How to Keep Bees
A Handbook for the Use
of Beginners
By
Anna Botsford Comstock, B. S.
With Illustrations
Garden CityNew York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
MCMXI
PREFACE
This book has been prepared especially to meet the needs of the beginner in bee-keeping. It is not intended to be a complete treatise for the professional apiarist, but rather a handbook for those who would keep bees for happiness and honey, and incidentally for money. It is hoped, too, that it will serve as an introduction to the more extended manuals already in the field.
When we began bee-keeping we found the wide range of information and varying methods given in the manuals confusing; but a little experience taught us that bee-keeping is a simple and delightful business which can be carried on in a modest way without a great amount of special training. After a beginning has been made, skill in managing the bees is gained naturally and inevitably, and interest is then stimulated by the wider outlook which bewilders the novice.
For the sake of simplicity this volume is restricted to knowledge gained in practical experience in a small apiary; and the writer has sought to exclude from it those discussions which, however enlightening to the experienced, are after all but devious digressions from the simple and straight path which the feet of the inexperienced must tread to success in the apiary.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | Why Keep Bees | 3 |
| II. | How to Begin Bee-Keeping | 8 |
| III. | The Location and the Arrangement of the Apiary | 20 |
| IV. | The Inhabitants of the Hive | 27 |
| V. | The Industries of the Hive | 50 |
| VI. | The Swarming of Bees | 64 |
| VII. | How to Keep from Keeping Too Many Bees | 73 |
| VIII. | The Hive and How to Handle It | 83 |
| IX. | Details Concerning Honey | 106 |
| X. | Extracted Honey | 117 |
| XI. | Points About Beeswax | 126 |
| XII. | Feeding Bees | 136 |
| XIII. | How to Winter Bees | 145 |
| XIV. | Rearing and Introducing Queens | 156 |
| XV. | Robbing in the Apiary | 164 |
| XVI. | The Enemies and Diseases of Bees | 172 |
| XVII. | The Anatomy of the Honey Bee | 181 |
| XVIII. | Interrelation of Bees and Plants | 194 |
| XIX. | Bee-Keepers and Bee-Keeping | 206 |
| XX. | Bee-Hunting | 211 |
| Bibliography | 215 | |
| Index | 219 | |
Photograph by Ralph W. Curtis
PLATE I. BASSWOOD BLOSSOM
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| Plate I.—Basswood blossom | Frontispiece |
| Observation hives | Page 2 |
| FACING PAGE | |
| Plate II.—(a) Two flat section boxes. (b) Corneil smoker | 14 |
| Plate III.—(a) Dixie bee-brush, spur wire-embedder and Van Deusen wax-tube fastener. (b) A super with fences. (c) The Porter bee-escape in a honey-board | 15 |
| Plate IV. Hives well shaded by a tree | 26 |
| Plate V. (a) Queen; drone; worker. (b) Queen cell, (c) Miller's queen introducing cage | 27 |
| Plate VI. Head of drone; head of queen; head of worker; ventral surface of worker showing plates of wax | 30 |
| Plate VII. Legs and antennæ of the honey-bee | 31 |
| Plate VIII. Drone cells in a comb of honey | 50 |
| Plate IX. Side of hive removed showing the bees at work | 51 |
| Plate X. Bees hanging in a curtain secreting wax | 62 |
| Plate XI. Hiving bees; cutting down a swarm | 63 |
| Plate XII. (a) Two self-spacing frames. (b) An empty super. (c) The Doolittle division-board feeder | 90 |
| Plate XIII. Examining the brood-frames | 91 |
| Plate XIV. (a) Alley's queen and drone trap. (b) A well-filled section. (c) One empty section holder, and one filled with section boxes | 106 |
| Plate XV. One and a half story hive for comb honey | 107 |
| Plate XVI. Drone and Queen trap; queen maihng and introducing cage; queen-protector and queen-cage used in queen-rearing, and bee-escape | 110 |
| Plate XVII. "In apple-blossom time" | 111 |
| Plate XVIII. (a) Taking off upper story of hive containing combs for extracting. (b) Extracting-room showing apparatus for extracting honey | 122 |
| Plate XIX. (a) Uncapping comb before extracting the honey. (b) Placing uncapped comb in one of the pockets of the extractor | 123 |
| Plate XX. (a) Drawing honey from extractor. (b) Pouring extracted honey into keg for shipping in bulk | 126 |
| Plate XXI. (a) Extracted honey in pails, candied. (b) Extracted honey in glass jars ready for market | 127 |
| Plate XXII. Winter quarters in chaff-hives | 154 |
| Plate XXIII. Plum blossoms | 155 |
| Plate XXIV. Sumac in blossom. Blossom of mountain maple | 184 |
| Plate XXV. Fig. 1. Vertical longitudinal section of the body of a larva of an insect. Fig. 2. Section of the body-wall of insect. Fig. 3. Head of a bee and its appendages. Fig. 4. Glands of a honey-bee. Fig. 5. The wax plates | 185 |
| Plate XXVI (a) The reproductive organs of the honey-bee. (b) Fig. 1. The internal anatomy of the honey-bee. Fig. 2. The respiratory system of the honey-bee | 192 |
| Plate XXVII. An old-fashioned apiary | 193 |
| Plate XXVIII. (a) Thorn-apple blossoms. (b) Wild crab-apple blossoms | 198 |
| Plate XXIX. Buckwheat in blossom | 199 |
| Plate XXX. Box-elder, staminate and pistillate flowers | 210 |
| Plate XXXI. Blossoms of black locust | 211 |
Copyright, 1905, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
Published April, 1905
All rights reserved including that of translation—also right of translation into the Scandinavian languages
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1930, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 93 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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