes a honey-and pollen-laden bee will come home from pasture with flakes of wax exuding from the wax plates on her abdomen. But this happens only when wax is needed for comb making. At other times no amount of honey gorging will produce a scrap of wax. Does this not hint at mystery and something higher than mere intelligence?

You would think in such a perfectly organized community there would be something like specialization. Such appears not to be the case. All the workers seem to do all the different kinds of things. Let us say a bee goes out and gets a load of honey the first thing in the morning. When she comes in she goes to the comb to deposit her honey, then to the brood cells where she combs the pollen off her legs into a cell where it is stored to feed the young bees later. Perhaps she sees in passing some cells which need capping, does that, then away to gorge herself with honey and make wax, then builds her own or her neighbour's wax onto the comb. If the day is hot it may occur to her and a thousand others to construct a living fan and keep the air stirring inside the hive by waving their wings. In a system like this there is no resting, no play, no shirking, no specializing. There is always work to do and always somebody doing it with a will in the perfect socialism.

Many boys and girls of these days are fortunate in having had at school an observation hive. No bee-keeper will be long without one if he has any curiosity about what is going on in the dark hive, or if he is ambitious to solve some of the mysteries. An ordinary hive can be made into a good observation hive by putting a pane of glass in the sides and top. There should be hinged doors to fit tightly over the glass. A two-frame hive devised by Prof. V. L. Kellogg has both sides of glass so that the whole domestic economy of the bee family can readily be observed.

DISEASES AND ENEMIES

You will not be in the bee business long before you learn that bees have diseases and enemies. In fact, it is better to face that fact at the beginning and learn how to recognize and combat the troubles. Carelessness along this line is inexcusable and will surely cause failure. Several states have official inspectors whose business it is to know bee diseases and methods of controlling them. He is required to inspect apiaries where diseases are suspected, and the best thing to do is to interest him in your work and get all the help from him you can. An ounce of prevention will save a pound of cure, every time.

If there is a Bee-Keepers' Association in your county, by all means join it and help make it a live, active organization. The United States Department of Agriculture can give you much needed information as to who the men are in your locality who are officers in the associations and official inspectors.

MARKETING HONEY

The best honey market is the home market as I have said. You may have to work up a demand in your neighbourhood and there are many ways to do this which ingenious boys and girls will devise. Most of us, if we can afford to use honey at all, know it only as a "spread" for hot biscuits or griddle cakes. But not every one knows that honey is a very much more wholesome sweet than cane sugar. Many people cannot eat sugar at all, but find honey does not cause indigestion. If you could persuade your neighbours to buy your honey for their children instead of candy, "all-day-suckers" coloured with cheap dyes, and sirups made of nobody knows what, you would be doing something worth while.

Honey is used in cooking too, in many ways. Get your mother or sister interested in trying some receipts in which honey takes the place of sugar. If you make a success of this you can get other people to making honey cakes, thus creating a demand for your product.

One enterprising chap made a great success by first going from house to house and giving away samples of his honey. He also left a self-addressed postal card with prices and order blank printed on one side, and nine out of ten of the people he called on sent orders. It seemed a pity to waste a good postal card and everybody likes to help a bright boy along; and beside they wanted the honey! It might be well to have a little pamphlet telling about your honey and of the many uses it may be put to, with a receipt for honey cake, perhaps. You will get a reputation, if you try, for pure products, neat packages and courteous dealings. As your output increases from year to year your market will grow, until you, like the boy we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, have a business worth at least a thousand dollars.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH HONEY BEES

It was just by chance that I ever got started in keeping bees. There were several boys about my size in the neighbourhood at my home and we used to go swimming and play ball together. One fine spring day a few of us were walking down the road toward the swimming pool when we found a swarm of bees on a fence post. One of the fellows knew how to hive the swarm, so we got a box from the store and watched while he got the bees into it. It was the first time that I had seen a swarm hived and the performance proved very interesting to me.

I bought that swarm in the old box for seventy-five cents, very well satisfied with the bargain, for of course the box would be full of honey in a short time!

The colony was placed upon a bench in the front yard. One night the old bull got out and upset the bench. The bees were ready to sting anything next day. I bundled up until I was sting proof and then got them straightened up. The combs were broken which gave the bees a setback from which they did not recover. I did not get any honey from them and they died out in the winter.

An old bee-keeper who lived near us gave me two swarms the next spring. One of them left the hive and flew to the woods and the other was weak and died. It began to seem as though bees were hard to keep. I got a book called "A B C of Bee Culture," and read it. I soon learned that bees should be kept in movable frame hives so they could be easily handled.

I had no bees now, but, although we were laughed at, my father and I entered into a partnership. He furnished the hives and implements and I furnished the bees and labour. We were to divide profits equally. We bought two hives, a smoker, and a bee veil. I caught one swarm in the woods and bought another. They were both late swarms and died in the winter.

Success was still far off and things did not look very bright, but I had learned how not to do lots of things. The two hives we had were not the best, so we sold them and bought five of a different kind for the next spring. The outlay was large and no profits, but I was determined to succeed.

In the spring I caught a swarm early in the season and it made a few pounds of surplus honey which we used at home. During the latter part of August my chum and I were out squirrel hunting and he found a swarm that had built combs on the limb of a large tree. We got it into a hive and I bought his share of the swarm. This colony needed feeding, so I fed it on sugar and water. Both colonies lived through the winter and made a strong start in the spring. Each gave a swarm and I caught both.

The book and the old bee-keeper taught me that Italian bees were better than the wild bees, so I invested in two Italian queens which I got by mail from a queen breeder. I killed the old queens in two of the colonies and introduced the new ones. They did some good work that summer and lived through the winter. The next spring I had two colonies of black or wild bees and two of Italians. The blacks together made about twenty pounds of surplus honey, while the two Italians made nearly two hundred pounds. This showed me that there was a great difference in bees. Each colony swarmed once, making eight in all.

We had now made a success and the business was on a good footing even after four years of failure. That last honey crop was worth about thirty dollars, and the bees and hives were worth about forty-five dollars. We were encouraged.

That fall I was sixteen years old and had decided to go to college. The president of the agricultural college in this state offered me a chance to work my way through college by taking charge of the bees on the college farm. I gladly accepted it and sold my bees at home.

Life at college was very different from home life, but the bees always furnished a source of pleasure and recreation during my spare moments on week days and on Saturdays. In the summer months I either worked with the government bee-men or for the college.

The bees have not only given me lots of pleasure, but they have made it possible for me to pay my entire tuition and expenses for five years at college. Besides studying and attending to my bees, I have had time for much other fun, and this year I made the 'varsity football team and played in every game.

Some people think that the honey is not worth the stings, but my advice is to get a colony and try your hand.

Sydney S. Stabbler

HOW I EARNED TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS

I had helped with the bees more or less all my life, so that I already knew how to handle them when my high school course was broken into by illness and I had an enforced vacation of one year and a half. I was able at this time to devote to the bees one full season, that is, from April through July.

My father allowed me the use of bees, hives, combs, etc., for queen rearing. The queens I sold for seventy-five cents and one dollar each, according to the grade. To my father I furnished one hundred queens at the reduced price of fifty cents each as rent for the bees, hives, etc. I had about ninety nuclei of two frames each. During the swarming season I used a good many natural cells from the better colonies. Later I used artificial, dipped cells which I made myself. In the latter case I took larv? from the very best queens in the apiary and placed the cells in queenless colonies to be developed, or sometimes in colonies which were superseding their queens. When the cells were nearly ready to hatch they were placed in the nuclei where the young queens remained until they commenced laying, when they were ready for sale.

Altogether I made a little over one hundred dollars that season. I was then eighteen years old and determined to go to college. Two years later I began my studies at the University of California, working for my board in a private family and drawing from the one hundred dollars for incidentals. Clothing I had received at home and had made myself for the most part.

The San Francisco earthquake occurred on the eighteenth of April, in the spring of my freshman year, and college was closed immediately, so that I was able to enter again into the queen rearing business. That season I sent out advertising cards to the members of the California Bee-Keepers' Association and sold nearly all my queens to them. The financial result was nearly the same as for the former season.

So in all I made about two hundred dollars, which paid for the incidentals during three years of my college career which is as far as I have gone. By "incidentals" I mean books, paper, and such necessities, also subscriptions to the college daily paper, class and association dues, tickets to college jinks, theatricals, games, etc. I also spent a good deal for tickets to concerts, plays, etc., as that was my first opportunity to hear the great musicians and actors and I considered that a part of my education.

Flora McIntyre

PROFITS OF BEE-KEEPING

I have been asked to tell something of my early experiences as a bee-keeper, for boys and girls who may become interested in this very fascinating, and, I may say at the same time, profitable, pursuit.

I think it may be said of bee-keeping as sailors say of seafaring-once a bee-keeper always a bee-keeper.

I should like to tell you in a few words what can be expected from a dozen and a half hives of bees with an average of one and one half days a week spent in the apiary. I believe really, though, that when I began keeping bees it was not because I expected to make much money. The whole story of the bee life, as read from different books which I secured after becoming interested, was so wonderful and fascinating that I could hardly wait until spring so that I might study the two hives acquired through the winter. That first spring and summer there were only those old box hives, which could not be opened for inside study, and all observations had to be confined to watching the bees from the outside. The next summer some modern hives that could be taken apart and every nook and corner laid open to observation were bought. In the fall I was very fortunate in securing eighteen colonies of bees at an auction sale, paying therefor only fifty cents a colony, much to my satisfaction and my neighbours' amusement. Most of the hives were frame, but of an undesirable sort of frame. The next summer these colonies were transferred to up-to-date hives. That summer, and for the next succeeding six summers, these colonies did not fail to yield on an average about seventy dollars' worth of honey and wax. Counting out winter losses the number of colonies per year would average twelve, the number of pounds of honey about three hundred and seventy-five, worth twenty cents a pound. The bees received only a small part of my time each day.

Later, when a student at the Ohio State University, as manager of the apiary there, about the same results were obtained, so that an average of about five dollars a hive is a conservative estimate. If one begins in a small way, in a few years he should be able to manage one hundred colonies. But it should be remembered that the yield per hive may decrease somewhat as the number of colonies increases, because of the danger of launching in the business on a large scale. The best insurance against loss is a thorough study and understanding of all the details by the practice of bee-keeping on a small scale for a term of years first.

I may say that the income from the bees aided not a little in helping me through college, and I may say, also, without exaggeration that this interest in bees by one enthusiastic student helped in no small degree toward the inauguration of a course in bee-keeping at our own Ohio State University. To make the story complete I think I should add that the writer of this article is at present engaged as assistant in apiculture, doing experimental work in apiculture in the government apiaries at Washington, D. C.

There is opportunity for those who wish to take up some problem relating to apiculture as a subject of investigation, and the agricultural colleges and experiment stations will no doubt in the future give more and more attention to the investigation of problems related to this interesting and profitable pursuit.

Arthur H. McCray

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