is commonly called, is quite plentiful. Following out the plans which I have already mapped out, with several railways running from south to north, and with good waggon roads, it is a simple matter to move an apiary fifty or sixty miles without any loss whatever. We have learned also by experience that in placing hives in cars for shipment always place them so that the racks hang lengthways, instead of crossways; whereas, shipping by waggon the reverse position is necessary.

With us beekeepers in Hastings, we ship our bees north for linden and clover, south to the County of Prince Edward for buckwheat, and back home for winter quarters. By following this course we usually get a fair crop of clover, linden, and buckwheat honey. Time will not permit to go into all the details of moving, but I trust enough has been shown to clear the way for any new or old beekeepers situated in a locality where there is not an abundance of clover, basswood, and buckwheat, and other honey-producing plants.

At the close of his paper Mr. Lott explained that owing to an enforced absence from home for nearly four weeks, he had not had an opportunity to devote as much time to the subject as he would have wished, but he trusted the paper he had pre. pared would be of some interest to someone who had, perhaps, very little experience with out-apiaries.

Mr. Holmes: Not having had the advantage of knowing the subject matter contained in the very excellent paper given by our friend Lott, I am placed at a little disadvantage. However, in the course of the paper there were some suggestions that came to my mind, and I shall take the opportunity of telling you that, owing to the fact that I have not worked in out-apiaries, my suggestions will be more theoretical, and not practical, from my standpoint I was wishing he had referred to the adyantages from local showers, which might accrue from having apiaries scattered over a radius of perhaps ten, fifteen or twenty miles. Perhaps in one locality the honey flora might be badly scorched, and just a few miles further on the advantage of showers would give the beekeeper in that locality a special advantage. Another matter upor which I am sorry he did not inform us was that of store-rooms at different pices. If I were engaged in it I would wish to have the store-rooms at the different places, so that the honey would not have to be removed from the out-yard. Another matter I was sorry he did not refer to was as to whether he used the same set of extracting utensils in connection with his work, or a separate and distinct set for each out-yard. I think these points might be referred to, and I would consider them advisable, necessary. and best if it was my case. I do not bring these points up as differing from Mr. Lott, and I do not propose, either, to kick any holes in the very good paper to which we have listened.

A's

Mr. Lott: I do not know that I could answer the question of Mr. Holmes satisfactorily. He wished to know if, in moving our bees in different localities, we were blessed with showers, and such things as that. I might say it would be necessary to have some direct communication with the Supreme Being to know as to that. to the utensils which we use in apiaries, we usually use the whole apiary, so that in taking one or two carloids to different localities we usually take our extractor and other appliances with us. I am here, and will be pleased to answer any questions which I possibly can from a practical standpoint, so far as my experience goes.

Mr. Dickenson: In the case of a man having an apiary with one hundred or one hundred and fifty colonies all ready with the frames resting on tin supports, what would you do in moving them?

Mr. Lott: De as I did remove the tin and replace it with wood. I started out with tin rests for top bars, and in shipping either upon train or waggon we found that the bees would not propolize the rack to the iron, and consequently we used to have to nail strips across the rack in order to hold them. We found, also that after discarding the iron rest bars and letting them rest upon wood, it was not necessary to strap a rack down with the strips, but the bees would propolilze them down in such

a way that we rarely ever found a rack misplaced or moved. II anticipated moving my bees to other localities, I think I would, for the little amount of labor connected with it, remove the iron bars, and if then you have not the proper bee space below, put your strips under your top bars at the end of the rack.

Mr. Hall:

Does the handling of those frames without the tin rests that you. have removed compensate for removing them?

Mr. Lott I admit it is not as easy to handle frames resting upon wood as upon the iron bars, but, speaking from experience in moving and shipping bees, I think you will be well repaid for the amount of extra labor by the saving to your combs and to the death rate of the bees. We used to lose a great many bee: in shipping, but after we discarded the iron bars the death rate was very small.

Mr. Post: That was when you handled them on waggons?

Mr. Lott: Yes.

Mr. Post: All but about 150 of mine have metal rabbets, and I cannot see one particle of difference. Our top stories have all metal rabbets, and they are moved in August with the top stories on. If we moved them on waggons I think they would be out of place, but they are carired on hand barrows to the car, and I never saw one shifted. If I were to build five hundred to-morrow, I would have every one with meta rabbets.

Mr. Hall I have had a little experience in moving bees to out-apiaries and retu.ning them, and my hives and supers all have metal rabbets, and the difference in handling those bees, when you come to the honey crop, is so great that it pays you. Some of them got together, but not many. Most of them have little brace combs. I move mine with top stories on when I move them to the buckwheat, because otherwise they would smother. I think I would not take our friend's advice about taking off the metal rabbets. If I had to do that, I would put a block of wood between the metal rabbet and the end of the hive.

Mr. Holtermann: In this question of out-apiaries I believe I can help my friend Lott out, who I know is a practical man. What he says is perfectly correct. If you put the metal rabbets there, and you have your bee space above the frames, there is more or less danger of those frames shaking loose. Of course, as Mr. Post says, if you are moving them on trains that is less the case, but there are not very many of us who can afford to do that. If you leave your metal rabbet there, and put your bee space below instead of above, you remedy the whole matter. The moment you put your queen excluder on, its frame has practically pinched down the end bar, and i you put your cover on, that pinches down the frames, and thus you prevent them rocking.

Mr. McEvoy If our friend had to ship one hundred colonies two hundred miles, would it pay to move them or leave them?

Mr. Lott I am situated in a locality where there is clover, but very little basswood. If I kept my bees there, and it was a good clover season, I would perhaps get a good crop of clover honey; but if I did not move them where there was basswood I certainly would get very little. I am in a poor buckwheat locality, but by shipping flity or sixty miles to Prince Edward, where there are thousands of acres of buckwheat within a radius of five or six miles, we usually get a good crop. Generally speaking, railways charge outrageous rates for bees or fixtures, but we are more fortunate here, particularly with the Central Ontario Railway, which runs eightyfive miles north through a well-wooded country to the Town of Picton, through nearly the whole of Prince Edward, which is noted for its buckwheat. We can ship to advantage, and we get very reasonable rates. I think it would pay any man who is in a locality where linden, buckwheat, or clover is scarce, to ship his bees fifty. sixty. or one hundred miles.

Mr. McEvoy Would it pay to ship them providing it cost fifty cents a colony >

Mr. Lott If there is a scarcity of nectar, and no flow of honey, perhaps it would not pay; but, generally speaking, it does pay us well. If my friend Post left his bees in Trenton, where he lives, he would get a couple of tons of honey. When he ship's them out back of my place it is quite a common thing for him to get ten tons of honey.

Mr. Post Mr. McEvoy is interested in the difference in profits in moving them. It is all chance. We could not answer that positively. We do not move our bees anything like two hundred miles. We might take our bees from one locality which was poor to another which we thought was good, and there might come local showers across that favored spot, and the bees would do splendidly, whereas five or ten miles beyond they would get hardly anything.

Mr. Armstrong: Would it not do away with all this trouble of taking out the metal rabbets and replacing with a piece of wood underneath if we used a good selfSpacing frame, and have bee space on top?

Mr. Lott I have had no experience, but I would not think it would. The only trouble is with the frames shifting together, killing bees and rubbing the brood. This is about the only disadvantage I know of along that line.

Mr. Holtermann': It will not do if you take a proper self-spacing frame. I say that advisedly. After years of experience with a Hoffman frame, I do not believe any man who runs out-apiaries can affort to have them. They stick together, and there is difficulty in getting them apart. A man who is running out-apiaries wants to be a rapid manipulator, which he cannot be with a Hoffman frame. If he takes his frame and drives a staple to properly space on one side of the top bar, and then turns the frame over and drives one near the opposite end, he has two staples in the top bar, which act as self-spacers. I got this idea from Morley Pettit. Even when the frame is spaced with a staple, it will still rock. Now, hare bee space below the frames and the top bars are held firm.

Mr. McEvoy Mr. Hall has moved bees, and he has got a good deal of honey sometimes, and I ask him if it does not pay pretty well ?

Mr. Hall: I am too old to move very many bees. If you want to keep your metal rabbets, if you want to move them rapidly, you can manage that by simply putting in a piece of wood under the end of your frame behind your metal rabbet, and you can take it out when you get there if you choose. I do not move on trains, because they are exhorbitant. We have to move on waggons, and in this way the frames do not need to be fastened in any shape, and if you want to go into your bees when they are in the out-apiary, you can do so in one-sixtieth part of the time by simply having the metal. With me, with one exception, it has always paid to move to the buckwheat.

Mr. Lott: Mr. Hall might be right, but I am satisfied with our system. I could not agree with our friend Holtermann. In shipping the top stories, as we do for extracting, with those staples in your rack I do not know how you would use the capping knife.

Mr. Pettit Then hold the frame with the staple at the bottom. Mr. Newton: I have something which I think is ahead of fastening the frame. In shipping or moving bees my screens always set down on the top bar with four screws, and they hold them perfectly solid, and by taking out the four screws the frames can be moved just as you wish.

Mr. Holtermann: What do you do when you set another hive on top of the first? Mr. Newton: Put a piece of wood between the bottom and top, and fasten with a clamp or whatever you use, and then your screen goes on top.

Mr. Morrison: I think probably the screens I used were after Mr. Newton's pattern--an inch and a quarter square, fastened at each side near the end with inch and a quarter screw nails. Three-quarters of an inch of that frame rested on the top

bar, and when they were fastened down tight I found when I had removed them on a lun.ber waggon there was not a frame moved, and they were all on metal rests.

Mr. Hall Mr. Newton uses the screens I use, but when he has one hive on top of the other, he cannot use that screen on the bottom hive, and he does not need it there. I do not even use the screw-simply very fine, long wire nails, and put four of them in. The top cannot move, and the bottom does not move. The screen does not touch the side of the hive at all; it simply rests on the end of the frame.

Mr. Holtermann; If you went on the non-swarming principle, looking to your bees, they would not be propolized.

Mr. Hall: They are not propolized down, but there are brace combs which keep them together.

Mr. Morrison: Does the end of your top story press on the frame below?

Mr. Hall It does not in my case. If I put a screen on the top story or on the brood nest, it then rests on the screen, as Mr. Newton says. The ends of the screen are deeper than the sides of the screen, and the ends rest on the end of the bar. Mr. Morrison: With mine it would. My frames come plumb with the top of the hive.

Mr. Pettit Out of over two hundred stocks that I have put away for the winter, I do not think I would find three hundred burr combs in the brood chamber between top bars. This is due to correct spacing of combs. If you have a bee space underneath the combs, as Mr. Holtermann has said, you have the bottom of the super resting on the queen excluder, and the top bars or the cover on the top bars, as the case may be, and you have your combs held firm. We hear a great deal about moving bees for better pasture in different places on account of the difference in weather, showers, drouth, and all these things, but I think in the long run we will average up just as well if we stay just where we are. Moving for buckwheat is a different thing.

Mr. Armstrong: I would say that it would pay. I have moved bees for the last ten or fifteen years. I have shipped them on cars, and the highest rate I ever paid was $1.50 a colony, and that was from my place to New Brunswick. I do not think it will ever be necessary for any person to move two hundred miles for fresh pasturage. About seventeen miles is as far as I move, and I have never moved them yet but what it paid, and paid well. I do not quite agree with Mr. Holtermann about the frames sticking together. I think in moving bees we wanted them to stick together. If you have everything arranged all right, with the right space, you will have very few burr combs. I can take out three frames at once with the self-spacing Hoffman frame, and you cannot do it with any other frame except by adopting the method which Mr. Hall uses.

Mr. Hall: It has paid me every time I have moved these, with one exception, when the Lord did not give us any honey. It cost me fifty cents a hive to get then there and back again.

Mr. Lott There are years we do not get a surplus of buckwheat honey when we ship south, but usually we get enough for winter quarters, and we are amply repaid then. Generally speaking, after running for a crop of clover honey, extracting from the 1st to the 10th of July. then comes the basswood, about the 12th July to the 26th or 27th, and then shipping from the 1st to the 5th of August to the buckwheat field, our hives are usually very light, and then they are usually filled up well for winter quarters, if nothing else. An advantage to anyone who lives along the lakes is that you can ship very reasonably by boat. Also with a local railway you get better rates than upon some of the larger railways. Generally speaking, it pays as

well to move.

Mr. Byer There is one important element which Mr. McEvoy, I think, is forgetting to take into consideration, and that is the element of chance.

Mr. Darling: With regard to keeping frames firm while moving bees, I would imply put two springs right on each side on the end of the frame, and hold them

dov. n on the rabbets. My frames hang crosswise of the hives, and I have never had a frame get out of place. I hold them down with wire nails or screw nails.

Mr. Pettit : From the general opinions that have been expressed I think the question resolves itself down to whether your space is above or below the frame. Each man who gets up to speak must let it be known whether his space is below or above. If above, I would prefer that mentioned with strips to hold down the frame; if below, the top bars come even, and are held down by the queen excluder, or cover, or whatever it is.

Mr. Darling:

Even with the space below, the frame on top, I fancy, I should

put the strip on, and then the frames would not slide.

Mr. Edmonson: Do you nail each frame separately?

Mr. Darling: No; two nails in each strip; four nails in a hive.

Mr. Sibbald: When Mr. Pettit comes to put the third story on from the bottom, does the bottom edge not catch tight to the frame-that is, propolize to the bottom edge of the hive ?

Mr. Pettit If everything is square and even, and nice and snug, the propolizing does not amount to anything.

Mr. Sibbald: You understand what I mean. If it is a nice, snug fit, the hive will just rest even on the top of the frame, and on the other half, at the end of the hive, it will be stuck to the bottom, and when you pry the top off probably two or three of them will lift, and they will drop down again and annoy the bees very much. Mr. Pettit Turn it sideways and slide it.

Mr. Sibbald

That is all right with your staples, but if you had no staples there

it would slide the whole thing.

Mr. Pettit I could not keep bees without staples.

Mr. Dickenson: Mr. Pettit recommends running the capping knife down. I think Mr. McIntyre is on record in our November Bee Journal as saying "always cut up."

Mr. Hall: We all of us have different methods, and all have found out how to rock the cradle and keep the baby quiet. Those who have the space below, and those who have the space above, and those that have loose and tight frames are all right, because they run them to suit their own hives.

Mr. Pettit That is the point exactly. We all have different things, according to our own management. From my experience of years without staples, with frames hanging loose and then using the staples, and spending hours driving staples in the frames that have not had them, I would not think of pulling out the staples and going without them again.

Mr. Lowey I use the metal rabbets, and would not have a hive without them. I simply pick them up when I want to take them away, and simply pick them up when I want to bring them home. I do not, perhaps, move far enough to want a screen on top, and I never have any difficulty. I would say to everyone, never use a closed end frame or a frame with any spacing without a metal rabbet. I have read something about cutting out the queen cells, and when I heard about going through the hive I thought I would ask what the object of doing that was whether it was to prevent swarming or what?

Mr. Sibbald: I don't think it is very much use cutting out queen cells to prevent swarming.

Mr. Hall: When we take them out for the buckwheat we never go into them for any cause except from the top. We do not take them out for white honey, because we have them where the white honey is. We look into them every week, and if they

are prepared to swarm we simply divide them up and take them out.

Mr. Holtermann: I think the information Mr. Lowey wants is as to whether it is through the entire season.

Mr. Hall After July we let them take their fling. If they go to the woods we bid then good-bye.