172 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 



the Dovetailed hive, or, at least, I myself 

 do not think it advisable to try to do it ; and 

 I agree With Dr. Miller, that the T super as 

 he uses it is perhaps the simplest Surplus ar- 

 rangement for the one-pound section that 

 has ever been brought out— that is, it is 

 more likely to please the masses. 



FROM DIFFERENT FIELDS, 



RIPENING HONEY IN HOUSES, ETC. 



When honey Is stored in houses built for that 

 purpose, is the temperature allowed to go down to 

 the freezing-point and below? Gleanings once 

 told us that extracted honey should stand 34 hours 

 before being sealed up. The plan works well. But 

 when I wish to melt candied honey I should like to 

 seal it while hot. How can I do this and not have it 

 ooze out? It is quite sure to find its way out of the 

 Mason cans unless it stands the 24 hours. 



Tell us about the strawberries, The Jersey Queen 

 produces many strong plants. The Jessie is slow 

 about sending out runners. Libbie Williams. 



Delavan, Wis., Feb. 13, 1890. 



Comb honey should not be allowed to get 

 below freezing. If it does, however, jisual- 

 ly no great amount of harm is done. Some- 

 times the combs are cracked by a severe 

 freeze ; and sometimes, if a damp spell fol- 

 lows, dew collects over the cold surface of 

 the capped honey. This may work through 

 the capping so as to dilute the honey ; and 

 if a warm spell follows, this sweetened wa- 

 ter will sour enough to give the honey a 

 bad flavor. Keeping comb honey at an even 

 temperature remedies most of this. What 

 Gt.eanings said about letting extracted 

 honey stand had no reference to the preven- 

 tion of candying. If you want to prevent 

 candying you must heat it to about 130 de- 

 grees, and then seal it up like fruit, while 

 hot. Put up in this manner it will seldom 

 candy, no matter how cold it gets, and, of 

 course, there will be no oozing if the sealing 

 is perfect. We have not had any trouble 

 with the Mason fruit-cans when put up ex- 

 actly as we can fruit. — My good friend, have 

 you said just what you intended to say about 

 the strawberries? With us the Jersey Queen 

 is the slow grower, and the .Jessie is the one 

 that produces so many and such excellent 

 strong plants. In fact, we have decided to 

 drop the Jersey Queen when we can get a 

 better-growing plant that produces as large 

 a berry. It is possible, however, that your 

 locality and soil make this difference. 



THICK bars a success ; THE THEORY THAT BEES 



WITH THEM WILL NOT ENTER THE SECTIONS 



AS READILY, A FALLACY ; NO USE FOR 



HONEY-BOARDS. 



The use of thick top-bars has been a success with 

 me. They have come to stay. I have them in all 

 my yards, and will have no frame made now unless 

 it has a thick top-bar. Five years ago I changed all 

 my bees to a frame whose top-bar was 14 'a inches 

 long, % wide, % thick, and 10 inches deep. I put 

 11 of these frames into a hive 16 inches wide, and I 

 haven't been bothered with brace-combs and run- 

 ning their cells all over the tops of the frames as 



they do when the top-bars are but | of an inch 

 thick. 1 have had the queen go up into the sections 

 biit once that I remember, and that time she laid 

 in a lot of drone-cells, and the hive was contracted 

 to only 8 frames, so I have no use for honey-boards; 

 and by experiment I have had them carry their 

 honey up over 10 or 13 inches of sealed honey to put 

 it into the sections, and I couldn't see but that they 

 stored it in the sections just as fast as the other 

 colonies just as strong in bees whose sections were 

 but two or three inches from the brood. So I have 

 no faith in a Ja-inch top-bar putting the brood too 

 far from the sections. C. M. Hicks. 



Fairview, Md., Feb. 10. 



THE BEE-ESCAPE FOR EXTRACTING; FURTHER PAR- 

 TICULARS. 



I should have said (see page 100), that a case of 

 empty combs should be put under the full one be- 

 fore it is finished, or else at the time of putting on 

 the escape; then, even if the bees are bringing in 

 five or ten pounds per day, there is no loss whatev- 

 er — not even as much as when smoke is used, and 

 they are shaken from the combs, and are upset and 

 confused for the rest of the day. I love the little 

 bees, and am glad to use any plan that will do the 

 work with so little smoke, for I think they deserve 

 better treatment than they get from some smokers. 



H. P. Langdon. 



East Constable, N. Y., Feb. 13, 1890. 



FRAMES AT FIXED DISTANCES. 



Mr. Root:— You ask for suggestions for a plan to 

 space frames at fixed distances. How will this do? 

 Drive the points of 4-penny wire nails into the rab- 

 bet, just the distance apart that you want your 

 frames spaced from center to center. Then cut a 

 slot in the end of the top-bar so as to bang as- 

 shown by diagram below. 



■ ! m\ 



Where a groove is cut in the top-bar for comb-- 

 guides or starters there will be nothing to do but to 

 drive in the nails, hang in the frames, and they will 

 be fixed as substantially, I think, as will likely be 

 needed under any thing like ordinary circumstan- 

 ces. This plan is suggested for all-wood frames 

 only. The points I would claim for this spacer are, 

 that it is out of sight, out of the way, and, by hav- 

 ing nails of just the right kind, it would cost almost 

 nothing. E. R. Jeffress. 



Martin, Tenn., Feb. 11, 1890. 



Friend J., your suggestion is very ingen- 

 ious indeed, especially the idea of taking 

 advantage of the groove on the under side 

 of the top-bar — that is, where that kind of 

 top-bar is used, though with theordinary kind 

 a machine could be made to cut a groove 

 very rapidly in the under side of the pro- 

 jection. This groove allows the frame end 

 to shake, but holds it only at a fixed point 

 of distance from its neighbors. For fifteen 

 or twenty years past we have so many times 



