Let all your motions about your hives be gentle and slow; never crush or injure the bees; acquaint yourself fully with the principles of management, and you will find you have little more reason to dread the sting of a bee than the horns of a favorite cow or the heels of your faithful horse.
Fig. 12. Use of veil and bee smoker. (Original.)
Most bee manipulators, however, grow somewhat indifferent to stings, since in time they become so inoculated with the poison of the bee that the pain of the sting is less severe and the swelling slight. But to avoid the stings is, with some of the races more recently introduced into this country, simply a question of care in manipulation and a free use of smoke. It is not meant that the bees should be stupefied with smoke, but merely alarmed and subjugated, and whenever they show any disposition to act on the offensive recourse is to be had to smoke. It is not necessary that the smoke should be from a particular source, but that from certain substances, as tobacco, subjugates them more quickly, while burning puffball stupefies them for the time. There are some objections to these substances which do not apply to wood, either partially decayed or sound, and as the latter when in a good smoker holds fire best and is very effective, it is advisable to keep a good supply at hand. Seasoned hickory or hard maple are best, though beech, soft maple, etc., are good. The most improved bellows smokers, when supplied with such fuel sawed 5 or C inches long and split into bits a half inch or less in size, will burn all day and be ready at any time to give a good volume of blue smoke, by which bees of most of the races now cultivated in this country are subdued at once.
Fig. 13.—Manipulation—removing comb from hive. (Original.)
With Italian or black bees a puff or two of smoke should be given at the hive entrance and the cover and honey board, or quilt, removed slowly and carefully, smoke being driven in as soon as the least opening is made and the volume increased enough to keep down all bees as fast as the covering is removed. The smoker may then be placed on the windward side of the hive to allow the fumes to pass over the top and toward the operator. The frames may then be gently pried loose and lifted out carefully, without crushing a bee if it can be avoided. Crushing bees fills the air with the odor of poison, which irritates the bees. So also when one bee is provoked to sting others follow because of the odor of poison.
Too much smoke will often render certain manipulations difficult; for example, when queens are to be sought out, or nuclei or artificial swarms made, volumes of smoke blown in between the combs will drive the bees from them so that they will cluster in clumps on the bottoms of the frames or in the corners of the hives. A little observation and judgment will enable one to know when the bees need smoke and how much of it to prevent any outbreak on their part, which it is always best to forestall rather than be obliged to quell after it is fully under way.
Fig. 14.—Manipulation—tilting to bring reverse side of comb in view. (Original.)