72 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



in a room above a basement having an 

 earth floor ; and, before I knew it, the 

 honey was all in the cellar. I am willing 

 to give Mr. Dadant full credit for this 

 affair. He said alcohol barrels would not 

 leak. I had also taken the precaution to 

 use between two and three pounds of 26- 

 ct. wax on the inside of it. I have been 

 having some correspondence this winter 

 in regard to getting a number of barrels, 

 or cans, perhaps I should say, made out 

 of galvanized iron. Mv idea is to have 

 them about as large again as an alcohol 

 barrel, so they will hold about 1,000 

 pounds each, and use them as storage 

 tanks. Such a large receptacle will allow 

 the honey to ripen considerably, and 

 make it much more uniform in quality 

 than when put in small packages as soon 

 as extracted. I would have these tanks 

 set in the honey-house, on benches high 

 enough so that the honey in them could 

 be drawn off into cans without any lifting. 



It will not answer in this locality to use 

 one large tank for storage; as we usually 

 get a number of different grades of honey 

 each season. The first extracting from 

 clover is very likely to be tinted with 

 that from fruit and dandelion bloom. 

 After clover comes basswood; then fall 

 flowers, including buckwheat. There is 

 but little tame buckwheat raised here; 

 but a great deal of wild buckwheat 

 springs up each fall in the stubble-fields 

 where various kinds of grain have been 

 grown; and in some seasons, considerable 

 surplus is secured from it. 



There is one little kink, and it is not 

 so very small either, about producing ex- 

 tracted honey, that may not be generally 

 known, and that is in regard to straining 

 it. Rambler of California, that land of 

 extracted honey, described, a short time 

 ago, in Gleanings, an ingenious machine 

 that he invented to strain honey; and, 

 judging from the description, I have no 

 doubt that it would do all or more than 

 the inventor claimed for it, but there is 

 no need whatever of straini-ig extracted 

 honey. It will strain 275i?//' better than it 

 can be done in any other way. In a short 



time after it is put in a can, or anything 

 else that will hold it, every particle of 

 foreign matter, such as propolis, bits of 

 wax, and any bees that ma}' have been 

 drowned in the product of their toil, will 

 rise to the top, and can be skimmed off, 

 leaving the honey perfectly clear. Of 

 course, when it is desired to store honey 

 in shipping-cans, or tight barrels, a tank, 

 or enough cans with open tops, are 

 necessary to hold one day's extracting. 



I have never run a whole yard for ex- 

 tracted honey; but I have, for the last few 

 years, run from 30 to 40 of the colonies in 

 the home-yard for extracted; and this 

 leads me to believe that locality may play 

 nearly as prominent a part in the produc- 

 tion of extracted as it does in that of 

 comb-honey; and, from experiments I 

 have made, I feel safe in sa3dng that when 

 running for extracted mi my locality, 

 considerable more surplus, especially of 

 white honey, can be obtained if the queen 

 is confined to one story during the white 

 flow. When this is done, and only Sor 10 

 frames are allowed for a brood-nest, colo- 

 nies are about as likely to swarm as they 

 are when being run for comb honey. If 

 three or four stories are used, and the 

 queen is allowed the free range of all of 

 them, no colony so treated has, with me, 

 ever tried to swarm; but I probably keep 

 enough colonies in the home-yard to fully 

 overstock its range; and I think there is 

 no question but what that which may 

 prevent swarming in a fully stocked 

 range is liable to partly or entirely fail on 

 a range but lightly stocked. In this lo- 

 cality, allowing the queen unlimited 

 room lessens the amount of surplus; 

 and also makes considerable more 

 work. There will be more or less 

 brood scattered through two and three 

 stories; and, in order to get what surplus 

 there is, more frames have to be handled. 

 Then, in the fall, the whole outfit has to 

 be overhauled and reduced down to one 

 story for winter; and is no small task 

 with a whole yard. 



Mr. Barber's article was also a very in- 

 teresting one; and the subject discussed 



