1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



441 



wish in your nucleus. Take out the funnel 

 and close the hole, when you will put the 

 frame from which you shook the bees back in- 

 to the hive and close it." 



" Well, that is an easy way to secure bees, 

 and a way I never thought of before. But 

 what do you do next ? " 



" Next, take the box of bees into any room 

 and throw a blanket over it, or darken in some 

 way, when they are to be left three or four 

 hours. At the expiration of this time they 

 will realize their hopeless and queenless con- 

 dition, telling you the same by their buzzing 

 and running about the cage when you go to 

 them, and be ready to take a queen of any 

 kind." 



" But where is the queen to come from, I 

 should like to know? " 



" As you said you knew how to raise queens 

 and keep them in a nursery, I will only say 

 that at this time I go to my queen -nursery and 

 get a virgin queen, putting her in a cage hav- 

 ing a ' candy cork,' and give them. Attach to 

 the cage a short piece of wire, and you are 

 ready. To put the cage in, set the box down 

 suddenly, so that all of the bees will fall to 

 the bottom, when the hole is opened, the cage 

 put in and the hole closed again, all being 

 done while the bees were trying to climb to 

 the top again. The cage is pulled near the 

 top of the box, and secured there by bending 

 the wire over the button or tin closing the 

 hole." 



" Pray tell me what a ' candy cork ' is." 



" A candy cork is a cork, generally of wood, 

 with a ^ hole bored through it. This hole is 

 filled with ' queen candy,' which the bees eat 

 out and thus liberate the queen. The greater 

 the length of the cork, the longer it will take 

 the bees to eat out the candy. For this pur- 

 pose I make the cork about half an inch long, 

 so that the queen will be liberated in about 

 twelve hours, or at some time during the 

 night, as she is generally given about two to 

 three o'clock in the afternoon." 



" But you do not do any thing with this box 

 of bees in the night ? ' ' 



" No. They are left as they are after giving 

 the queen, till near sunset of the next day, ex- 

 cept to feed them if they need it, when they 

 are put in a hive as follows : Prepare a hive by 

 placing in it a frame containing a little brood 

 and one of honey, together with a division- 

 board, which are put on the opposite side of 

 the hive from where you wish the bees. Now 

 get the box, in which you will find the bees 

 all compactly clustered like a swarm ; careful- 

 ly remove the movable wire cloth side, and 

 with a quick jerk dislodge the bees from the 

 box on the bottom of the hive. Now draw 

 the comb of honey, then the comb of brood 

 and the division-board, across the rabbets of 

 the hive, in the order named, to where the 

 bees are, and they will be immediately on 

 them. The hive is now closed, and, if all has 

 b.:en rightly conducted, and works as it should, 

 you will have a fine nucleus in that hive for 

 the whole of the season, with the queen laying 

 nicely in a week. But I must go now, as I 

 have an appointment to meet at our village in 

 lialf an hour." 



THE TRICK OF PRODUCING LIGHT COIvORED 



EXTRACTED HONEY; THE EFFECT 



OF THE COMBS. 



One year when the Illinois State Fair con- 

 vened at my home, Peoria, 111., I made an 

 effort to put on exhibition a choice article of 

 extracted white-clover honey. With this end 

 in view I exercised the greatest care in select- 

 ing the honey, and to have the utensils clean, 

 and free from other honey. I extracted from 

 no comb, unless of the purest white; in hold- 

 ing a comb up to the light, if I discovered a 

 few cells off in color they were not uncapped. 

 This honey was put on exhibition, along with 

 a large collection from different producers 

 living far and near. It was all white-clover 

 honey, in pint glass jars, and arranged on a 

 shelf in front of a window. In looking at the 

 exhibit, no one would fail to see that mine 

 was the lightest in color, and was given first 

 premium. There was not the slightest differ- 

 ence in color, in all the other honeys on ex- 

 hibition. 



I inquired of the other exhibitors why this 

 difference in color, and they replied, " We 

 thought there was some trick about it." I 

 told them what must have made the difference. 

 It is not at all surprising that they inferred a 

 ' • trick, ' ' as all of the other white clover honey 

 did not vary one point in color. It may make 

 no difference in color from dark combs, when 

 one extracting follows another in quick suc- 

 cession. Mrs. L. Harrison. 



St. Andrew's Bay, Fla., April 3. 



[I believe it has been before stated that, in 

 order to get an extra-light-colored honey for 

 exhibition purposes, it is very necessary that 

 such honey be taken from new or white 

 combs. If I mistake not, Mr R. F. Holter- 

 mann, formerly editor of the Canadian Bee 

 Journal^ was among the first to ur^e the im- 

 portance of this. But as a rule the average 

 honey-producer uses combs of all colors and 

 ages for the extracted honey he sends to 

 market. It is possible that, when competi- 

 tion becomes stronger, as it probably will do, 

 it will be best for him to discard the old black 

 combs, melt them up in one of the presses 

 shown in our columns recently, and use, in- 

 stead, new combs made off from foundation. 

 In spite of what you, Mr. Holtermann, and 

 others have said on the subject of producing 

 light colored honey, I do not think that very 

 many of the average producers are " on to the 

 trick." As some extracted honey may be 

 produced for the Buffalo Pan-American, it 

 may be well for some of our friends to bear 

 this little "trick " in mind. — Ed.] 



A correction ; COI^LIER'S EXPERIMENTS. 



Mr. Editor: — Please correct the third para- 

 graph from top first column, page 245. The 

 detailed experiments of myself concerning 



