1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



50? 



Charton Froissard, of France, made use of 

 an implement which he invented for measur- 

 ing bees' tongues. He is reported in Leip- 

 ziger Biettenzcitung, 1893, as having con- 

 ceived the same idea the American bee-keep- 

 ers are bent on at present; viz., breeding 

 long-tongued bees able to secure the honey 

 from red clover. It is not stated what success 

 Mr. F. has had in improving his stock in the 

 line of long tongues. Perhaps our friend Da- 

 dant, who is at home in France, might tell us 

 or trace the matter up. 



\h 



E.' Reidenbach, editor of the Pfalzer Bie- 

 ne?t Zuch/, writes in regard to the use of old 

 brood combs; "Long-continued breeding in- 

 creases the thickness of the midrib very ma- 

 terially — sometimes up to 5 millimeters. The 

 cell walls of old combs, however, are scarcely 

 perceptibly thicker than those of new comb, 

 because the bees have ways of gnawing away 

 the silken cocoons. The cell walls of brood- 

 combs are probably lengthened according as 

 the midrib thickens from the accumulating 

 deposits." 



N. Ludwig says to this, in the Leipziger 

 Bienenzeitii7i^ that his own obseruation coin- 

 cides with Reidenbach's, and claims that, 

 after making exact measurements, there ex- 

 ists no difference in general roominess be- 

 tween the brood-cells of old and new comb. 



SEPARATORS. 



Early History of; why it is Not Wise to Dispense 

 with them. 



BY F. GREINER. 



The subject of separators versus no separat- 

 ors has been gone over a number of times 

 during the past 25 years, and the evidence 

 has always been greatly in favor of separators. 

 The reason why a small minority of our bee- 

 keepers still cling to the open or undivided 

 super lies in the fact that there exists a great 

 difference in people. Some are satisfied if 

 they produce an article that will just pass, 

 while others do not rest easy until they have 

 reached actual perfection. This difference 

 may be noticed everywhere in life. For in- 

 stance, in planting a field to corn, some farm- 

 ers have the rows as crooked as an old-fash- 

 ioned rail fence, and in planting out an or- 

 chard the trees are put in haphazard fashion. 

 Other farmers will have the rows as straight 

 as a string. The crooked rows would be an 

 eyesore to me, and trouble me nights. The 

 imperfections in the out-of-date section honey 

 would produce a like effect upon me. As to 

 how we came to use separators, there is a lit- 

 tle history connected with that. It might 

 interest some. 



When we first commenced keeping bees on 

 a more scientific basis, i. e., using frame 

 hives, our super made no use of separators in 

 any form. For several years — and as begin- 

 ners, mind you — we produced comb honey 

 for the city market without separators, and 

 without the use of comb foundation, not even 

 for starters. Comb foundation was not com- 

 monly used, as now, and we always tried to 

 collect enough newly built comb during the 

 season to start our boxes. 



Some well-known honey-producer once ex- 

 pressed his sentiments thus: "The success to 

 produce comb honey without separators de- 

 pends upon the skill of the apiarist," although 

 it appeared later that it would be desirable, if 

 not necessary, to crate such non-separator- 

 raised honey in the order it had been built by 

 the bees, and that a certain per cent of the 

 section honey could not be crated at all. I 

 consider it of great importance to be able to 

 crate our honey just as it happens, or as we 

 think best — a grave disadvantage if we must 

 crate in the same order as the sections came 

 out of the super; the matter of uncratable sec- 

 tions perhaps amounts to but little. 



As that beginner in keeping bees, I certain- 

 ly did not pretend to be skillful ; still, I found 

 very little trouble to make a success in raising 

 comb honey in open supers. At present, with 

 the comb foundation to use for starters or in 

 full sheets, it would indeed be easy enough to 

 raise a fair or at least a salable article. 



There was, of course, a reason why we did 

 not continue the use of undivided supers. 

 We were using a shipping-case with two glass 

 fronts at that time, and it required six nice 

 straight combs for facers to each 15 sections. 

 While we could crate very nearly all the 

 combs built in the open supers, it was, never- 

 theless, a fact that they were lacking that 

 uniformity equally desirable to the grocer and 

 to the apiarist ; in particular the faces were 

 not perfectly on a level, but were wavy in 

 nearly all cases. The most desirable face 

 combs we often found in the outside rows, 

 the face next to the hive-wall being perfect. 

 The thought occurred to us, "Why not have 

 more hive-walls?" So, sure enough, we did 

 just as friend Gill did (see page 335, Apr. 15th 

 Gleanings), and put in some dividers. First 

 we used but two ; and as that particular 

 honey season advanced we fitted other supers 

 with more. We were so well pleased with 

 the looks of that honey that we adopted the 

 separator to be used between all combs, and 

 we have never had reason to be sorry for mak- 

 ing the change. 



Tin and zinc were the materials of our first 

 separators. The supers we used at that time 

 were such that a stiffer divider seemed much 

 more desirable ; and since the wooden side of 

 the hive answered quite well to produce a 

 perfectly smooth face on the outside comb, we 

 saw no reason why the same material should 

 not answer the same purpose in the middle 

 of the hive. We brought the matter up for 

 discussion. Mr. A. I. Root and Mr. James 

 Heddon somewhat discouraged us as to the 

 adaptability of wood for separators. I think 

 you will find some of these things recorded 



