Featured Beekeepers Pipe

Another recent online purchase that arrived today

Mark on the bottom:

I'm only able to read HLD (Holland?), the rest is covered too much by the rust.

Unfortunately one bit is missing, as it should look like this:

This one is dated 1917.
Will mine be from the same period?

 

yes , imo !
you're on a bit of a buying tear..... eh ?

 

I've been buying some more vintage/antique razors, and often end up buying other items from the same seller The pipe was bought together with a vintage straight razor, similar to this razor:

 

don't lose sight of what you're really after...... lots ... can become lots of lots of stuff !!!

 

I'm really after lots of lots of stuff

 

Wow that is a super fun piece! We actually purchased a kit to build some 'hives' for honey bees. Hubby found out how much the queen and the drones were and looked shocked - then found out they can just fly off elsewhere LOL!!! Still in our garage!

 

Even with the missing piece, I like it a lot.

One of my uncles has bees. Many years ago, I went with him to get the honey. Fully equiped, with suit and headware.
At that time, I had long hair, and I forgot to tie it into a ponytail before suiting up. It was very warm that day, and my hair was getting stuck to my face. So I decided to step a few feet away from the hives, take off the headgear, and take care of my hair and go back to the hives. Well, one of the bees was so kind to follow me Had to run a lot to get rid of it ... while hearing my uncle shouting at me what an idiot I was
But...
the honey was delicious!

 

Ditto.

That will change when you get to know more about vintage and antiques, and you'll wish you never bought so much stuff.
It is best to focus on the good stuff, of whatever fields really interest you.

 

More accurately called a "smoker" - one lights a small smoky smoldering fire in it - I'd use old leaves myself - then blow through it to distribute the smoke into a hive - it calms the bees down. They think the hive is on fire, and fill themselves with honey; and honey-filled bees generally won't sting. Modern smokers have a bellows arrangement to blow the smoke.
My own hives never just flew off-once you have bees in a hive, they are very unlikely to all leave. But they will make new queens, and the new queen will fly off with some of the colony. But if your colony starts to make new queens, you should notice the oversize cells being prepared for new queens, when you inspect the hive. You can choose to destroy those cells before new queens are made; or you can prepare for that event by putting a new empty hive-box nearby, and the new queen will go into it and then you'll have two hives.
I found bee-keeping to be easy and fun; did get some honey, but had to rent a centrifuge to extract it (one can also just put the honey, combs and all into jars, without extracting), and then the local bee-keeper's supply/rental outlet closed, and when we sold our house, I sold the hives to the new owner and got out of the bee-keeping hobby.
(Laura-if you have any bee-keepers or honey hobbyists in your area, they might be able to supply you with a queen and advice on getting started at a lower cost. I started almost for free when a swarm settled in my attic; I was advised to just buy a hive and set it nearby. Bees would rather live in a hive with correct bee-dimensions than in an attic - and sure enough, they moved into the hive and I was in the bee business. That original hive spawned new queens and swarms twice more, so I eventually had three hives, never having actually bought any bees.)

 

Great story.