BEES. ot 
Honey is gathered in the form of nectar secreted by various flowers, 
transformed by the bees, and stored in the comb. Bees also often 
gather a sweet liquid called “honeydew,” produced by various scale 
insects and plant-lice, but the honeydew honey made from it is 
quite unlike floral honey and should not be sold for honey. It is 
usually unpalatable and should never be used as winter food for 
bees. When nectar or honeydew has been thickened by evaporation 
and otherwise changed, the honey is sealed in the cells with cappings 
of beeswax. 
It is not profitable to cultivate any plant solely for the nectar 
which it will produce, but various plants, such as clovers, alfalfa, 
and buckwheat are excellent honey plants as well as valuable for 
other purposes; their cultivation is therefore a benefit to the bee 
keeper. It is often profitable to sow some plant on waste land; sweet 
clovers are often used in this way. The majority of honey-producing 
plants are wild, and the bee keeper must largely accept the locality 
as he finds it and manage his apiary so as to get the largest possible 
amount of the available nectar. Since bees often fly as far as 2 or 3 
miles to obtain nectar, it is 
obvious that the bee keeper 
can rarely influence the nec- 
tar supply appreciably. 
EXTRACTED HONEY. 
Fic. 18.—Knives for uncapping honey. 
Extracted honey is honey 
which has been removed by means of centrifugal force from the 
combs in which the bees stored it. In providing combs for the stor- 
age of honey to be extracted, the usual practice is to add to the 
top of the brood chamber one or more hive bodies just like the one 
in which brood is reared and fill these with frames. If preferred, 
shallower frames with bodies of proper size may be used, but most 
honey extractors are made for full-size frames. The surplus bodies 
should be put on in plenty of time to prevent the crowding of the 
brood chamber, and also to act as a preventive of swarming. 
Honey for extracting should not be removed until it is well ripened 
and a large percentage of it capped. It is best, however, to remove 
the crop from each honey flow before another heavy producing plant 
comes into bloom, so that the different grades of honey may be kept 
separate. 
The frames containing honey to be extracted are removed from the 
hive, the cappings cut off with a sharp, warm knife (fig. 18) made 
specially for this purpose, and the frames are then put into the baskets 
of the honey extractor (fig. 19). By revolving these rapidly the honey 
is thrown out of one side. The basket is then reversed and the honey 
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