American Hee Jonrnal j 



the fall than it could possibly be were it not 

 thus treated. Your boy or girl, hired hand — 

 yes, even your wife — can do it as well as 

 you can, and your mind can be at rest, for 

 the bees will not swarm that season. 



Every means possible is used to get all col- 

 onies strong at the beginning of the honey- 

 flow, and in the case of 8- frame hives, the 

 queen is given the run of two stories for egg- 

 laying; thus the swarming fever is not con- 

 tracted before the clover flow starts, and just 

 as it is nicely on I apply the treatment, 

 which both prevents and satisfies all desire to 

 swarm, and causes the queen to continue lay- 

 ing as vigorously as before; thus getting a 

 fresh lot of workers ready for the fall flow, 

 instead of slacking up on laying at this time, 

 as is the case if left to themselves. 



W'lien the honey -flow is well started I go 

 to each strong colony, regardless of whether 

 I he bees desire to swarm or not, and remove it 

 from its stand, putting in its place a hive 

 filled with empty combs, less one of the cen- 

 ter ones. Next, a comb, containing a patch of 

 unsealed brood about as large as my hand, is 

 selected from the colony, and placed in the 

 vacant place in tlie new liive; a queen-excluder 

 is put on this lower story, and above this a 

 super of empty combs, this one having an 

 escape-hole for drones; and on top of all, an 

 empty super. A cloth is then nicely placed in 

 front of this new hive, on which the bees 

 and queen are shaken from the combs of the 

 parent hive, and the third story is filled with 

 the combs of sealed brood and brood too old 

 to produce queens, and allowed to remain 

 there and hatch, returning to the working 

 force. Thus the swarming fever is satisfied, 

 the colony is stimulated to do its utmost in 

 honey-gathering, and the queen is encouraged 

 to lay as in spring-time. Yes, much better, 

 for in two weeks she will have 5 to 7 combs ' 

 filled with brood and eggs, which forces the 

 honey above, where we want it. 



It does not take five minutes for the bees 

 to find that brood above, where it is nicely 

 cared for. There is no sulking, for in less 

 than an hour the colony is at work as though 

 nothing had happened, and as the brood 

 hatches its combs are filled with honey, and 

 often a fourth story has to be put on to catch 

 the flow, for in keeping the whole colony to- 

 gether we get big results. 



The old hive often contains more brood 

 than will go in this third story, and the bal- 

 ance is put on any weak colonies that may 

 be in the yard, thus strengthening them. 



If I want increase, it is made about 10 days 

 afterward, by simply lifting this upper story 

 of brood off and placing it on a new stand, 

 and given a ripe cell, or a queen. As all bees 

 that are old enough to be field- workers will 

 return to the old stand, nothing is lost from 

 the clover crop in this way, and these new 

 colonies sometimes secure a super of fall 

 honey, and are the very best to go into win- 

 ter quarters, as all their bees are young. 



If any of you will try this plah, I will be 

 pleased to have you report results, and any 

 questions or criticisms will be gladly consid- 

 ered. A. C. Allen. 

 Portage, Wis. 



Mr. Allen demonstrated his non- 

 swarming plan, and many questions were 

 asked, showing much interest in his 

 methods. 



Mr. York then read the following pa- 

 per on, 



Honey — Its Marketing and Staple 

 Use. 



To some bee-keepers the word "honey" is 

 almost a new one, so far as the honey season 

 of 1909 was concerned. A few not only har- 

 vested no honey at all, but even had to feed 

 their bees; or else what their bees did store 

 was honey-dew, which in some instances, was 

 but little better than no honey at all, and in 

 other cases worse than none, especially for 

 the bees' winter stores. 



But as the good honey season have been In 

 the past, so they will be again in the fu- 

 ture. About 20 years ago there was con- 

 siderable said about the then poor and dis- 

 couraging honey seasons, many bee-keepers 

 even wondering if the good honey crops of 

 the early '80s would ever be repeated! But it 

 was not so very' long until the good old sea- 

 sons came again, and with increased amounts 

 of honey, so that the crops of lOOli, ]90G 

 and 1008, were even more abundant than 

 those of the former bounteous years. 



While, of course, there will be little or no 

 difficulty experienced in disposing of the 



honey crop of 1909, very likely another large 

 crop will soon be here, and the question of 

 marketing it will be up for consideration again. 

 In the meantime it may be well to look at 

 some of the present most successful methods 

 of disposing of honey. 



Perhaps the bulk of the honey crop each 

 year is sent to the large city markets — sold 

 wholesale. This, of course, the easiest way to 

 sell, but not always the most profitable to 

 the producer. And yet, for the most exten- 

 sive producers it is the best way, for such 

 can not hope to work up a demand at home 

 sufficiently large to take all the honey pro- 

 duced in their immediate locality. 



But all who ship or sell wholesale should be 

 exceedingly careful with whom they deal. 

 There are commission men who handle all 

 kinds of produce, and such do not know best 

 how to dispose of honey. They seem to 

 think that any old price will do for honey, 

 so long as they get their commission on the 

 sales they make. And thus often the mar- 

 ket is ruined before much honey has begun 

 to be shipped. 



In nearly every large city there are now 

 commission men or dealers who make a 

 specialty of honey. They have developed a 

 line of customers to whom they can sell honey 

 right along, year after year. Such dealers 

 can usually realize much better prices for the 

 producer than c^n the ones who know little 

 about honey. 



Every bee-paper publisher knows pretty well 

 who are the reliable and best wholesale honey- 

 dealers, and if every bee-keeper reads the 

 bee-papers (as, of course, every up-to-date bee- 

 keeper does), he will have little trouble about 

 learning where it is best to ship his honey. 



Next is the retailing of honey — that is, sell- 

 ing it near home, or to consumers residing 

 within a short radius of the producer. Many 

 bee-keepers, after years of patient effort, have 

 developed a good local demand. If more 

 would do this, I think all would soon find 

 that better prices, both wholesale and retail, 

 would result. Less honey would be sent to 

 the already overloaded city market, and thus, 

 by reason of less quantity, a higher price 

 would be realized; and by cultivating the 

 home market, it would be found that soon 

 more honey would be required to supply it, 

 or else what honey there is to be disposed 

 of there would bring a better price. The 

 fact is, there are thousands upon thousands 

 of people in the country and in small cities 

 that do not see any honey from one year's 

 end to the other. And this ought not so to 

 be. It surely doesn't pay to neglect the home 

 market, and overstock the large cities with 

 honey. 



And this brings me to a consideration of 

 honey as a staple article. You ask. Will 

 honey ever be used as commonly or as ex- 

 tensively as sugar? Maybe not. But the 

 fact remains that it ought to be used ever 

 so much more generally than it is today. 

 And it is "up to" the bee-keepers them- 

 selves to see that honey has its rightful place 

 among the articles of daily consumption. I 

 say daily consumption, and I mean it. I de- 

 clare that lioney should always be on every 

 table, just as much as butter or any kind 

 of sauce or fruit. And surely at the pres- 

 ent price of extracted honey, why should 

 it not be eaten daily ? Oh, yes, I know that 

 some people say that they don't care for 

 honey! But I have found that there are 

 but very few people who would not eat honey 

 pretty regularly if they had a chance! 



Right here I want to touch upon the form 

 of honey to be placed before the people, if 

 we ever expect it to be used extensively, or by 

 practically everybody. 



Of late, my attention has been called to 

 chunk or bulk comb honey, which has been 

 in recent years such a success in certain parts 

 of the South, especially in Texas. Do you 

 know, I believe our Southern brethren have 

 hit ujjon 3, good thing, in more ways than 

 one ? In the first place, they can produce 

 more honey by their present methods than 

 they could if produced in sections or even 

 in the extracted form And then, they get 

 a higher price for it than they could ex- 

 pect for the liquid honey free from the 

 comb. They produce all their honey in shal- 

 low extracting-frames, then cut it out and 

 put it in tin cans of various sizes, ready to be 

 delivered to the consumer. .And I can readily 

 understand now nearly everybody would take 

 to such honey, just as naturally as a duck 

 takes to water. It has the real bee-honey 

 taste. There is nothing about it that suggests 

 artificiality, as do the clean, white sections, 

 free from even a stain of propolis or bee- 

 glue. Chunk or canned comb honey shows 

 on its face that it is the real honey simply 



cut out of the hive and placed on the mar- 

 ket. It could very well be put into tin pails 

 or other receptacles, that may easily be handed 

 out to customers. I predict that this method — 

 which may seem somewhat slipshod, and savor 

 a little of the back woods — will be prac- 

 tised pretty generally over the whole coun- 

 try within a very few years. It is a sane^ 

 sensible, successful method. It is economical 

 for the producer — no sections needed, but 

 plenty of shallow frames; more comb founda- 

 tion, more hives, more supers, and then more 

 honey harvested. And, with plenty of such 

 super-room on the hives, there is going to be 

 less swarming. The honey is not removed 

 from the hives till the end of the honey sea- 

 son. Result, a better quality of honey be- 

 cause thoroughly ripened while with the bees. 

 But I didn't start out to boom chunk, bulk, 

 or canned comb honey. And yet, I believe 

 it is going to prove to be the method which 

 will help most to popularize the use of honey — 

 help make it a staple article of diet- — sooner 

 than anything else I know of. I think thi& 

 method needs to be encouraged, because it 

 will also put more money into the pockets 

 of the honey-producers ; more money in the 

 bank for the bee-supply manufacturers and 

 dealers; and thus bring the greater financial 

 success to all connected in any way with 

 the industry of bee-keeping. And above and 

 beyond all this — and also more important — ■ 

 more people will be eating honey, and thus 

 more people will have better health, will live 

 longer, and be happier. And, maybe, more 

 people will be keeping bees, more bee-keep- 

 ers will "keep more bees;" and thus there 

 will also be produced more and better fruit 

 because of the more perfect fertilization of the 

 fruit-blossoms throughout the country on ac- 

 count of the presence of a" larger number of 

 bees to do the work. 



Now, you may say that all this looks very 

 well on paper, but it is the talk of an enthu- 

 siast. All right, let it be so. But what I 

 am telling you is already being accomplished 

 in Texas and other parts of the South — that 

 fair land that has in very recent years been 

 teaching the North how to "sober up" and 

 get rid of the curse of the open saloon, State 

 by State. Who knows but our Southern bee- 

 keeping brethren and sisters will yet teach 

 us of the North, how to "sivecten up," as 

 well. 



Let us not despise our calling, but let us 

 go forth to help make our goodly land "a 

 land flowing with honey," whether it flows 

 with milk or not. Our dairy cousins can 

 look after the cow and milk part of it; let us 

 attend to the bees and their honey. 



Chicago, 111. George W. York. 



An interesting discussion followed the 

 foregoing paper, in which some gave 

 their experience with chunk-honey, 

 which was both pro and con. 



The election of officers resulted as 

 follows, each being re-elected : Presi- 

 dent, Jacob Huffman, of Monroe; vice- 

 president, Franklin Wilcox, of Mauston ; 

 secretary, Gus Dittmer, of Augusta; and 

 treasurer, A. C. Allen, of Portage. Del- 

 egate to the National Convention for 

 1910, Jacob Huffman; alternate delegate, 

 A. C. Allen._ 



The question-box was again resumed. 



Pollen in Wintering — Gasoline En- 

 gine IN Extracting. 



"Do bees need pollen for wintering?" 



They do not need it, and are much 

 better off without, as it is liable to be 

 the cause of diarrliea. 



"Will a gasoline engine run a 2-frame 

 extractor?" 



If you want to use power, use a 4- 

 frame extractor. 



Cellar- Wintering — Preparing Nuclei 

 FOR Winter. 



*'Why are some colonies dry and oth- 

 ers damp in the same cellar?" 



This question was discussed, but no 

 satisfactory reason given. 



"Give the best method to prepare nu- 

 clei for winter." 



Set them on top of strong colonies, 

 with a l(i inch board between them. 



