August. '16] PETTIT: BEEKEEPING 407 



dwell near our homes by being provided with conditions most suited to 

 their comfort and prosperity. It has been the purpose of the lecture 

 course to describe these conditions, to give an outline of facts with 

 which every beekeeper must be acquainted." 



It is the purpose of beekeeping investigation to determine the prin- 

 ciples of bee nature and of instruction to convey them along with 

 methods of their application to the student. From 1909 to the present, 

 it has been the writer's purpose, as yet realized to a very limited ex- 

 tent, to make it "possible to look to the graduating classes of the 

 Ontario Agricultural College, for valuable assistants and foremen of 

 apiaries, trained inspectors of apiaries, queen breeders, lecturers, 

 experimentalists and experts in all lines of beekeeping." 

 1. Investigations in Apiculture 



The problems of investigation proposed in that first report w^ere the 

 following: 



Wintering bees; the prevention of swarming; preparation of honey 

 for sale and the marketing of it ; the production of commercial beeswax; 

 the control of the mating of queens; the influence of weather condi- 

 tions on the working of bees and the nectar secretion of flowers; the 

 comb building of bees, including the use they make of comb foundation; 

 the separation of the wax and honey contained in cappings without 

 injury to the honey ; the testing of appliances offered for sale by dealers; 

 the testing of queens sold by commercial queen breeders; problems 

 connected with bee diseases. 



Most of these problems are as yet almost untouched, owing partly to 

 a lack of equipment, and mostly to the pressure of executive work and 

 teaching. By attention to the well known essentials we are able to 

 winter bees and prevent swarming with more than average success. 

 Successful methods of packing and marketing honey have been in- 

 vestigated and reported on from time to time. Various methods of 

 rendering beeswax from old combs and refuse have been tested. An 

 experiment conducted bj' C. P. Gillette of Colorado, some years ago, to 

 determine the amount of wax from foundation used in the cell walls in 

 comb building was repeated with similar results to those obtained in 

 Colorado. Various capping melters on the market have been tested 

 to discover some practical method of removing all the honey from the 

 wax without injury to the honey from overheating or contact with the 

 melted wax. During the season of 1915, a honey crop of about 20,000 

 pounds of honey was extracted in a commercial apiary using the Peter- 

 son Capping Melter with good success. This device has a flat surface 

 heated by hot water and slanted to run off the mixture as soon as the 

 wax is partly liquefied. A gravity separator removes the honey quickly 

 from the wax. Queens sold b}^ a number of queen breeders have been 



