630 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



Next to the left is the comb box, next the rapping tub, then the stove 

 and steam boiler, and across the back end of the room are the honey and 

 other tanks. An electric bell which is worth its weight in gold is used 

 to tell us when the five-gallon can of honey is full. The arrangement is 

 simple and is made ready for use in ten seconds. It takes up scarcely 

 any room in the house or wagon. The trip arrangement is simply a 

 short board with a short piece of number nine wire fastened across it, a 

 short distance from one end, this is used to act as a tilting fulcrum, a 

 brick is laid on the other end at a point that will balance the can of 

 honey when it is full. When the can is almost full it tilts down and 

 makes the electric connection, rings the bell for us to either change cans 

 or shut off the flow of honey. 



When the capping tub is full of caps I break them up fine and empty 

 them out onto a strainer cloth that is spread out over another coarsely 

 woven burlap cloth that is tied over the top of a can and allowed to bag 

 down enough to hold the tub of broken up caps. When the cap tub is 

 full again, the four corners of the strainer cloth is caught and the "wad" 

 is dumped into another can with a screen bottom. At the end of each 

 day's work this is hauled home and the next morning, after drawing off 

 the accumulated honey at the bottom, it is dumped into another tank in 

 the storage house at home, similarly arranged and allowed to drain 

 until time to melt up the wax. My storage house is a building 24x68 

 two stories high and in it I have a great many handy contrivances that 

 I would like to show you but time will not permit. 



You will notice that I have said nothing about marketing the crop, and 

 time will not permit my saying anything further than that my home 

 market takes a great deal of honey. Then I attend the farm sales and 

 other gatherings with my "honey rig." I have also a large mail order 

 trade. Whenever I go any place on the cars, or otherwise, my little five- 

 pound pail of honey goes with me. While there is much yet that I have 

 left unsaid on the subject, yet I think that I have given you a pretty 

 good glimpse of my season's work, and if I have said anything in this 

 short talk that will enable you to keep bees better, or rear better bees, or 

 helped you in any other way, I feel that my efforts have not been in 

 vain. I thank you. 



BEEKEEPING AS A SIDE LINE AND THE FUN OF THE THING. 



IIAMLIN B. MIIXEB, MABSHAXLTOWN. 



My subject today is of such a nature and my beekeeping experience of 

 so short a duration, that I needs must confine myself to personal experi- 

 ences, more or less, in order to make my remarks of sufficient length 

 and interest. I don't presume in this effort to teach you old-time bee- 

 keepers anything. I am just going to be satisfied if I can only entertain 

 you a little and perhaps take you back to your beekeeping youth. 



Were you an audience of overworked office men, business men and 

 professional men, I would not feel like I was about to make a fool, or 

 a laughing stock of myself, before a wise, or otherwise, beekeeping aud^- 



