1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



687 



book, on the subject of cross bees, friend Doo- 

 little wrote: 



T carry a piiddle, made of wood and wire cloth, in 

 my wovk-bdx; and if any bee insists dii following- 

 me two rods from its liive, I always kill it with tliis 

 paddle, and thus my apiary is always kept free from 

 angry bees. The wire clotli is inserted in the cen- 

 ter of the wood, so as to allow rlie air to g'o throug'h 

 the paddle, thus making' sure of hitting the bee 

 every time, instead ot blowing it on one side, as is 

 often the case where only solid wood is used. 



From the above it would seem that our friend 

 has changed his mind. That's all right: we 

 do it ourselves sometimes. Now. we have tried 

 both the solid wooden and wire-cloth paddles — 

 the wire cloth itself being reinforced at the 

 edges by a rim of heavy wire. The latter, in 

 our hands, proves to be much more effective. 

 It hits the bee every time without fanning, and, 

 so far as we can remember, it makes a pretty 

 sure job of killing. We made quite a lot of 

 them for use at the candy-stands at our county 

 fair, giving one to each stand, with instructions 

 to kill the first bee that came around; and you 

 will remember how, last year, we reported that 

 the plan was a complete success. With the 

 wooden sticks and paddles we used to give 

 them, they were quite sure to only fan the bee 

 — possibly receive in return a sting for their 

 misdirected effort. Now, Mr. Doolittle, have 

 you not been a little too hasty in giving up a 

 good thing? 



When we want to make a wholesale job of it, 

 we simply clap a couple of boards together, 

 about as one would a pair of cymbals; and as 

 soon as every last bee is killed, peace reigns for 

 a while. But when we desire to kill only an 

 ocaisional bee, a wire-cloth paddle, in our esti- 

 mation, is ahead of every thing else. Now, 

 either friend Doolittle has lost the knack of 

 killing bees with the wire cloth or else he has 

 forgotten what he wrote above; for, observe, 

 he said, " I always kill it with this [v/ire-cloth] 

 paddle." Italics are ours. 



THE BOARDMAN .SOLAR WAX-EXTRACTOR; HOW 



IT WILL SAVE MONEY FROM " STUFF " 



USUALLY THROWX AWAY'. 



We have been saving up for several months 

 past the refuse from the wax-rendering from 

 our wax-room, until we have now an accumu- 

 lation of several barrels. By any process by 

 which we may treat it in the wax-room, even 

 by sulphuric acid, we can get no wax out of it. 

 It seems, in fact, to be nothing but dirty dirt. 

 Very recently we set up one of the Boardman 

 extractors, placed a few shovelfuls of this stuff 

 in it. spreading it evenly over the bottom of the 

 tuachine. The results were astonishing. At 

 the present rate we shall get a large quantity 

 of wax of beautiful color, of what could not 

 otherwise be obtained by any mechanical 

 means indoors. Indeed, from our four or five 

 barrels of dirt we shall get. at the present rate, 

 about half a barrel of beautiful wax; and with 

 this style of extractor the labor of shoveling the 

 stuff' into the wax-extractor and removing the 

 residue after the wax has been extracted, is 

 very small indeed. We are coming to the 

 belief that the solar wax-extractor does its 

 work the most thoroughly of any method of 

 refining known. The first few times we tried 

 the ]}oardman it did not seem to do the work 

 satisfactorily; but we now know that it was 

 because we thought we could make a "slight 

 improvement'" on his machine. It will be 

 remembered that the bottom of his tray is 

 simply made of matched stuff— that is, narrow 

 strips of lumber tongued and grooved like 

 flooring or ceiling. Well, our improvement 

 consisted in covering this flooring with tin, but 

 its bright surface reflected back so much of the 



sunlight that we actually lost considerable 

 heat, and really spoiled the practical working 

 of the machine. The last time we visited 

 Mr. Jioardman we were reminded that the 

 bottom of his extractor consisted principally of 

 matched stuff, and we began to think that was 

 really the reason why his worked so nicely. 

 Soon after arriving home we put out an ex- 

 tractor exactly as Mr. Boardman makes his, 

 with the result above mentioned. Lest some 

 may have forgotten how the Boardman is 

 made, we will simply state. that it is a large 

 wooden tray, made entirely of wood, 4 or .5 in. 

 deep, and about :^ by 5 feet. An ordinary hot- 

 house sash may be used to cover, but we find it 

 very much better to use one large glass. Glass 

 is now made so cheaply in large sheets that it 

 adds but a small amount to its cost, and con- 

 siderable to the effective working of the ma- 

 chine, because the ordinary sash bars tnake 

 shadows, along which the wax fails to melt. If 

 you do not wish to make a Boardman solar 

 wax-extractor, you can obtain one at the Home 

 of the Honey-bees for #(5.00. We shall soon put 

 in use some four or five of them. Indeed, every 

 foundation-maker will find that their use will 

 many times make up for their first cost. They 

 will likely earn for you in one day SIO.OO from 

 dirt that would otherwise be turned over to the 

 garden as just so much fertilizer. 



HOW TO TAKE AWAY THE DISPOSITION OX THE 



PART OF THE BEES TO ROB AFTER 



THE HOXEY-FLOW. 



Every' summer, after a honey-flow and dur- 

 ing the early part of the fall, we have been 

 troubled greatly by robbers. As is well known, 

 our apiary is run almost exclusively for con- 

 ducting experiments, rearing queens, and rais- 

 ing choice bees. This requires the almost 

 incessant opening of hives; and the result has 

 been, that robbers have bothered us continually 

 — so much so that many days we have been 

 obliged to discontinue work. This year we 

 have not been bothered at all; and it is not 

 because nectar has been coming in in small 

 dribs right along, but because we have discov- 

 ered a way of keeping the robbers busy. 



Nearly a year ago we described in our issue 

 for Oct 15, page 182, our method of transferring, 

 and, in connection with it, how to get extracted 

 honey from the old crooked combs, without an 

 extractor. The latter was accomplished in this 

 way: Old combs containing much or little hon- 

 ey, that were crooked or otherwise undesirable, 

 were placed in four or five hive-bodies, said 

 bodies being stacked up in one tier four or five 

 high, A wire-cloth screen* was placed on top, 

 and shaded; and an entrance at the bottom 

 was contracted to a space sufficient to admit 

 one or two bees at a time. As it took the bees 

 some little time to get in and out of the hives, 

 to say nothing of the time of crawling up and 

 down the combs, no robbing was induced. The 

 very thing that will get an apiary in an uproar 

 is, to let the bees get a large quantity of honey 

 at a time. But if, on the contrary, the bees 

 can get the honey very slowly, about as they 

 would from natural sources, nothing tinusual 

 is apparent in the apiary: and. on the other 

 hand, the undesirable combs are emptied and 

 cleaned up. Having bought qtiite a ntimber of 

 colonies in the spring, we had quite a lot of just 

 such combs, all containing mort! or less honey. 

 We stowed the.se away until the honey-flow, 

 when they were put in tiers of fotir of five hives, 

 as described above. Our purpose at tlie time 

 was simply to get the honey out of them. But, 

 incidentally, we stumbled on to something more 



*This is necessary to prevent the bees from 

 smothering- while ia the hive. 



