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She began reading books about beekeeping and subscribed to the American Bee Journal. Books which she has found particularly helpful are "Bees Ways," by George De Clyner Curtis, published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, and "Practical Bee Breeding," by A. Nilman, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons. She felt also that she should learn from some one who had had practical experience, so she enlisted the help of a friend of the family. He helped her for two years and at the end of that time they divided the increases in bees as was their agreement. Since then she has had full charge of the bees and loves it. "They are so interesting," says Harriett, "I could spend all my time watching them. I have seen the queen laying eggs in the cells; the nurse bees feeding the newly hatched ones; workers bringing in nectar and pollen or cleaning the hive. And they are so cute. Immediately after I put back a cone from which the honey has been extracted, there is a line of tiny heads along the top row and minute tongues move rapidly cleaning the cells, for no fresh nectar will be stored in them until they are thoroughly cleaned."

HARRIETT lives with her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Guy Baker, one mile north of Boulder, Colorado, when she is not attending A.&M. college in Fort Collins, Colorado. Needless to say she is majoring in entomology.

The bees provide plenty of honey for the family and give Harriett a neat income besides. "One nice thing about beekeeping," says Harriett, "is that there is always a market for the honey. Wholesale dealers in the larger, cities will buy any amount at current prices."

She now has sixteen hives and intends to increase them until she has twenty-five, as she feels she can care for that many in spare time.

Two of her colonies have been purchased. Several she obtained by dividing larger colonies and the others were hers when she shook runaway bees into her hives. Several times neighbors have called and frantically asked Harriett to "please come quick and take a swarm of bees out of an apple tree," or "please take some bees off a bush near the house." Sometimes runaway swarms attach themselves to trees in the Baker's own orchard or near the garden as was the instance one day when Mrs. Baker was standing near a flower bed and noticed an unusually large number of bees around overhead. Glancing up, she saw a swarm hanging from a limb of an near-by tree. Harriett's bees, a short distance away, were working contentedly in the hives, so she knew that these were strangers. She got away as fast as she could, and since neither she nor her husband knew how to handle bees. they drove to Boulder high school for Harriett. Harriett donned veil and gloves and shook the swarm into a super.

Harriett's bees are the Italian and Caucasian strains, although for no particular reason. The two colonies which she bought happened to be Caucasian; the one she found in the canyon was Italian. Both strains do well in the Colorado climate. She has one colony of Yellow Italians which she thinks are one of the prettiest strains and as unpredictable as they are pretty. Perhaps as she is making her weekly check-up, she will see that they have gathered very little honey and think that they aren't worth keeping; then the next time the frames will be full as if they had been waiting for the right day or a special blend of nectar.

"The productivity of a hive," says Harriett, "depends on the season. Our growing season, so close to the mountains, is always shorter than in other areas. Nevertheless, this last season, which was a short one because of a late spring, the bees produced about 650 pounds of honey besides the amount needed to keep them during the winter. Eight of my hives contained new colonies which produced little more than enough for their own need, so it was really the eight older colonies which brought in the extra honey. Of course in other sections of the country where it is warmer, the bees can be expected to gather more nectar. The bees must be good workers too, and some aren't. Sometimes one hive will not produce as much as another."

BEES WILL go as far as three miles for nectar, but Harriett does not think her bees need to go that distance as there are fruit blossoms, flowers and patches of sweet clover on their own five acres and adjoining tracts. Her mother, who is a flower lover, has large beds of various flowering plants near the house and in the front yard. "Flowers make pollen and nectar," Mrs. Baker explains.

Various plants yield nectar at different times of the day. These conditions are controlled to some extent by the heat of the sun or the absence of it. Pollen has been called bee bread as it is essential to the welfare of the colony and is the main food for the young. It is stored in cells in the same manner as honey and the surplus is covered with a small amount of honey and then capped with wax. In this manner it will not spoil before it is needed.

Most people prefer the light-colored rather than the darker honey because the flavor is usually milder, but there are some blends which are almost colorless yet have a strong flavor. The honey from white clover is considered the choicest of all; however, the food value is known to be greater in darker honey.

FOR a start in beekeeping, one will need a colony of bees, a hive with a super containing ten frames and sufficient comb foundation for the frames. A three-pound colony, which of course includes a queen, can be purchased for about $5. This colony can be expected to increase to a good size the first season and may produce a small quantity of honey besides the amount the occupants will need during the winter. Other equipment includes an extractor (a hand one which takes care of four frames is adequate), a smoker (to quiet the bees), a veil, a pair of gloves, a hive tool, and clothing which will fit snugly and protect ankles and wrist from crawling bees.

Harriett has been stung many times. At first they hurt," she acknowledges, with a smile, "but now I don't mind them any more than a mosquito bite." And she shrugs her shoulders.

Cleaning the hives is only a part of the work. There are supers and hives to assemble; foundation wax to fasten to frames; extracting and bottling. So far Harriett has sold only extracted honey. Sometime she expects to add comb honey and creamed honey as products for sale.

Since a frame of comb honey is never taken from the hive until it is capped with wax, the wax must be removed before the honey can be extracted. A knife with a long thin blade is used for the uncapping. The frames are then set on end in the extractor inside a groove especially placed there. Then the handle removes the honey by centrifugal force and it flows into a container at the bottom of the extractor. When this container is full, the honey can be drained through a faucet into a large jar or can for storage. Harriett likes gallon-sized wide mouth jars as she thinks they are easier to keep clean. Later the honey is poured into smaller jars and labeled.

In order to save expense Harriett buys all her equipment in knocked down condition. And she doesn't buy all of the jars for marketing the honey. Her friends save mayonnaise and pickle jars for her—another method of keeping down expense. She paints the lids a pretty turquoise blue, fills the jars and adds her colorful label stating it is "Blossom Honey from Sunny Hill Apiary." At Christmas time colored Cellophane tied with a fancy ribbon adds a holiday touch.

HARRIETT LOOKS into each hive at least once a week. She feels that in this manner she knows how each colony is progressing. Although bees are noted for their cleanliness, spiders often build webs across the frames and she removes these along with misplaced wax or bee glue. She wants to know too if there are plenty of fresh eggs, for if there aren't, the queen may be a poor one or may be sick or dead; she tears out drone cells to keep down the population of drones. These cells are usually built at the bottom of the comb and they must be destroyed before the eggs hatch, as a colony with too many drones will soon die out. They do not work but stay around the hive and eat the nectar brought in by the others. Empty frames of comb must be kept in the hive for honey storage, so she must remove ones that are fully capped, extract the honey and replace them. To keep the bees healthy Harriett gives a dose of sulfa in heavy white sugar syrup twice a year. Once she came back after a few days to find that the bees were attaching comb to the container. She removes any wax that the bees have attached in undesirable places. Sometimes they build a few cells here and there as if reluctant to waste extra bits after the comb is finished. Harriett does not throw these pieces away but places them together and later melts them. Then when there is a good sized chunk of bees' wax she sells it to a buyer in Denver.

Harriett prefers to buy sheets of foundation wax for the frames. The bees build to it, thereby saving the effort of making it themselves and giving them more time to gather nectar. Also it takes energy to transform honey into wax. Beekeepers estimate that bees eat from eight to ten pounds of honey to make one pound of wax, so buying the foundation saves valuable honey.

When fall arrives and nectar becomes scarce, the bees know that winter is near. Then they bring in propolis, a brownish resinous glue from the buds of trees, and seal all the cracks in the hive to keep out winter winds in much the same manner our pioneer grandmothers chinked their log cabins. Harriett lays a heavy piece of wall board over the top of each hive for extra warmth. Then with fifty to seventy-five pounds of comb honey (depending on the size of the colony) in each hive, the bees cling together in a large ball in the lower section of the hive until warm weather comes. Then the queen again begins her task of laying eggs. The pollen stored in cells is used to feed the young long before the flowers are open. In this manner many young bees are ready to gather nectar when its starts flowing.

This cycle must continue all during the summer or a colony would soon decrease in size. The average life of a worker bee is two weeks, as by nature a bee literally works itself to death. Wings become frayed and then one day the load of nectar becomes too heavy and they cannot reach the hive. They drop to the ground and die. Then, too, many bees are destroyed each year by sprays that the farmers use to kill insects on crops. Other young must be ready to take their places.

HONEY HAS been a delicacy for man since time immemorial. We all are familiar with Samson's riddle devised after eating honey which came from the carcass of a lion he had killed. No doubt bees have been on the earth as long as man, making their homes in hollow logs or any other convenient darkened spot. Young and old have bragged of finding hollow logs in a forest, which yielded tubs full of honey.

In one of the foreign countries there is a blend of honey said to have medicinal properties. One doctor of today has suggested that the use of more honey in our diet might prevent the dreaded polio. Regardless of the reason, we all want plenty of this luscious sweetness.

There is a great demand today for bees from farmers who have learned their value in producing more seed from crops and like to have hives placed on their property. Over fifty fruit, vegetables and legumes seed crops depend upon the honey bee for effective pollination. Other insects pollinate but bees are said to be the best.

"I can sell all the honey my bees produce to a dealer in Denver," Harriett says in a very business-like manner, "but of course the price is not as high as I can get when I sell it myself in smaller quantities. I fix my price according to the average selling price of popular brands of honey in the local stores." Last year her prices were, 25 cents a pound for three-pound lots or over, 40 cents for one and a half pound, 28 cents for one pound, 22 cents for twelves ounces and 16 cents for eight ounces.

TO PROMOTE sales, Harriett has a mailing list of previous customers and she sends each a postal card stating that "Blossom Honey" is available. She includes her prices. Word-of-mouth advertising has increased this mailing list each year. An advertisement in the "For Sale" column in the local paper in the fall and another at Christmas time, was another method she used last year for the first time. Many of her customers give the smaller jars as Christmas gifts. One person told her that she gave a half-pound jar to each of her two small nieces.

The youngsters were delighted and thought it fun to eat a spread that was especially theirs. Last fall Harriett placed her honey in a display sponsored by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. Jars of each size were shown and the price stated on the label. The cost was $1 to cover charges of lettering an eight-by-ten-inch card giving name of product, her name and phone number. She thinks advertising of this kind is good business.

Included in the profits this year was the sale of ten pounds of beeswax at 50 cents a pound, and a nucleus, or new colony, for $5. A nucleus, or "nuc," as she calls it, is obtained by taking a frame from a hive which contains queen cells that are soon to hatch, and an ample supply of honey for the new colony together with enough bees to take care of a queen. This hive is placed a short distance from the old one. When the first queen emerges she will kill all the other unborn queens and in a short time will mate with one of the drones and begin laying eggs. This new colony can be expected to increase and produce enough honey for themselves during the first winter if started early in the summer. Of course the next season they will be a good producing hive.

LAST YEAR a carpenter built a ten-by-twelve foot building for Harriett. She calls it her "honey house." It contains her equipment; and jars of strained honey are displayed on shelves along the east wall.

The best location for a hive is on a southeastern or south slope. They must be placed where there is an air drainage, for during cold nights air currents move down a slope thereby taking moist air away, which is dangerous to bees. This is very important in the Colorado climate where the nights are usually cold. A hive should have a solid base. Harriett makes hers of lumber. And she keeps a heavy rock or two on top of the hive to prevent the wind from blowing it around. Harriett thinks it wise to look into the hive once or twice during the winter months. But she waits until there is a warm sunny day, for the hive must not be opened unless the temperature is at least fifty degrees Fahrenheit because the bees will become chilled. She wants to know if they have plenty to eat. The full frames are moved to the center where the bees can find it easily and the empties are replaced with full ones or placed toward the outside edge. Frames of capped honey are stored each fall for emergency use.

"Of course, the seasons are unpredictable," she explains. "They tell me that a few years ago, a heavy rain came during the summer and washed away all the nectar from the blossoms, and the beekeepers were compelled to feed their bees sugar syrup to keep them alive at a time when they should have been producing at their best. I hope that doesn't ever happen to me."

Harriett tells about one swarm she didn't get. "It was up in one of the canyons," she recalls. "We were hunting mushrooms again and there was that swarm of bees on a tree limb. I went home and got a super and my veil and gloves. I crawled out as far as I dared on the limb and shook it. Most of the bees fell into the super. In a minute they all flew back to the limb. Thinking maybe I hadn't shaken off the queen I got a long stick and scraped everyone of those bees off the limb and they fell into the super, but immediately up they came onto the limb again. I did this two or three times and then gave up. Either there wasn't any queen, which happens once in a while in runaway swarms, or else the queen wouldn't stay in the super and the others followed her out."