July 14. lyo-l. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



487 



seem to favor large tanks. Some advocate the use of arti- 

 ficial heat. 



Mr. Wood has lard cans to store in. He never opens 

 them until he is ready to melt the honey. He finds the 5(i- 

 pound size the best. He strains the honey through cheese- 

 cloth when he puts it in the cans. 



Mr. Black can not get honey to run through cheese- 

 cloth. 



Pres. Hutchinson described a strainer he saw in Califor- 

 nia, used by " Rambler," which was simply a long piece of 

 cheese-cloth on rollers. The cloth was simply unrolled 

 from one roller and rolled up on the other as fast as it got 

 too dirty to strain well. 



Mr. Wood uses one strainer for each can. 



- ALSIKK CLOVER FOR HONKV— RIPENING HONEY. 



QuES. — " What has been the success in alsike clover for 

 honey ?" 



Mr. Black raises a good deal of alsike, and has a good 

 deal of alsike honey. He says the honey is good, and 

 weighs 13 pounds per gallon. 



George A. Stray says alsike honey is as good as any 

 produced. 



Mr. Wood finds alsike honey extra-good. 



W. D. Soper believes alsike honey is good. He didn't 

 think that standing in open tanks was beneficial to honey, 

 but that honey is all right to bottle when extracted. He 

 thinks tank honey isn't so good, and said that any honey on 

 which rises a scum when heated isn't sufficiently ripened. 



Mr. Huff differs from Mr. Soper on the rising of scum; 

 some of the best honey in his experience will have it when 

 heated. 



Mr. Ludington had some experience with sour honey, 

 and found that heating it improved its flavor. This honey 

 soured bejore being extracted. 



Mr. Graden took off some honey once as soon as it was 

 capped, and it sweat badly. He put it back on the hives, 

 and the cells that sweat were emptied by the bees and filled 

 with dark honey. 



Mr. Wood gets his honey well ripened without getting 

 travel-stained, by putting a piece of wire-screen between 

 the supers and the bees. 



GETTING BEES OFF EXTRACTING-COMBS. 



QuBS. — " How to get bees off combs for extracting ?" 



Mr. Chapman has taken off as high as 3000 pounds in 

 one day. He takes out the combs and shakes off the bees, 

 then sets them down until all are shaken, when he finishes 

 by brushing. 



Mr. Ludington and Mr. Huff use bee-escapes. 



Mr. Chapman does not use escapes on account of rob- 

 bing. 



Mr. Leach asked if combs do not sometimes break by 

 shaking. 



Mr. C. Cady advocates wired frames. 



Mr. Leach does not use wired frames. 



Mr. Wood uses wired frames. 



Mr. Leach extracted 900 pounds with the help of a boy 

 from 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock. 



Mr. Huff puts on escapes in the evening for what he ex- 

 tracts the next day. 



DEEP OR SHALLOW FRAMES — WHICH ? 



QuES. — "Which are preferable, deep or shallow supers? " 



Mr. Wood began bee-keeping in 1878, and from his ex- 

 perience would advocate shallow supers. He can take off 

 four shallow ones to one deep one. 



Mr. Tyrrell asked if they can extract fast enough with 

 the shallow frame. Some thought they could, others 

 thought not. 



At a call for hands, three favored bee-escapes for ex- 

 tracted honey, and five were against them. 

 [Concluded next week.) 



Please send us Names of Bee-Keepers who do not now 



get the American Bee Journal, and we will send them sam- 

 ple copies. Then you can very likely afterward get them 

 subscriptions, for which work we offer valuable premiums 

 in nearly every number of this journal. You can aid mucn 

 by sending in the names and addresses when writing us en 

 other matters. 



See Langstroth Book Offer on another page of tl s 

 copy of the American Bee Journal. 



[ Our Bee-Heepln§ Sisters j 



Conducted by Emma M. Wilson, Marengo, 111. 



Sulphur and Honey for Rheumatism. 



Honey thickened with dry sulphur — a teaspoonf ul every 

 morning — has cured some cases of rheumatism. — National 

 Stockman and Farmer. 



Some of the sisters might try this and report. 



Bee-Literature for the Common People. 



Three years ago this summer a Mrs. Brundage, from 

 Chicago, came to me to get all the cases of honey I could 

 spare — she wanted it for herself and neighbors. She said 

 she could not get anything but manufactured honey in the 

 city. I gave her the address of George W. York & Co., and 

 told her I would not be afraid to give her all I was worth if 

 she got anything but pure honey there. 



After I explained and told her all I could, I said, " To 

 make a long matter short and to the point, if we bee-keepers 

 fed that stuff you speak of to our bees, it would be just like 

 throwing your pocketbook full of money into the fire ; it 

 would be the end of all and both." 



She is a woman with a fair education, and after she had 

 started off she stopped her horse and called back to me, 

 " Oh, I thank you ever so much for what you have told me ; 

 I feel so much better." She certainly must have had a hor- 

 ror of manufactured honey to hire a horse to go through 

 this country in different directions for "pure bees' honey,''' 

 and hire it taken from 2/2 to T miles to the depot, and pay 

 express charges from here to Chicago. 



An old man who gets a dollar's worth of honey of me 

 each year, got some of the fall honey of another bee-keeper, 

 and told him, " I know Mrs. Bartrum feed dem bees some 

 things dat makes dat terable vite honeys." I said to him, 

 " Of course, you explained the difference in the color of the 

 early honey and the fall honey, didn't you ?" He said, 

 " No, I did not ; do you think I would argue with such old 

 drones 7" I think they are just the ones to work at. 



I do wish one of the big bee-men would write a book on 

 bees, from the beginning to the present, about honey and 

 all the flowers and plants that produce honey. Write it so 

 that children under 14 years of age can comprehend it. 

 Make it as fascinating as the " History of Birds," and have 

 it introduced into our school libraries. I am sure if you 

 would attend one of the teachers' institutes you would not 

 find more than one — or perhaps not one — who can tell any of 

 the whys and wherefores of bees. I think it just as impor- 

 tant a study as to take a horrid snake and dissect for the 

 scholars. And a book on all the honey-plants of the differ- 

 ent countries would be nice in t'heir libraries. Our school 

 has a lovely library, with histories of birds, animals, in- 

 sects, our big men, and just about everything excepting 

 bees and honey-producing plats, and" I do think a flowery 

 written book on those subjects would be a blessing to this 

 growing generation, and the author would reap a good 

 thing from it. 



■The two road commissioners, that repair the road here, 

 are two old Norwegians that try to kill all the lovely sweet 

 clover, and let grow all the horrible old burrs and obnoxious 

 weeds you can think of, and they think it is all right. 



If some good writers could roll up some good bee-facts 

 in a miserable old dime novel, some of these fellows that 

 won't read the bee-papers might swallow it like a bitter pill 

 rolled in sugar, and after it is down it would do its work. 

 So the good bee-work rolled in the cheap novel would have 

 an effect on a certain class. 



I have a friend, a smart woman, well educated, and a 

 doctor's wife, who thinks and says that " honey don't cost 

 bee-keepers anything." And a young man I know, who 

 owns a big farm, and is considered quite smart, has a few 

 colonies of bees in box-hives, but never has any honey ; he 

 would not give a man SO cents a colony to transfer them to 

 good hives ; and he thinks the bees make their hone)' in the 

 winter. Rich as he is, it would kill him to take a bee-paper. 

 And there are so many like him that would not read a bee- 

 paper, that might get it into their heads through their chil- 



