360 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apr. ]! 



ink. I have seen the best of honey made as 

 black as molasses. 



It seems certain now that we shall have no 

 honey this year. In fact, it looks as if it were 

 going to be a duplicate of 1894, when many bees 

 were lost by starvation. We have had only four 

 inches of rain up to date, March 1. 



Newhall, Cal. 



CLOSED-END FRAMES WITH A SPACE BACK 

 OF THEM. 



ByJ.E. Hand. 



Mr. Editor:— I was pleased to notice the new 

 Danzenbaker hive illustrated on p. 64— more so, 

 perhaps, because I find incorporated into it one 

 of the principles which I used and abandoned 

 several years ago. This is the cleat which 

 forms the space at the ends of the frames. I 

 soon found, as all will in time who use this 

 hive, that the trouble was not at the ends at 

 all, but at the side of the hive. It was always 

 more or less trouble to get out the first frame; 

 and, sometimes after a rain, utterly impossible, 

 and, as highly as I valued the closed-end 

 standing frame, I resolved that, unless there 

 could be some better way to get out the first 

 frame, I should be obliged to abandon the whole 

 business. 



It was at this time that I thought of using a 

 hive with a movable side except IJ^ inches at 

 the bottom, which is nailed so as to hold the 

 hive together. The movable side is clamped 

 on by means of two VanDeuzen clamps which 

 hold the hive practically as solid as if nailed. 

 I have used it ever since with perfect satisfac- 

 tion. This is, no doubt, a very good hive, but I 

 think no better than the Dovetailed eight- 

 frame, as it is too large to be used successfully 

 as a divisible-brood-chamber hive. 



On page 56 we find these words by Dr. Miller: 

 " And for extracted honey, I'm not sure that I 

 ever saw objpction made by American bee- 

 keepers to allowing unlimited breeding-room." 

 I am aware that there are many producers of 

 extracted honey who do not limit- the queen; 

 but I am not willing to admit that all Ameri- 

 can bee-keepers are in favor of any such whole- 

 sale production of brood during the harvest, 

 only to become consumers in many locations 

 where there is no fall honey to gather. 



I know of one bee-keeper who hives his 

 swarms in half-depth L. hives, and, after the 

 harvest is over, drives these swarms into Dove- 

 tailed chaff hives for winter, and, by using 

 queen excluders over these small hives, gets all 

 the honey in the extracting-combs, and I never 

 saw a finer article than he produced in this 

 way. Perhaps this is one of the problems that 

 that can be governed only by location. My 

 own experience has been in favor of limiting 

 the queen to 8 frames during the harvest. I 



found, as a rule, where the queen was allowed 

 access to the second story, there would be sev- 

 eral combs only partly filled with brood, and it 

 was always more work to extract such combs 

 than those that were full of honey; and very 

 often such combs were not extracted at all, and 

 for that reason I have for the past ten years 

 used queen-excluders on all my hives run for 

 extracted honey, with perfect satisfaction. 

 Wakeman,Ohio., Feb. 18. 



[Mr. Danzenbaker uses in his hive a follower 

 and wedge; and if you had used a similar ar- 

 rangement in the hive you speak of, I do not 

 think there would have been any trouble about 

 getting out the first frame, nor any frame, in 

 fact. The loosening of the wedge releases the 

 follower, and then all that is necessary is simply 

 to pry over the frame or frames. — Ed.] 



PREVENTING GRANULATION. 



THE GREAT IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING HONEY 



FROM granulating; heating to prevent, 



NOT AS FEASIBLE AS CHEMICALS. 



By C. F. Hochstein. 



In Gleanings for March 1 I see that " E. F. 

 C, of N. Y.," asks you for the same thing that 

 I did some time ago, and there's no doubt but 

 thousands of bee-keepers want the same thing. 

 You say you would not like to put any thing in 

 honey for any purpose whatever, meaning by 

 this, of course, you do not want to adulterate it. 

 I do not know the exact definition of adultera- 

 tion, as I have no dictionary here in the woods; 

 but most people consider adulteration as the 

 mixing of an inferior article with a genuine 

 one in order to cheapen the latter. Now, in 

 putting a chemical in honey we put it in to pre- 

 serve the honey in its natural state, and not to 

 cheapen it; so it can not, come under the head 

 of adulteration any more than any fruit or pre- 

 serve you put up with sugar to keep it from 

 getting sour, or working. We might just as 

 well accuse you of selling us foundation made 

 of adulterated wax, if you use sulphuric acid to 

 take the wax out of old combs. 



Now. Gleanings always advocates selling 

 honey in the home market; and right here it 

 refuses its help to a plan that will increase the 

 consumption of honey, raise the price, and 

 make selling in the home market easy. 



You probably ask. " How will it do this ? " I 

 will try to explain. Since I came down here I 

 met a bee-keeper with over 150 colonies, and he 

 used this thin Florida sugar-cane syrup on his 

 table. I teased hina about it. "Oh! "said he, 

 " I have several barrels of honey yet, but I can 

 not bother to use it — it's all candied." This 

 also applies to the retailers and consumers of 

 honey. They will not bother with it if it gran- 

 ulates, no matter how pure it is. They will 

 rather use sugar-cane syrup. So granulation 

 lessens consumption. Now, if we can get some- 



