BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
The following form of contract was very carefully drawn by an attorney, and it is hoped will meet every condition.
## 7 Aitches of Agreement
This Agreement, made and entered into at,
this day of,
, by and between,
, party of the first part, and heeinafter called the owner, and,
, party of the second part, and heeinafter called the employee.
_Witnessed:_ First, that said owner has agreed, and in consideration of the covenants and agreements herein contained and to be performed by said employee, does hereby agree to provide a good location for keeping bees, at our,
, and furnish and put thereon, on or before the day of,
, 100-, not loss than, colonies of healthy bees, and then and thereafter at such times as needed during the continuence of this contract, to provide and furnish at his own cost and expense, all hives, tools, implements, machinery, and buildings necessary to enable said employee to carry on successfully the business of producing and security honey and war from said bees; and further to pay one-half of the cost and expense of all sections,
shipsping-cases, and packages that may be required to put the honey and wax into marketable shape; and in case it shall be necessary to feed said bees, to provide and furnish feeders and the sugar for making the syrup; and said owner further agrees to give and deliver on the said premises, to said employee, as and for his compensation for labor done and provided by him in caring for said bees and securing honey and wax, the full one-half of all marketable honey and wax produced by and secured from said bees.
Second: In consideration of the above covenants and agreements, the said, employee, hereby agrees to enter the employ of said owner on said,
,, and it once emerge for said,
,, and to once emerge for said bues in a proper manner; do, perform, and provide all labor necessary to carry on successfully the business of producing and securing honey and wax ready for market; pay one-half of the cost and expense of all sections,
, cans, bottles, shipping-cases, and packages that may be required to put the honey and wax into marketable shape; feed the bees, when necessary that they shall be fed, and deliver on the premises to the said owner the full one-half of all the marketable honey and wax produced and secured from such bees, and to accept the remaining half as and for his full compensation for labor done and provided by him in the care of said bees and the production and securing of honey and wax.
## Bees on Siares
Provided, and it is mutually agreed and understand by and between the parties hereto, that said employee shall double up all of so d lives at the close of the season or leave them reasonably strong and well supplied with stores and prepared for winter; and if any of said o Lonies of bees are lost through the carelessness or negligence of said employee, said owner may recover from said employee as changes in amount not greater than one-half what it would cost to replace said laves and queues; all increase of swarms (arithmetic or natural) to belong to said owner. It is further mutually agreed and understood that in case no money is secured, or the amount runs below ten (100 pounds per colony, said ownershall pay to said employee, as and forhis compensation for all labor alone and provided by him on and about said bees, an amount not exceeding --).
The foregoing comprises the essential features of a contract ; but local conditions may render it necessary to make some modifications.
The last clause in the above contract is inserted as a matter of fairness to the employee. If no honey should be secured, the employee has performed his part of the contract in good faith, and, moreover, has improved the apiary=perhaps increased it --so that it will be in better condition the following year for a honey crop. For this betterment it is no more than right that the owner should pay the employee a reasonable sum, whatever amount may be agreed on ; or, if preferred, a certain number of colonies. One can readily see that, in case the honey season was an absolute failure, the employee would suffer a total loss except for a provision of this kind, and that the owner would still have his bees. his implements, and every thing necessary to carry on the business for another sea-on.
By the above contract it is to the interest of both parties to keep down increase. The employee must know, if he is a practical bee-keeper, that, the greater the increase, the less the honey; and he will, therefore, bend all his efforts and skill to keep the colonies in the best possible condition to obtain a crop of honey.
Keeping bees on shares is practiced quite extensively in Colorado and California. It very often happens that a bee-keeper lately arrived from the East desires to try a locality to see whether it will be suited to his health, and whether or not he can make the keeping of bees a success. He accordingly finds a bee-keeper whose other business leads him to desire some one competent to manage them for him. But where one is well settled in a locality, and has the means whereby he can purchase the bees, he had better do so--better even go in debt ; but in this case, to secure the owner I would agree that, in case the honey crop is insufficient to pay for at least half the bees, he will then agree to content himself with half the honey crop on the terms here proposed.
## Bees, Singsingsings
The bees of the Western Hemisphere are stingless--it least a very large proportion of them. Their habitat extends from the boundary between the United States and Mexico down to Buenos Alires, in Argentina, embracing an area of 8,000,000 square miles. One comparatively unimportant species inhabits most of the West India islands. There are a few species in Asia and Africa.
By entomologists these bees are usually classed under two great genera--_Melipone_ and _Trigone_; but some naturalists are disposed to add another, _Trigone_. There is an extraordinary variety of these bees, which is suppesed to embrace at least 100 species, whereas there are not more than 8 species of _Alpis_. The variation in size is also great, for some are no larger than a mosquito, while others are considerably larger than the hive bee. A number of naturalists are at work studying them with a view to their proper classification and arrangement by species.
There is an equal variation in the number of bees per colony, for some consist of only a few (100) individuals while others are supposed to contain not less than 100,000 bees.
Some build only small nests, not much larger than an orange; others, again, construct a home as large as an ordinary flour-barrel. Some build in a hole in the ground; others in the open air, as wasps and hornets do, while quite a number build their nests in the hollows of forest-trees.
An intermediate species occupies the position midway between bees and wasps, and is generally spoken of as the honey-gathering wasp. Wissps are carnivorous, hence it is hardly fair to class this one with these hawks of the insect tribe.
Early travelers in South and Central America did not fail to notice the stingless bees, and they are quite frequently referred to by them. Capt. Basil IIall, in the 1sth century, noticed apiaries of them in Peru; and Koster, in his Travels in Brazil, carefully mentions them. Spanish writers on Ceutral America usually noted them in the light century; but no European seems to have been interested enough in them to make a comprehensive study of their life-history and habits. That work was left for the twentieth-century naturalists. Geoffrey St. Hillaire, a naturalist-explorer, did something to awaken interest by his now classical observations on honey-gathering wings of Paraguy, of which he furnished a common from their chief enemy, the lizard. The logs are robled at stated intervals, the keeps her being well satisfied if he can secure a gallion of honey per hive at a robbing, depending somewhat on the species used for domestication.
Apparently no effort has ever been made to invent a hive suitable to their wants. It is noticeable that the natives use only those species whose homes are made in hollow They attacked their despoilers in a way they will not soon forget. They would bite, grasp the hair, eye-lashes, twist and pull, and even crawl into the ears and nose of their tormentors. So vicious was their on-slaught that they drove one man, who had a hand in breaking up their home, from the scene of action. While the pain of their bite is infinitessimal, yet the high-note hissing sound, getting into the hair, pulling at the eyes and eye-lashes, and, crawling into the nostrils and ears, almost makes one crazy.
It is fair to state that stingless bees do not offer such attack unless provoked to try: ordinarily they can be handled without any protection whatever.
See Copy Honey, also Exticating.
**Beginning With Bies.** The beginner will find he will be able to understand the articles in this work much more readily if he can in some way manage to visit a bee-keeper in his vicinity. If he can afford it, it would be well for him even to go some distance to see some progressive bee-keeper, and spend a whole day where he will be able to pick up tricks of the trade, and a fund of information that might take him weeks or months to dig out of text-books. Even if he knows of no one but an old-fashioned box-hive bee-keeper, he should see him ; but, far better, visit some practical man who will be able to point out the queen, and illustrate the _nodus operandi_ of opening a hive and handling the frames--in short-make a practical demonstration of many of the manipulations here explained. If there is no bee-keeper he can visit he should send to his nearest dealer and get a one or two frame nucleus with a queen. Let him follow carefully the directions on the outside of the shlipping-box ; then, with the bees before him, read and study his A B C's. Without an actual demonstration of some sort, much that is written here will otherwise be like pure Greek to the average beginner in bees. Having seen the bees, and learned how to open a hive, what next?
We would strongly urge the importance of a small beginning with as little expense as possible ; for nothing is more discouraging after having plunged into the business extensively (blindfolded as it were) than to lose a large portion of the bees, either through bad wintering or from some other cause--all for the want of a little practical experience, or even a theoretical knowledge. Many a person has met with disaster from starting out with bees on altogether too
## Beginning with Bees.
Having the hives all in readiness, five or ten, as the ease may be, one can, with his two or three nuclei, build them up by feeding, and then divide as recommended under Nucleus and Feeding.
If the beginner is successful thus far, he may then, with some assurance, purchase of his dealer one or two Italian queens, which he can easily introduce to the nuclei. See Introducing. In dividing or forming nuclei, one should, of course, give the new queen he just purchased to the bees that are made queenless. After he has had a little more experience in watching and studying bees he may then be able to do something at queen-rearing. See Queens and queening. To avoid trouble with robbers he should then read very carefully the subject of Stings and Robbing. Toward the close of the season he should next take up Wintering, as found in its alphabetical order, reading this carefully; for more disasters in apiculture result from failure to winter bees properly than from any other cause.
Nuclei, or, better, pounds of bees, can be purchased of some of the dealers. These will be placed in light shipping-boxes, and usually contain 500 to 1600 bees, one or two frames of brood, and a little honey. As the express charges on nuclei will be double first-class, it is always cheaper and better to buy in pound packages, or common bees in one's own vicinity where possible, and, after transferring, introduce Italian queens.
**BELLTLOWER.** See Campanilla.
**BLACK BROOD,** See Diseases of Bees.
**BLACK LOCUST.** See Locust.
**BLEACHING COMBHONEY.** See Comi Honey.
**BOX HIVES.** It seems as if any description in a work designed to teach modern apiculture would be entirely out of place; but since many have never seen any thing but a movable-frame live, and the old box live is occasionally referred to in various portions of this work, perhaps a brief description should be given.
These hives, as the name indicates, are merely boxes containing neither brood-frames nor any movable fixtures. They usually consist of a rude rough box about a foot square, and from 1s to 24 inches high. Through the center there would be two cross-sticks, the purpose of which was to help sustain the weight of the combs built in irregular sheets within the hive.
At the close of the season it was the custom for the apiarist to go around and "left" his hives. Those that were heavy were marked to be brimstoned; and those that were light were left to winter over for next season if they could. The bees of the first named were destroyed with sulphur fumes, and then the bee-bread, honey, and every thing were cut out.
In the more modern box hives there were glass boxes that could be drawn out from an upper part, leaving the lower intact. In this case the bees were not destroyed. In any case there was no opportunity to inspect combs, hunt queens, divide, or perform any of the hundred and one operations of modern apiculture.
When one compares the erudity of these methods with those that are described in this book, he sees what wonderful progress has been made in apiculture.
**BRASNICA,** see Mustard; also large; also Seven-top Turelap.
**BROOD.** See Bees; also Diseases of Bees.
**BROOD, SPREADING,** See Spreading
**BROOD.**
**BROOD.** See Extracted Honey; also Pedding Honey and Candid Honey.
**BUCKWHETAL.** (_Polyonym_;) This, in certain sections, is one of the most important honey-plants. It is grown principally on the hillsides of Eastern New York and Pennsylvania, and in these localities, where are thousands of acres within a rulus of a few miles, immense quantities of buewheat honey are annually produced. On one hilltop in Seoharize Co., N. Y., near Gallupville,where we stood,we were told that within a radius of three miles the bees had access to 5000 neres of buckwheat, all of which was within the range of our eyes. So great is the acreage of it in New York that anywhere from 2000 to 3000 colonies can be kept in some counties; and this means hundreds of bee-keepers who are specialist honey-growers and farmers, almost all of whom keep it least a few colonies. The latter class reason this way : That the growing of buewheat as a grain is one of the most profitable branches of farming; that the nectar in the blossoms properly belongs to them, and if they keep a few colonies they will virtually get two crops from one field--longy and the buckwheat grain.
We have ridden a bicycle through the buckwheat region of New York, traveling all day, without losing sight of buewheat-fields that seemed to cover every availablepiece of ground on both sides of the road. So immense are the fields that the atmosphere seems to be heavily charged with the aroma of the bloom, and if one is not a lover of buckwheat honey the odor is somewhat sickening.
One bee-keeper in the heart of the buckwheat country (W. L. Coggshall, of West (Groton), who lives near Cuygn Lake, harsened one year with his 1000 colonies 78,000 in the East than in the West, although it is always a paying crop for the grain in nearly every locality where ordinary grain crops along into the earlonds. While this is not all buckwheat honey by considerable, yet a good big portion of it is.
But the growing of buckwheat is by no means continued to the East. It is grown in small averages, of, say, one to five acres, in most of the North Central States. It also is a paying crop for seed and honey in the South, being grown largely in South Carolina and Texas. But it is in Eastern New York, on the hillsides, that it seems to thrive best. Stalks of the celebrated Japanese variety that would measure two feet high in Ohio will reach five or six feet in length in the more favored locations in New York. There is something in the climate and soil of those great hills that makes the growing of this plant much more profitable is more or less rank ; and yet those who comb honey--some of it at least--is very have always been used to buckwheat honey, or at least a good many of them, prefer it even to clover or basswood.
A lady from the East once called at our store and looked over our honey. We showed her several samples of choice clover and basswood comb honey.
''I do not like this,'' she said. ''It looks like manufactured sugar honey. Haven't you any buckwheat?''
''Yes, but we did not suppose you would like that, because such honey rarely sells in our locality.''
We then placed before her some sections of buckwheat honey, and these suited her exnetly.
''_That_ is real bee honey,'' said she, with a look of satisfaction, and she carried home several sections.
It seems that her father had been a beekeeper, and aboutall the honey she ever saw was buckwheat; and unless it had the strong flavor and dark color of the honey she was familiar with in her childhood days it was not honey to her, and there are thousands and thousands like her in the East.
Yes, there is a fancy trade that prefers buckwheat; and this trade is so large that buckwheat honey in the New York market brings almost as high a price as the fancy grades of white ; but in the Western markets, principally in Chicago, ''the stuff'' goes begging a purchaser. and sells as an off grade of poor honey.
Notwithstanding the color of buckwheat honey itself is purplish, the cappings of the combs, especially if made by black bees, are almost nearly white. Buckwheat
## 5.1. Canled Honey.
liquid for a year. After that time, especially if it has been subjected to cold during the previous winter, there are likely to be a few scattering granules in each cell. These gradually increase in number until the comb, honey, and wax become almost one solid mass. In such condition it is fit neither for the market, the table, nor for feeding back, and should be treated by the plan we will describe presently.
1s granulation a test of purity?
In the eyes of the general public, granulated honey is not pure, many thinking it has been "-sugared," either with brown or white sugar. But the very fact that it granulates solid is one of the best proofs of its purity. If honey granulates only partially, in streaks, it _may be_ evidence of the fact that it has been adulterated with glucose. But even pure honey will assume this condition, while honey that is nearly two-thirds or three-quarters glucose granulates very little. Here, again, it must not be taken as positive evidence that, because honey refuses to granulate, or does so only slightly, therefore it is adulterated. The purity of any honey can usually be determined through the taste by an expert bee-keeper who has tested various grades of honey, and knows their general flavor. But here, again, even taste must not be considered an infallible test. Doubts can be removed only by referring a sample or samples to an expert chemist. See Honey Alditeration.
To prevent carding of honey.
There is no plan that will act as an absolute preventive ; but by a method which we will describe, granulation can be deferred for one and possibly two years. Even after treatment, if the honey is subjected to a freezing and thawing temperature for a series of days it will be almost sure to start endying again. Continuous cold weather with the mercury slightly above zero is not as favorable as alternate cold and warm weather.
After the first few days the honey will appear slightly cloudy. This murky appearance grows more pronounced, and granulation proceeds more rapidly, until the point of solidification is reached. But there is no excuse for having honey at any time, either comb or extracted, kept in a zero or freezing temperature; for all practical purposes we can prevent honey carding for a year on the average.
There are two methods commonly in vogue to prevent honey from carding again. One is, to put it in a double boiler or vat, and gradually raise the temperature to 150 or 160 degrees Fahr., holding it at that point till all the honey is melted. It should then be put into bottles or tin cans, and sealed while hot. While this plan is very good, a much better one, in cur opinion, is to melt the candied honey very slightly and keep it at a temperature of 140\({}^{\circ}\) Fahr., for three days. Do not let it go above 145\({}^{\circ}\). The process of melting will be very slow, and a continuous slow heat so acts on the honey that it will remain liquid much longer than when the heat is applied more rapidly and raised to a higher point. It is then sealed hot,as in the other case.
For full particulars on bottling honey to keep it in a liquid condition, see Extended Honey.
To liquefy honey in the candied state, or heat it to prevent its getting into that condition, the honey should be placed in a double boiler--that is to say, a tank with double walls, having the space between the walls filled with water. This may be placed on the stove and filled with honey. The double boiler used by the Rauchfuss brothers, of Denver, Col., is shown in the engraving on page 76, and its manner of construction will be apparent.
Where one doesn't have such a boiler, and can not afford one, he could make a very good substitute by taking a common washboiler. Into this put some blocks about an inch square. On these blocks place three or four tin pails, or as many as will go into the boiler. Should he have something larger than a wash-boiler it would be all the better. The honey is then filled into the tin pails. If candied solid it may be handled with a spade. Water is poured into the wash-boiler until it comes within two inches of the top of the pils. The whole is then placed on the stove, and subjected to a slow heat. When the water reaches a temperature of 160, or nearly that, let the fire be checked; the honey should not become any hotter, because it may otherwise injure the flavor as well as the color. Honey should never be brought to a boiling temperature except to kill the germs of foul brood, when all such honey should be fed back provided it has boiled at least two hours.
Mr. C.W. Dayton, of Chatsworth, Cal., has another and very simple outfit to liquefy honey. As it can be made out of materials found in any bee-keeper's yard, at very small cost, many will, perhaps, prefer it to the Rauchfuss double boiler above described.
## Chapter 5 CANDIED Honey.
As will be seen from the illustration, Mr. Dayton makes use of second-hand kerosen-caus, which may be purchased for five cents aplece. If euts off the top at a convenient height, then washes out the cans thoroughly. For the purposes of liquefying he uses eight on top of an ordinary cook-store. To keep the honey from burning he gets some band iron, #\( imes\)?e, at some hardware store, and makes a series of hoops on which the cans are to stand while heating. Eight of them are placed together as shown; when, to conserve the heat futher, a tin cover large enough to slip down over the whole is provided.
With the help of this outfit Mr. Dayton says he can melt up 200 lbs. of honey in a very short time. We should like to suggest that these cans would be more convenient to handle were he to take heavy wire, make some balls and hook them into holes punched
## 6. CANDIED Honey.
A s will be seen from the illustration, Mr. Dayton makes use of second-hand kerosen-caus, which may be purchased for five cents aplece. If euts off the top at a convenient height, then washes out the cans thoroughly. For the purposes of liquefying he uses eight on top of an ordinary cook-store. To keep the honey from burning he gets some band iron, #\( imes\)?e, at some hardware store, and makes a series of hoops on which the cans are to stand while heating. Eight of them are placed together as shown; when, to conserve the heat futher, a tin cover large enough to slip down over the whole is provided.
## 7. CANDIED Honey.
## 8. CANDIED Honey.
## 9. CANDIED Honey.
## 10.1 CANDIED Honey.
## 10.2 CANDIED Honey.
## 10.3 CANDIED Honey.
## 10.4 CANDIED Honey.