56 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Jan. id 



heard of a^frame hive. I remembered from 

 my boyhood days a frame hive in my grand- 

 father's house-apiary; for Baron von Ber- 

 lepsch, simultaneously with father Lang- 

 stroth, had constructed a frame hive already 

 in 1856; but I had not yet formed an exact 

 idea of the frame, the bee-spaces, etc., even 

 after reading a bee-book of Dzierzon; and 

 when I bungled up a sort of box hive with 

 frames it was any thing but perfection. 



In 1875 I saw the first properly construct- 

 ed frame hive, and I, with my older brother, 

 G. C. Greiner, well known to the readers, 

 built several hundred such hives in the 

 spring of 1876. Unfortunately, Gleanings 

 had not yet found its way into our hands, 

 and we were, in a measure, groping in the 

 dark. 



At the centennial exposition in Philadel- 

 phia, 1876, I saw the first sample of comb 

 foundation. The article was rather inferior 

 as compared to what our manufacturers turn 

 out to-day with their complete machinery, 

 their superior methods of cleansing and pu- 

 rifying wax, etc., but it was a long way ahead 

 of no foundation at all. Up to that time, and 

 for one or two years after, we had to (or did) 

 get along with naturally built comb as start- 

 ers in our honey-boxes and with wooden 

 comb-guides in the brood-frames. Many a 

 time we were forced to take old comb and 

 cut it nearly down to the septum so as to 

 serve us in our comb-honey supers. We 

 had to be on the lookout for new comb con- 

 stantly wherever an opportunity offered. 

 During fruit-bloom was a good time to have 

 strong colonies build us comb of the finest 

 kind for starters; but this required close 

 watching, and the hives had to be opened 

 often and the comb cut out in order to get 

 the start of the queens. The younger bee- 

 keepers, who have always had comb founda- 

 tion to use as starters, both in brood-frame 

 and super, would now consider it a great 

 hardship if they had to get along as we did 

 in those times. 



However, we produced very fair honey, 

 even under such adverse conditions. We 

 were then using a nailed two-pound box, 

 which was glassed on both sides after being 

 filled by the bees. The package — wood, 

 glass, and all — was weighed up and sold as 

 honey It was certainly not a losing game to 

 put on the glass. Sometimes the sheets of 

 glass were very thick and heavy. We never 

 ordered such heavy glass, and our conscience 

 troubled us not a little for hoisting this on 

 the unsuspecting customer. We produced, 

 during the years 1875, '76, '77, till 1885, many 

 tons of comb honey, of which every box was 

 glassed, and the gain thus made was consid- 

 erable. 



In 1877 we were only just beginning to use 

 separators as an experiment. Tin separators 

 were used by A. I. Root at this time and pre- 

 viously; but we had not found it out, and we 

 were trying wood as the more congenial and 

 natural. James Heddon and others argued 

 that wood could not be used successfully as 

 a divider; but in all of our trials it proved a 

 success. We constructed several different 



styles of supers with wood separators, for our 

 open or undivided super did not please us, 

 although we had little trouble in crating all 

 the honey we produced with the help of 

 them. 



It is sometimes claimed that it requires 

 more skill to produce good himey without 

 separators than it does with them; but in 

 view of the fact that we for several years, as 

 beginners at that, successfully produced 

 comb honey by the ton without separators — 

 yes, and also without the auxiliary of comb 

 foundation, this contention is without suf- 

 ficient support — nay, it seems to me the 

 greater skill is required to produce comb 

 honey in our modern divided and sub-divid- 

 ed and cross-divided supers. 



Before adopting a super which satisfied 

 us during this earlier period, many of differ- 

 ent styles were studied out; and after trying 

 them we discarded them till we hit on the 

 wide-frame single-tier super. Just about 

 this time Gleanings came into our hands 

 for the first time, and we found that A. I. 

 Root had a double-tier wide-frame super al- 

 ready in use for several years. With this 

 fact before us our confidence in our single- 

 tier super increased to such an extent that 

 we speedily changed all our stock of supers 

 into this style — something which I never had 

 the slightest reason to regret, although man- 

 ufacturers have abandoned their wide-frame 

 (double-tier) super for such of other con- 

 structions. The most or all of these newer 

 supers do not protect the tops of the honey- 

 boxes, and they at times become badly be- 

 smeared with propolis before being ready to 

 be removed from the hives. The T super is 

 the simplest and most inexpensive of all the 

 supers before the public. It neither pro- 

 tects top nor bottom of the section boxes. 



To be fair, I have given nearly all of the 

 different styles of supers a trial. With me 

 those parts of sections which are unprotect- 

 ed — in other words, are not covered up by 

 either the bottom-bar or the top-bar — the 

 sides of the sections being protected or inac- 

 cessible to the bees in all kinds of supers — 

 have often, if not usually, become besmeared 

 with bee-glue to such an extent that I could 

 not properly clean them with a knife. I con- 

 sider this a serious enough fault to condemn 

 all such supers as leave either the tops or 

 the bottoms of sections exposed to the bees; 

 and I have gradually worked them over into 

 wide-frame supers with the exception of 

 some thirty T supers, which so far have es- 

 caped, although they are not expected to be 

 put on the hives again in their present form. 

 By mere accident two or three were put on 

 last summer, and were filled also. It was a 

 singular occurrence that a case of honey 

 which I took to one of our groceries a few 

 weeks ago came from one of these T supers. 

 I had forgotten it; and when I opened the 

 case I was greatly mortified to find such 

 dauby-looking boxes. I believe I take at 

 least as much pains as the average bee- 

 keeper in cleanmg up my honey, and I re- 

 member very distinctly having used more 

 "elbow grease " with this lot than with my 



