THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



281 



beautiful occupation. To produce the 

 clean, smooth sections of honey, in all of 

 their virgin whiteness, crate them up in 

 tidy cases, and stack them up in showy 

 piles, appeals to the love of the beautiful 

 in any man. 



The filling- and stacking up of piles of 

 new, shiny, tin cans, filled to the brim 

 with the thick, rich, ambrosial product of 

 the apiary is not entirely devoid of en- 

 thusiasm. 



I have not said much of the advant- 

 ages of the production of extracted 

 honey, but there is one important point 

 upon which not much has been said, and 

 that is, that a fair crop of extracted 

 honey may sometimes be secured when 

 not much marketable comb honey would 

 have been stored. Even a slight flow 

 may be secured in the extracted form, 

 while it requires quite a bountiful flow to 

 make much headway in sections. 



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Selected Articles 



AND EDITORIAL COMMENTS. 



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CLE.ANING LXTRACTING COMBS. 



How it may be Accomplished at the end 



of the Season Without any Fighting 



or Difficulty. 



• I am not certain that extracting combs 

 need cleaning up by the bees at the end 

 of the season. Partly finished sections 

 that are to be used for bait-combs the 

 following year, must be cleared of honey, 

 otherwise it will candy, and, when given 

 to the bees, they will store new honey 

 over it. 



Of course, the combs must be cleaned 

 by the bees, but exactly what way to 

 allow them access is sometimes difficult 

 to decide. G. C. Greiner gives his plan 

 in Gleanings, and it strikes me as an 

 excellent method if the combs are to be 

 cleaned. Mr. Greiner says: 



This is an old subject, discussed and 

 talked about time and again; but I be- 

 lieve there are some points connected 

 with it that have never been mentioned. 



To prevent the gnawing of combs, one 

 of our prominent writers advises reduc- 

 ing the entrance to a single bee-space. 

 This may have the desired effect; but, in 

 my opinion, there is a better way to 

 accomplish the same result, but in an 

 opposite direction. The small-entrance 

 plan seems faulty in more than one 

 respect. 



We are told to reduce the entrance to 

 guard against robbing. How can we 

 expect that the same device can be a 

 protection in one place, keeping robbers 

 out. when at the same time, only a few 

 steps from it, we make it as inviting as 

 we can to coax robbers in? Isn't this a 

 little inconsistent? 



Then the small passage causes a terri- 

 ble jam. It is a continual crowding and 

 fighting to see which will be first, either 

 going in or coming out. The wear and 

 tear of bee life in trying to get at the 

 tempting sweet is entirely needless. A 

 little different method will prevent all 

 this trouble. 



Again, the reduced entrance gre'tl/ 

 delays the job. What is the object in 

 prolonging the anxiety and efTorts when 

 the whole business can be done in less 

 than two hours' time without the least 

 crowding or fighting among the bess? 



Another unpleasant feature in connec- 

 tion with small passages is the excited 

 condition of the bees; they will sting 

 everybody, far and near, if they have to 

 fight to get at exposed honey, and they 

 are all the more excitable if this work 

 has been delayed until all natural 

 sources have ceased to yield honey. 



The plan I have followed for years is 

 something like this: When 1 strip my 

 colonies of all their supers at the final 

 ending of the honey season, which is 

 generally during the fore part of October, 

 these supers are taken, one after another, 

 directly from the hive to the honey 

 house, and extracted. They are then 

 stacked up as high as I can reach, in 

 rows, on the west side of my bee yard. 



