1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



383 



That will make them get down to business 

 all right; but if there are many to put down 

 cellar it means a lot of lost time right in 

 the honey-flow. Xow, my way is this: If a 

 swarm will not stay hived I cage the queen 

 and keep her caged for 24 hours on top of 

 the frames or sections, whatever it may be; 

 and at the end of that time I go to the hive, 

 take out the frame of brood, and if any cells 

 have been started I destroy them, shake a 

 few bees in front of the entrance, and let 

 the queen run in with them. This cures 

 them for the rest of the season if they are 

 given plenty of storing room. 

 Owen Sound, Ont., Can. 



WHY IT DOES NOT PAY TO GRADE COMB 

 HONEY CARELESSLY. 



BY H. H. ROOT. 



A few months ago we bought a car of 

 comb honey from a dealer who supposed it 

 was graded. When we opened some of 

 the cases we found practically no attempt 

 at grading, as .shown by the illustration of 

 eight sections, which, if we remember cor- 

 rectly, came from the same case. Proba- 

 bly none of this would have answered for 

 fancy; but at least two of the sections might 

 have gone for No. 1, and perhaps two more 

 as Xo. 2, but why any bee-keeper wanted 

 to put the other four sections in with 

 the same lot is more than we can under- 

 stand. Three of the sections in the up- 

 per row and the one at the left of the lower 

 row should certainly have been sold as 

 culls, or as bulk comb honey. The bee- 

 keeper who indiscriminately throws togeth- 

 er in the same case good and bad sections, 

 is likely, instead of getting the fancy or 

 No. 1 price for the good and bad, to get 

 No. 2 or even a lower price for all the honey, 



some of which, perhaps, could have brought 

 a much better price if it had been separate- 

 ly graded. 



When a buyer gets hold of a lot of honey 

 like this he is very apt to make up his mind 

 to look elsewhere for his honey the next 

 time, and the bee-keeper can hardly blame 

 him. Injudicious grading means low i)rices 

 every time. 



♦ ■ ^ ■ » 



ANCIENT EGYPTIAN BEE-KEEPING. 



BY H. J. O. WALKER, LT. COL. 



Mr. Fluharty is to be congratulated on 

 the imaginative sketch that makes the cov- 

 er of Gleanings for January so especially 

 attractive. To come down to hard facts and 

 your explanatory note on page 34, I should 

 like to know where can be seen "the paint- 

 ings upon the walls of their tombs and other 

 edifices" that depict the ancient Elgyptian 

 art of bee-keeping; or if they can not be seen 

 where are they even described? Not, I think 

 I may positively say, in the British Museum 

 nor in the museums of European capitals 

 that I have visited — not in quest of such 

 paintings, perhaps, but ready to mark them. 

 Nor have I read of any instances except the 

 following passage in Sir Gardner Wilkin- 

 son's The Manners and Customs of the An- 

 cient Egypt ieins: "To the garden depart- 

 ment belonged the care of the bees, which 

 were kept in hi\es similar to our own (I re- 

 meml^er to have seen them so represented 

 in a tomb at Thebes)." As this book was 

 written in or before ISoT it is almost certain 

 that the vessel taken by the author for a 

 bee-hive must have been in the form of a 

 straw skep. 



It is far more probal)le that, from the old- 

 est times. Kgyptian bee-keepers used the 

 cylindrical hives made of clay or Nile mud 



^'••^•^^WVJJ 



5? • 





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mm^t£irmtHMt v?** 



AN ILLUSTRATION OF SOME STRANGE GRADING. 

 These sections represent a considerable number classed as No. 1 in'a car of honey. 



