THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



115 



was spent in hunting- and trapping". 

 Many is the dollar that I earned in 

 this way, and in manj' parts of the 

 countrj' there is still "good inone3', " 

 in it for boys, or anj' one with leisure 

 in the fall and winter. Send ten cents 



for a cop3% and it may i>ut you in a 

 way of making- some money where you 

 least expected it. No this isn't a paid 

 advertisement; the publisher will prob- 

 ably be the most surprised of the lot 

 when he sees this notice. 



HONhY CANDYING IN THE CONB. 



Is This More Likely to Take Place if the 



Cells Contain a Little Candied Honey 



When Given to the Bees. 



At the end of the harvest, when the 

 hone^' has all been extracted, it is the 

 practice of bee-keepers to g-ive the bees 

 access to the combs that they i-nay be 

 cleaned up before being- stored away 

 for the winter. If any partly filled 

 sections are left at the end of the sea- 

 son, the honej' is usualh^ extracted 

 from them, and the bees allowed to 

 clean up the combs before the combs 

 are put away for winter. 



I have followed this practice, siuiph' 

 because I have been taug-ht that that is 

 the proper wa3' to do. I have never 

 tried leaving the combs with a little 

 honej' adhering to the sides of the cells. 

 I have been taught that this honey 

 would granulate, and I expect that it 

 would, and I have been told still 

 further, that this granulated honey 

 would be sort of "starter," that would 

 start granulation in the new honey 

 stored in the cells. I have often won- 

 dered if this were really true, as I 

 have noticed that the bees always 

 clean out a cell perfectly before storing- 

 honey in it, and now comes Mr. Doo- 

 little, in the American Bee Journal, 

 saying that this cleaning out of the 

 combs in the fall is entirely useless. 

 Here is what he says: 



I have been censured for thus advis- 

 ing the use of bait-sections (without 

 their having been cleaned the previous 



fall) the claim being made that if we 

 do thus that the little honey left after 

 extracting will granulate, and from 

 this the "seed" for granulation will 

 be left in the cells, so that the honey in 

 baits thus used will granulate much 

 sooner than would be the case were the 

 sections cleaned by the bees in the fall 

 before the honey had a chance to gran- 

 ulate. But after years of careful ob- 

 servation and experimenting, I can 

 only think my critics are mistaken, 

 for such does not hold true with me. I 

 am confident that the bees always clean 

 all cells in which they deposit honey 

 absolute]}' clean before they store any 

 honey therein, and by their so doing 

 all this supposed "seed" is removed so 

 that there are no granulating "germs" 

 left to start granulating. And, as my 

 experience says that the honey in such 

 extracted sections does not granulate 

 any quicker than that in any of the 

 sections containing baits, cleaned by 

 the bees in the fall, as is often recom- 

 mended, I must be excused for think- 

 ing that the ideas of my critics are not 

 well-founded. 



I would be glad to hear from others 

 on this point, especially from those 

 who have had experience. Many times 

 there is no objection to having the 

 combs cleaned up in the fall, but some 

 bee-keepers don't extract all of their 

 honey until late in the fall when the 

 bees are flying very little, or not at all; 

 and others, a few, bring all of the 

 combs to the home-yard to extract, 

 and others are thinking of doing this 

 wa}-, and the question is, if it isn't 

 necessary to have the combs cleaned 

 up the previous autumn, wh}' go to the 

 trouble at a time when their exposure 

 puts the apiar3' into more or less of a 

 fracas? 



