1882 



GLEANINGS m BEE CULTUKE. 



483 



GOOD HONEY AND GOOD dl'EENS. 



A Plain, Practical, Coiimicu-senso Article. 



PUTTING UP EXTRACTED HONEY. 



MOW Shall we do it? This is an important mat- 

 ter; for whatever may be said of the coming 



bee, theie seems now to be little doubt that 



extracted honey will be the honey of the future; it is 

 being: produced in larger quantities, and is coming- 

 more and more into demand. The American Bee 

 Journal, and several respected authorities, state that 

 the best test of pure honey is, that it granulates in 

 cold weather, and they hint that consumers should 

 beware of honey in glass jars which does not candy. 

 This seems to be a little hard on some of us who 

 have thus put up our honey for years. But as we 

 know that their tin-can solid honey can not stand in 

 the market with pure liquid honey in glass jars, we 

 can afford to be patient under such insinuations. 

 What the people want is pure liquid honey, and 

 this they can have. The guarantee of purity must 

 be the character and name of the producer. 



About 14 years ago I put up my crop in glass jars, 

 and had it all granulate. What a job I had heating 

 it and emptying the bottles! The next year I put 

 about half a barrel of white-clover honey into a cop- 

 per kettle, and brought it to the boil, and ruined it. 

 But I noticed that the change of color and taste did 

 not take place until it had nearly reached the boiling 

 point. Thinking that honey heated, but not boiling 

 hot, when sealed up might, keep without granula- 

 tion, I tried again, and succeeded. For thirteen 

 years I have pursued this method, heating the hon- 

 ey, but not enough to injure it, and sealing it in 

 glass jai'S while hot. I also found that it was not 

 very important to have any particular degree of 

 heat. Last summer I made some experiments, put- 

 ting up some at 180, some at 160, some at 140 degrees. 

 It all kept equally well; liut that put up at 180° had 

 a slightly scalded taste, but not enough to injure it. 

 I want to try some this summer at lower degrees of 

 heat, and tind just how warm honey must be when 

 sealed up, to keep it from candying. The one thing 

 necessary is to have the air all expelled before it is 

 sealed. Now, as we can got 140 or perhaps 160 de- 

 grees of heat without fire, the next thing to do is to 

 learn to put our honey in glass without putting it on 

 the fii'e. Now, can this be done? Two ways occur 

 to me. In both ways a tight box is needed, in which 

 to set the jars to be heated after they are filled. 

 Where steam is to be had, a pipe can be run through 

 the box to get the required heat. When steam is not 

 accessible, the box can have a glass cover like a hot- 

 bed, and put in the sun any warm day. My ther- 

 mometer set in the sun, rose to 156° last summer: 

 under glass it would have gone higher. On any 

 bright day in summer, we can probably get enough 

 heat to warm honey sufficiently to keep it from 

 granulating, if sealed up while warm. 



QUEENS. 



Much depends on the queen. Who has not found 

 here and there in his apiary a colony which far out- 

 strips the mass, while others straggle in the rear? 

 Different causes may contribute to this result, but 

 the one cause, always operative, is the character of 

 the queen. For instance, I have a colony which for 

 three years, during the lifetime of one queen, was 

 in the vanguard; this year, with a new queen intro- 

 duced last falL, it is among the stragglers. Another 

 colony which for three years was in the rear, with a 



new queen introduced late in the fall, rushed up to 

 the front this spring. What we want is a select 

 tested queen of this liind at the head of every colo- 

 ny. How are we to get this? I know of only one 

 way; that is, to raise or buy them, and test them 

 ourselves, and kill all poor queens and all which are 

 only fairly good; and keep on testing and killing, 

 until we get a first-rate queen in every hive. This 

 killing of queens, especially fairly good ones, is sad 

 work; but there is no other way to the best results. 

 Suppose a man has 50 colonies with 15 first-rate 

 queens, 20 fairly good, and 15 below the average. 

 Suppose he raises this summer from his best queens, 

 say 120. He may sell them as dollar queens, and net, 

 say, $100. That would bo doing well, if he is work- 

 ing for honey rather than queens. Now, instead of 

 selling his youngqueens, suppose he keeps and testa 

 them, and out of the 120 he gets 35 first-rate queens. 

 Stappose he kills off all the poorest of his old queens, 

 and those that are only fairly good, and the 85 young 

 ones, rejected, 120 in all killed, and secures for each 

 of his 50 colonies a select tested queen. He makes 

 no money on queens this summer; but will he not, 

 in the years to come, get his money back? The man 

 who has done this, and who has followed it up for 

 years, is the man from whom I should like to buy 

 queens. Where does he live? Don't all epeak at 

 once. I am working on this plan this summer. 



Last year I bought, from different parties, tested 

 queens. They were tested, evidently, only with ref- 

 erence to purity. Only about one out of three of 

 them is really first-rate in all respects. I will buy no 

 more tested queens unless they are also tested with 

 reference to vigor, fertility, hardiness, and honey- 

 producing qualities of their workers. Queens of 

 this kind are worth many times the price of a dollar, 

 or ordinarily tested queens. Dollar queens from re- 

 liable parties yield about the same proportion — one 

 first-rate queen in three; the only difference is, that 

 some of them produce hybrids. Inferior queens are 

 just as likely to mate with Italian drones as the su- 

 perior ones. It is about time for us to stop keeping 

 or selling to others every thing we can raise in the 

 shape of a queen-bee. I am killing this summer, to 

 make room for others, queens which I might have 

 sold as tested Italian queens, fairly good ones too, 

 and a good deal better than some I recently bought 

 at $3.00 and $5,00 apiece. I do not expect to pay 

 $5.00 nor $3.00 nor $2.00 again for a queen, and And 

 her pure, but — worthless! I dislike to pinch the 

 head off a $5.00 queen, but sometimes it is a losing 

 business to keep them. When we get first-rate 

 queens in every colony, we need not trouble our- 

 selves about not being able to control the fertiliza- 

 tion of young queens. Good drones will be plentiful, 

 and tlie young queens can make their own selection, 

 and will no doubt do it as nicely as any man could 

 do. 



Much depends on the drones as well as on the 

 queen. An inferior queen, well mated, will cast bet- 

 ter queens than a superior one mated with a less 

 vigorous drone; at least, that is the only way I can 

 account for the fact, that the queens I raised last 

 summer from my best queen and colony were not 

 at all equal to those from a beautiful queen in an- 

 other colony, which was never strong in bees, and 

 gathered no surplus honey. But a superior queen 

 well mated is the one to raise queens from. This 

 can be ascertained only by thoroughly testing her 

 royal daughters. Every queen should be thus test- 

 ed before we raise many queens from her, either 



