Jan. 28, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



69 



lift off, replace, and take home. There is no business senses in 

 paying out for unskilled help a lot of money that may just as 

 well be in supplies, and, having them, you are ready for a big 

 rush, and out nothing but interest and insurance. 



Therefore, equip yourself well with tanks, and do the 

 bulk of the extracting when the flow is over, or nearly so, and 

 by the time the packing is over you have just time to go to 

 the convention and get straightened out for another year ; 

 and do as Mr. Hutchinson has been saying for a number uf 

 years, " Make it your business, and keep more bees." 



R. C. AiKiN. 



Before the discussion of Mr. Aikin's paper, the president 

 appointed the following committees : 



PuoGRAM — R. C. Aikin, P. Rauchfuss, and Fred Hunt. 

 -Exhibits — VV. L. Porter, H. Rauchfuss, B. W. Hopper, 

 Mrs. W. Lindenmeier, Jr., J. C. Carnahan, E. Milleson, Wm. 

 Broadbent, and J. S. Bruce. 



Transportation — Arthur Williams (Secretary Chamber 

 of Commerce), H. C. Morehouse, and W. P. Collins. 



Legislation — F. Rauchfuss, P. L. Thompson, and Fred 

 Hunt. 



H. Rauchfuss — One who has only 12 colonies can not 

 afford to purchase 10,000-pound tank, and yet he can pro- 

 duce a good article without it. He should have sufficient 

 combs to hold the whole crop, and produce no unripe honey. 

 He can store it in cans or barrels, or smaller tanks, and strain 

 and settle it, skim it ; then wait until it is cool, not cold, for 

 bottling. It should not be so warm that the stream of honey 

 runs down into the vessel below, dragging small bubbles of 

 air with it. nor so cold that it wavers from side to side, thus 

 enclosing air. By observing these points one can produce a 

 good article on a small scale. 



Mr. Gill — I would like Mr. Aikin to extract the honey be- 

 fore it granulates at all. To handle partly granulated combs 

 is a bother from start to finish. You can't get them clean, 

 and they are not in nice shape for wintei-. 



Mr. Garhardt — It would make a great deal of trouble for 

 me to haul my honey home and put it in tanks. I use four 

 thicknesses of cloth, take off the impurity and feed it to the 

 bees again. I indorse the method of producing a pure article. 

 I never have enough to sell because I can't produce enough. 

 But it is very wrong to think of hauling the honey home to 

 extract. It comes out so much easier when it is warm from 

 the hives. I would have no time to do It with my 20 yards to 

 attend to. 



Mr. Jouno — How do you keep the bees from robbing when 

 at out-yards ? 



Mr. Garhardt — There are some certain days when the 

 bees are likely to keep on with their work. On such days I 

 can extract for three hours without being bothered by the bees. 



Mr. Aikin — I did not advocate letting the hoiiey remain 

 on until it begins to granulate. But if you let the combs re- 

 main until September or October it takes only a few granules 

 to stop the strainer. The first flow of honey goes into the 

 cleanest combs, and can be extracted without a granule, and 

 will be solid in four weeks after extracting, oftentimes in two 

 weeks. Mr. Gill, or any other man, may get caught by stress 

 of work so as not to extract as soon as he would like to. I 

 usually get the combs perfectly clean by wholesale feeding 

 outdoors. I fill a barrel or tank with honey and water 

 made very thin — one gallon of honey to four or five of water — 

 douse the combs in it and hang them in a box, and set it so 

 the bees can get at them. While they are doing that there is 

 no robbing, and hives can be opened the same as in a flow. 

 There is plenty of time when running 20 apiaries to haul the 

 combs home, but you will find you will have to extract many a 

 time when it is not the fit time to do so, if you extract at the 

 out-yards. Any day when you can take off a thousand pounds 

 you will have robbers when extracting, and it is foolishness to 

 take off combs when robbing is going on. You can not take 

 off a big crop and extract it during a honey-flow. I don't ex- 

 pect a large equipment, but I do expect properly ripened and 

 properly clarified honey. Let it stay on the hive until thor- 

 oughly ripened, and have your tank deep, and then you may 

 draw it in five-gallon cans. But those producers who find it 

 expedient to do so do not repack it in retail packages. They 

 sell It to their neighbors, or sell it to the trade in 60-pound 

 cans. Every bit of honey that is packed in a retail package 

 should be packed in a retail package in the first place. I have 

 estimated I can sell even more extracted honey than I produce 

 myself, and have hoped to receive honey from ray neighbors 

 and pack it, but find that only those who produce on a large 

 scale produce a satisfactory article. In Colorado, bee-keeping 

 is a business. The tendency is to specialize. The man who 

 will not do business on a large scale will not be fitted to do 

 business. 



Pres. Harris — The convention should take up the subject 

 of queens. The vital importance of queens should be care- 

 fully considered. 



(Continued next week.) 





Dr. Miller's Answers 





Send Questions either to the office of the American Bee Journal, 

 or to Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



Honey and Rtieumatism. 



I have read that some people were cured of rheumatism 

 by the stings of bees. I have a customer who is very fond 

 of honey, and as she has the rheumatism badly, and is un- 

 der the doctor's care, she is advised against eating honey. 

 She was also at a Michigan bathing sanitarium and not 

 allowed to eat honey there. Will Dr. Miller answer this? 



Ohio. 



Answbr. — The fact that some people are cured of rheu- 

 matism by means of stings does not necessarily prove that 

 eating honey is good for rheumatism. Honey and bee- 

 poison are two very different things. Yet I have never un- 

 derstood that the use of honey was contraindicated in rheu- 

 matic cases. It is possible that in the case in question some 

 particular condition makes it advisable to deny the use of 

 all sweets ; but it is safe to say that if they are at all allowed 

 it will be better to use honey than sugar. That able author- 

 ity. Dr. Kellogg, at the head of one of the most noted sani- 

 tariums in the world, endorses the use of honey as being 

 more readily assimilable than sugar. 



Questions by a Beginner. 



As my health failed me, and my mind was very unset- 

 tled, I decided to keep bees, as I thought they would take 

 niy attention. I started with 5 colonies to winter, and 

 bought 13 more in May, 1903. They were in 8-frame hives. 

 I made extra stories, put 7 frames in the top story ; and I 

 also made 16 new 10-frame hives, thinking the 8-frame 

 hives were not large enough. I extracted 800 pounds of 

 honey from 13 colonies. 



1. Which are the best, the 8 or the 10 frame hives ? 



2. I did not extract any buckwheat honey in the fall ; 

 I left the supers on. Would it have been better to have 

 taken them off ? 



3. When is the best time to put them on in the spring ? 



4. When do you put the top stories on 7 



5. How do you find the queen in the case of a weak 

 swarm which you wish to put back in the hive ? 



6. How do you tell when the colony has no queen ? 



7. How do you introduce a queen into a queeenless 

 colony ? 



8. How do you avoid swarming? 



9. When is the time to extract ? New York. 



Answers. — 1. After living with you for a year I might 

 give a better guess as to which is best for you. Without so 

 long a sojourn I'm pretty safe in saying you would better 

 have the larger hives if you're working for extracted honey. 

 For comb honey the large hives are also better, unless you 

 give the business close and careful attention. It is lighter 

 work, however, handling smaller hives, and in some cases 

 that is an import matter. 



2. Unless the brood-chamber was well filled with stores 

 it was well enough to leave some honey above. But you 

 might have the supers taken off the hives and put some of 

 their combs of sealed honey in the brood-chamber. 



3. A good time to take out of cellar is when you see the 

 red maples in bloom, or as soon thereafter as weather seems 

 fairly settled. 



4. Put on the extracting-super as soon as you see bits 

 of white wax daubed on the sides of the top-bars or on the 

 upper part of the combs. If white clover is your first source 

 of surplus, put on supers when you see the very first clover 

 bloom. Better give supers a week too soon than a day too 

 late. 



5. One way is to put excluder-zinc at the hive-entrance. 



