No. G. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 3G'J 



BEE-BRUSH. 



To brush oil" the bottoms of sections, a bee-brush is needed. You 

 will also need one sometimes to get bees off brood-combs. You 

 can shake most of the bees off a brood-comb, but the remainder 

 must be brushed off". You can buy a bee-brusli for a few cents, made 

 like a whisk-broom of broom corn, only the corn is thin and not cut 

 off at the ends. But if jou don't care for the trouble of making 

 one fresh every time, you can make one as good or even better 

 out of asparagus tops, sweet clover, or any one of a number of dif- 

 ferent weeds. Get quite a bunch of it, and tie together with a 

 string. If in a big hurrj, you may grab up a big handful of long 

 grass or weeds without any tying together. Of course, green brushes 

 are good only for the day. 



EXTRACTED HONEY. 



In former days, besides comb-honey in irregular and dauby chunks, 

 there was strained hone}', secured by putting in a cloth a lot of 

 crushed honey combs, pollen, brood and dead bees. When the honey 

 was strained out of this, of course it was more or less flavored with 

 the other materials. Nowadays liquid honey, or honej- out of the 

 comb, is altogether different, being the pure honey with no ex- 

 traneous flavor, just like the honey that drains out of a nice section 

 of honey when it is cut and lying on a plate. This honey is not 

 strained but extracted. It is thrown out of the comb by centrifulgal 

 force, and the comb is left unbroken, so that it can be returned to the 

 bees to be filled over and over. 



As the bees have no comb to build, they can store the honey with- 

 out hindrance, no matter how fast it comes. So the yield of ex- 

 tracted honey is greater than that of comb honey. The greater 

 proportion of extracted over comb honey is variously estimated. 

 Some say they can get sometimes nearly twice as much extracted 

 honey as comb ; others say they can get only a little more. 



Aside from the greater yield of honey, there are some advantages 

 in working for extracted rather than comb honey. It takes less 

 skill to work for extracted. With a large hive and plenty of room 

 there is less danger of swarming, when working for extracted honey. 

 Sometimes, when the flow is short, the bees have not time to finish 

 up any of their sections, and it is but little satisfaction to have a set 

 of sections half filled. Even with the most skilful management 

 there will be more or less unfinished sections. With extracted honey., 

 it is different. No matter how little honey may be in the extracting 

 combs, it can be thrown out. 



Just on that account there is a danger. When honey, or nectar 

 rather, is first gathered, \t Is thin, watery stuff, unfit for table use. 

 24—6—1901 



