1911 - Miss Kehoe's Philadelphia Roof Bees

There is nothing about an ankle length white summer dress to make me think of a working beekeeper.  In fact, the thought of tending my bees in a skirt gives me the heebie-jeebies!  Hats off to Miss Kehoe and all my beekeeping sisters in the past who did just that however.

DETERMINED to benefit by the work of others while she worked herself, Miss Margaret Kehoe, a

Vine St.  still looks like a good place for hives!

stenographer in an office building in Vine Street, Philadelphia, hit upon the plan of starting an apiary on the roof. It was a roof that lent itself readily to the idea and with the consent of the owners of the building Miss Kehoe installed her bee hives. Now there is a thriving colony of honey-makers busily engaged in gathering honey and storing it for the benefit of the clever little girl who originated the idea. 

Very few of the office workers in the neighborhood know of the existence of this roof apiary. The roof is not overlooked by other buildings and as adjoining roofs are not visited by the tenants the apiary established by Miss Kehoe is not interfered with and no one is the wiser for the innovation. The bees give very little trouble. As any one knows who has possessed an apiary the little collectors go about their business day by day and require no attention. They feed themselves, manage their own affairs and ask only to be let alone to toil the merry day through. 

If they realize that the honey they are so industriously storing is to benefit the owner of the hive and not the bees themselves they don't let the knowledge trouble them or interfere with their daily program. The keeping of bees being one of the profitable experiments that can be undertaken without any great effort, at slight expense and with scarcely any labor involved, the originator of the roof apiary finds it no tax on her time or her resources to manage the little honey business she has established. 

The only outfit required in starting an apiary of this kind is a hive or two, a colony or two of Italian bees, a veil, a smoker and a little practical knowledge added to the book learning that any one can acquire from a volume borrowed from a library. The apiary can be started with a capital of twenty-five or thirty dollars and if you have no roof on which to keep the hives, and no back yard they can be kept on the porch. 

As the popular idea of bees, however, is that they are vicious little insects, given to sting on sight and at times showing a fiendish desire to attack in a body, it is well to start the apiary as Miss Kehoe did, out of sight of every one and where there can be no possibility of interference with the industrious little bees.

Miss Kehoe has only been familiar with the habits bees for a few months, but she has entirely lost all fear of them and has learned that the popular idea of the  viciousness of bees is entirely wrong. To prove this she permitted two clusters of bees to swarm on her her arms and in one of the pictures she 

can be seen with the masses of bees held in this way, smiling at the camera, not the least bit nervous and confident that the bees would be gentle with her, as indeed they were.

It would not be possible to take these liberties with the old time black or hybrid bees. But the advance made in the bee keeping industry includes the importation of the Italian bee, a much more gentle variety than the older kind.  The Italian bee will not sting unless driven to it in defense of his home and his honey.  Miss Kehoe wears a veil sometimes when working around the hives, but at times she works entirely without the protection and is never stung.  In fact she wears the veil more to keep the swarms of flying bees from her face and eyes than from any fear of harm from them. There  is also, she declares, a great deal of exaggeration concerning the harm done by the sting of a bee.  If brushed off quickly the bee sting, which is left in the wound with its store of poison, is harmless.  The mistake made is to try to pick out the little sting with the thumb and finger.   In squeezing it this way the poison is pressed in and the very object that is to be avoided is accomplished.

It may be expected that Miss Kehoe will duplicate the experience of another city beekeeper who writes: 

"Began the season with three colonies; divided and swarmed to nine and took 362 sections of fine honey late in the fall.  I have spent about $100 since beginning, but now have nine good swarms, 25 supers and three empty hives with everything complete and the outfit worth over $200.  Altogether I have taken 622  sections of honey of which $115 worth has been sold.  All my honey sells for 25 cents per section and I sell out as fast as I can deliver it."

It should be remembered when comparing the plan of beekeeping with that of chicken raising or any of the kindred ideas that the suburbanite or city dweller has for raising  money, that the bees require no feeding, they shift for themselves all the time, they are working for you without any cost to you, they take up little room in the establishment, are not likely to get you "in wrong" with the neighbors if properly placed as those of Miss Kehoe's are, and the initial outlay is scarcely anything.

From: The Technical World Magazine, 1911