BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
After many years' experience I have found that by wearing a suit of white cotton material such as painters wear, consisting of overallsHow to keep be less for profit and jumper, I am less liable to be stung than when I wear dark woollen clothes. Whether it is because they detect the animal scent in the woollen goods, or have a natural aversion to black, I am not able to say, but I do know that bees are more gentle and docile when I wear the light suit in preference to the dark.
I was visiting a few years ago the large apiary of Mr. Alexander at Delanson, New York. He had a large flock of white wyandotte hens, which would wander all day among the hives, picking up drones. In the flock was one single black minorca hen, and strange to say the bees never troubled the white fowls at all, but again and again they would drive the black hen from their midst, which seemed to prove that they have a hatred for black.
"What hive shall I use?" is a question that is frequently asked, and its answer is the question, "What do you intend to produce, comb or extracted honey?"
If you intend to produce comb honey, by all means adopt a hive having a shallow brood
nest, as the shallow brood nest compels the bees to put the surplus up in the supers just where you want it, and not so much in the frames of the brood nest, which they are sure to do with the hives of regular depth.
The brood nest is the hive body proper, in which the bees rear their brood, and must not be confused with the super or surplus chambers that are put on top of it at the beginning of the honey flow. In the case of bees in a comb-producing hive they are sintered in the brood body and the surplus supers are set away for the next season, as will be described later. At the beginning of the honey flow, the supers containing the little section boxes are set over the brood nest; each of these little boxes holds about a pound of honey, and there are usually twenty-four of them in a super chamber.
If comb honey is desired, purchase the shallow brood nest hive such as the Danzenbaker hive, or other shallow hive, of which a number of different kinds are on the market. Not
## Chapter 5 How to quiet and handle bees -- How to avoid stings -- remedies
DES are not naturally vicious, as many suppose, but on the contrary are the most docile of creatures if we will but conform to their desires, and refrain from doing those things that irritate them.
Judging from the rough methods used by careless and ignorant beekeepers, it is surprising that stinging is not more frequent.
I have worked with my pets day after day without receiving a single sting, and this is due, not to the popular notion that bees know their keeper, but rather because I know there are some things the bees will not tolerate, such as jarring their hives, or mashing bees in taking out the frames, and it is these things I avoid.
Bees also detect the odor of a horse or stable, so that I am careful to wash my hands thoroughly and change my clothing after driving a horse, and such a simple matter as this has wrought a remarkable change in the temper of the bees. I must confess that there have been times when in my eagerness to rush the work I have been careless, and in every instance the result has been a number of stings, but it has been entirely my own fault.
The ease with which some beekeepers open their hives and work among the bees has led a great many people to suppose that there was an acquaintance between the beekeeper and his pets, but there is absolutely no truth whatever in this belief. It seems strange, but somehow the confident and fearless manner in which the experienced beekeeper goes among the bees seems to awe them, whereas a timid person by his every move seems to make the bees aware of the fact that he fears them, and they are not slow to act when once this notion possesses them.
hOW TO KEEP BEES FOR PROFIT
frame from the brood nest with all adhering bees, and as the bees, if Italians, are very quiet, we can take our time in looking for the queen, for she is not hard to find. If she is not on the first frame, place it end up on the grass, letting it rest against the side of the hive while we remove another and look for her on it.
It may take a little more time to be careful so as not to mash any bees, and incidentally we might say that careless and too rapid handling not only mashes worker bees but often results in crushing a valuable queen; but in the end carefulness pays, as it makes the bees more gentle, and the next time we open their hives they seem to know that we mean them no harm.
One day I was examining a colony to find its queen in such a hurry that I mashed a number of bees, with the result that the colony was thrown into an uproar, and for days afterward every time I passed the hive the bees would rush out to sting me, while usually it was the gentlest colony in the yard.
## How to quiet and handle bees
There is more danger of mashing bees when putting back the frames than when removing them; but a little time will enable us to accomplish it perfectly, and then working among our bees will be a positive delight.
If there are several colonies to be examined, it is a good plan to go down the line and smoke several of them before opening them, and by the time we get to the last one in the line we will find the first in splendid temper.
It may take the novice a couple of weeks to gain confidence in himself, but after he has learned the knack of the thing, as he will in an incredibly short time by actual work among the bees, he will be able to look through as many as forty or fifty hives in a single afternoon without slighting any.
As the beginner gains confidence he will discard his gloves, as he will find that in certain kinds of work, such as queen-raising, where eggs are to be grafted, etc., he can work much better barehanded than otherwise. He must not be surprised, however, if his
lands should receive an occasional sting, and the first few stings may cause a slight swelling; but, as his system becomes used to the poison, in time the stings will cause no swelling at all, and the only inconvenience is the slight pain, which after all is no more than that caused by a pin pick.
I have on rare occasions when working without a veil been stung under the eye, and it was quite painful for a minute or two, and although the eye closed up for a matter of twelve hours, the real pain was during the few minutes immediately following the sting.
The poison of the bee sting is formic acid. When the little bee injects its sting into our flesh, it usually in its endeavor to get away leaves the sting with its poison sac, and it is an easy matter to scrape it out. Never try to pull it out with the thumb and index finger, for in so doing you are sure to squeeze all of the poison out of the poison sac into the flesh and cause greater pain and swelling in the part stung, but take the sharp edge of theHow to quiet and in a few minutes the live tool or the blade of a penknife, and if these are not handy use the thumb nail and scrape the sting out, and in a few minutes the pain will cease.
If, however, you find at the beginning that the part is swelling considerably, just pour a little household ammonia over it, and when your work among the bees is done soak a cloth in cold water and lay it over the spot, and in a short time the pain and swelling will be a thing of the past.
The gloves that are used are made of heavy muslin and treated with oil, having long gautlets, that come well up over the arms and are described in the catalogues of the various supply houses.
Sometimes a bee or two will follow the beekeeper all over the yard and manifest every determination to sting as soon as there offers an opening. The only thing to do in such a case is to get a single or flat piece of wood and "swat" him. I carry a paddle in my basket for just such fellows.
Be quiet in your movements, and manifest no signs of alarm, and the bees will soon learn that you are not afraid of them and will let you go your way in peace. If you are stung, then take my word for it that it is not nearly as painful or serious as is imagined, and not to be compared with the sting of the yellow jacket or hornet. There may be some satisfaction in the knowledge that the poor little bee pays its life as the forfeit for singing, as it usually dies shortly after losing its sting. It may be well, however, that they do sting, as it is a guarantee that the business of bekeeping will never be overdone, and it also protects our hives from meddlers, both two- and four-footed ones.
## Chapter Why bees swarm -- how to dive a swarm -- how to control swarming
A LL insects have some natural means of a reproducing themselves, and bees are no exception to the rule, their method being that of swarming. While swarming may be a perfectly natural act on their part, it cannot be said that beekeepers generally view it with any degree of pleasure, especially when they consider the possibility of losing valuable swarms that may emerge in their absence, which means a distinct loss of the entire working force of the hive and a consequent loss of honey.
Swarming usually occurs during the months of May and June, though they will frequently come out earlier and later than this, owingHow to keep bees for profit to the season, and the reasons for swarming are as follows. Broad is present in large numbers in the hive, the blossoms in the field are yielding up a heavy tribute of nectar, and under these conditions the colony becomes overcrowded and makes preparations to decamp. An examination of the brood nest just before a colony swarms shows us practically every cell occupied with honey, pollen, and brood, and, realizing that no further work can be done in such crowded quarters, the colony decides that it is time to seek another home. In some mysterious way this idea is passed from one bee to another until all obey it.
Fortunately for the beekeeper, however, the colony usually gives some premonitory signs of its intention to swarm, and these if needed will enable one to head them off and in many cases break up the fever entirely.
Often for several days before swarming the bees will cluster in large numbers on the front of the hive, and an examination of the brood nest will reveal the presence of queen cells, and it is by taking advantage of these signs we can often prevent swarming by giving enlarged storage room. If we fail to forestall them, then we may look for a swarm to come forth some beautiful day in May or June, and the way the bees will come boiling out of the hive is a revelation to the tyro. Out they come literally by the thousands until the air is filled with them and their roar can be heard at a considerable distance.
The swarm is not, as is popularly supposed, made up of young bees, but is composed principally of the old bees and the old queen, and with the exception of the time she flies as a virgin to be mated, this is the only time that her majesty comes forth.
For several minutes the swarm will swirl about in the air, and with rare exceptions, will in a short time begin to cluster on the branch of a tree, and often at an inaccessible height, and will hang there probably for an extended period.
The safest plan, however, is to hive the swarm as quickly as possible, for in all likelihood they have sent out their scouts to find a congenial home in the heart of an old tree or under the weatherboards of a house, and in some cases they often have their objective point picked out days in advance, and unless hired will eventually go away.
In the majority of cases the swarm will cluster on the lower limb of a tree or on a bush, and in fact I have had them cluster on a post, but in any case they are easily removed, and that without attendant danger of one's being stung, as every bee has filled its stomach with honey, realizing that it will be needed to build their combs within their new home, and it is this condition that renders them largely incapable of stinging, as they cannot bend the abdomen to do so.
If you are wise, you will have had your empty hive body with its frames of full foundation all ready for just such an emergency, and as soon as the swarm comes forth it willbe the easiest thing in the world to set the hive in place, and if the swarm is on a tree or shrub, the branch to which they cling can be cut or sawed off and the swarm shaken in front of the empty hive, which they will be glad enough to enter. If the swarm has clustered on a tree that you consider too valuable to cut, or on a fence or post, then take the new hive and place it under the cluster and shake the bees in front of it; or if on a post, brush them down with a brush or whisk broom, both of which are made for the purpose, and in a few minutes all of the bees will enter the hive. Let them remain there until toward evening, when the hive can be gently lifted and placed on its permanent stand; and in the morning you will find that they have their sentinels posted, with the field bees going and coming to and from the fields. In a few days one or more of the queen cells in the old hive will bring forth a virgin who in time will become mated, and thus you will have two full colonies, each with a queen at its head.
Do not fail, however, to examine the old hive in about ten days and make certain that the virgin has mated, which can be quickly told by the presence of young eggs in the cells, and if for any reason she should have become lost in her matrimonial flight, give them another that you have reared or secured from some reputable breeder. The method of introducing her will be treated under the chapter on Queen Rearing.
It will occasionally happen that when one or more virgins hatch at the same time an after-swarm will also emerge, but as these are very small, and incapable of doing much in the way of building up for the winter, it is best to throw them back into the hive from which they emerged, and let the surplus virgins fight it out to the survival of the fittest.
The professional beekeeper looks upon natural swarming as a nuisance, especially if he is running a system of outyards, for it often happens that swarms will come out when he is not there to attend to them, and it seldom pays to keep a man watching for them. This has led to a long-expressed desire for a race of non-swarming bees, but no such race is in sight, and beekeepers generally have taken up the next best thing, namely, preventive measures.
The dangers of losses from swarming have led a majority of beekeepers to devote their yards to the production of extracted honey, as by this plan the honey can be extracted as soon as the combs are nearly filled, and thus additional room can be given to the bees.
When the apiary is devoted to the production of comb honey, the problem becomes more serious, as the combs must of necessity be left on the hives until entirely sealed over, or else they will not be salable, and leaving them to be sealed impels the bees to swarm. To overcome this, a new plan was tried out some few years ago, and generally it has resulted in practically a complete control of swarming,
the old hive with its brood and few remaining bees? and the answer is that it can be left beside the new hive until its brood has hatched, when the bees can be shaken in with the bees in the new hive, and the combs can be removed and such honey as remains in them extracted, and the combs cut out and rendered into bees wax. It will be well in cutting out the combs to leave a strip of comb about an inch wide at the top of the frames, as such frames the following season will have starters of comb instead of foundation for colonies that may be shaken on them. By shaking the bees on starters only, we compel them to rush their honey up into the supers just where we want it, as they have no storage room below until the frames are filled with comb. Seldom will a colony swarm after it has been treated in this way, and this method has this apparent advantage over all others, namely, that the beekeeper swarms his bees at his own convenience and does away with all possibility of absorbing swarms.
Some men have said that the reason that the swarm shaken into the new hive seldom swarms again is because it has had the swarming impulse satisfied by being run into a new hive like a natural swarm, but the real reason is that a colony of bees will seldom desert a hive until it is completely filled with combs in the brood nest, and by the time the swarm will have filled its combs the honey flow is usually over and the cause of swarming a thing of the past.
There have been advertised from time to time a lot of automatic hivers, but he who invests his money in them but illustrates the old adage that "the fool and his money are soon parded." It is a good thing to go over the apiary and clip the wings of every queen after she has mated and has begun to lay; this will save many a swarm, as a swarm will never run off without its queen. If a swarm should come out with a clipped queen, it may cluster on a near-by tree, while the queen in her inability to fly will be found hopping about in the grass in her endeavor to join the swarm, and can be picked up with the bare fingers, as she will not sting, and removed to the house. A new hive being placed on the stand occupied by the one from which the swarm emerged, and the old swarm having returned and entered the new hive, the queen can be thrown in at the entrance; thus the hive swarm is hived without the owner having to handle it at all.
The "hook swarm" plan insures the bekeeper an abundance of beeswax after the combs have been rendered, and as this can be exchanged for sheets of foundation, it is an item worth considering.
The late Captain Hetherington of Cherry Valley, N.Y., one of the most extensive keepers of bees in his day, whose apiaries, scattered all over the country, numbered as many as three thousand colonies, had a plan of swarm control that he found satisfactory: the removal or caging of the queen during the swarming season. Some beemen contended that a swarm would not work as well with its queen removed or caged as one whose queen was present, to say nothing of the loss of brood during the period that the queen was caged, but the captain met this by the statement that any eggs she might lay would be so long in developing that the flow would be over before they were field bees.
The old-fashioned practice of ringing bells and hanging on tin pans to cause a swarm to alight is really laughable, and as a matter of fact had no influence on the swarm whatever. That they did soon alight was only a coincidence, as they would sooner or later have done so. It has been said that the custom dates back to the days of Alfred the Great of England, who, in order to stop the disputes among his subjects as to the ownership of swarms that came forth, decreed that when a man's bees swarmed, he should ring a bell or make some other noise to notify his neighbors that the swarm was his. Another amusing custom still in vogue in some parts is the placing of empty hives in the woods as decoysfor swarms to enter, and some have even resorted to the ridiculous practice of placing little red flags on top of them to flag the passing swarm and notify them that a welcome home awaits them. While it is true that a swarm has on rare occasion taken possession of some of these hives, yet it was a mere coincidence, and the flag, or the sprinkling of the hives with anise oil, had nothing whatever to do with it. Before leaving the subject of swarming, it will be well to state that shade boards placed over a hive, and an extra current of air given them by elevating the entrance of the hive will be important factors in swarm control, but often, in spite of all that can be done, a swarm will come forth when the fever possesses them, and the only thing to do is to accept the situation philosophically and get them into a modern hive as soon as possible. The proportion of swarming in comb honey production as compared with that of producing extracted honey is about two to one where How to keep bees for profit
the "shook swarm" plan is not practised, as the free use of the extractor enables the beekeeper to remove the honey from the combs and give the colony additional storage room before the bees feel that they are crowded.
## Chapter IX raising queen bees -- how to introduce a queen
\(\mathbb{I}\) the keeping of bees, there are many occasions when extra queens are required, notably when colonies from one cause or another become queenless, or when increase is made, and the general practice is to send away to a queen-breceder for the same. While in the majority of cases queens arrive in good condition, and apparently none the worse for their journey, yet some beemen have contended that the queen is hurt more or less from her journey and is not as good as before. Again, it costs a considerable sum to buy queens, especially if a large number are required, and, as they can be raised at home at a ridiculously low figure, the matter of expense has induced an ever increasing number
## How to keep be less for profit
of beekeepers to rear their own queens, as they are able to breed from only their best specimens, whose offspring have shown remarkable qualities of gentleness, and are great honey-gatherers. With the advent of a number of new systems of queen-rearing, which will be explained, one can easily see that this part of the profession is not so mysterious as some will suppose, and with a little experience the novice will soon be able to raise as good queens as the professional breeder, and not be compelled to pay from $1 to $3 apiece for them.
If left to follow their own natural impulses, the bees would build only a limited number of cells at the swarming time, but by the use of a few simple and inexpensive appliances, the beekeeper is able to rear them in almost unlimited numbers and thus always have them at hand when needed.
It is a known fact that in the breeding of all kinds of stock, the quality can be greatly improved by selection and restriction in the specimens that are to reproduce their kind,and bees are no exception to the rule. By breeding queens only from best mothers, the beekeeper will be able in a short time to secure a strain of bees in his apiaries that will be marvels of gentleness, to say nothing of gathering record crops of honey.
A good many apiarists advocate the requeening of all colonies with young queens of the season's breeding, as this insures every colony beginning the next season with vigorous young queens able to produce a large amount of brood, and such colonies are not so liable to swarm as those with old queens at their head.
There are three natural conditions under which colonies will of themselves raise queens, such as: at the time of swarming, when made queenless, and when about to supersede an old queen that is worn out. When about to swarm, the bees will begin to build a number of queen cells, usually at the bottoms of the combs, and in many instances the queen will deposit eggs in them for this purpose. While
these cells are of the very best, yet the fact that they have to be cut out of the combs in order to isolate them in cages, has led to the adoption of little wooden cups in which eggs are grafted by the beekeeper, by which means they can the more easily be handled without the danger of injuring their occupants, as will be described later.
When a queen begins to show signs of failing through old age or injury, the colony will at once begin to build cells, and when the young queen begins to lay, the bees will usually kill the old one. If a colony has its queen taken from them, or should she be killed through the careless handling of the frames by the beekeeper, the colony will also build cells in order to replace her, and under the conditions outlined above will build from five to fifteen cells, though in the case of Carinolans and Cypians colonies will often build as many as fifty cells at a time. While the cells reared by the bees under normal conditions are the very best, yet their production is
**RATISING QUEEN BESS**
**uncertain, and does not always occur when the beekeeper needs them, and this has led to the almost universal adoption of artificial methods. As far as is known, such queens are equal to those reared at the pleasure of the colony.**