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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 15 



so that the bulge from the weight of cappings 

 will come down into the lower body, which is 

 used as a tank. By tacking the screen inside, 

 the two bodies will fit close together and 

 make a good joint. Then, too, none of the 

 dripping honey will fall outside. 



Put a piece of board across the top to rest 

 the frames on while they are being uncapped. 

 Then when you wish to leave it, a cover closes 

 it bee tight. This will hold enough for half a 

 day's work if the cappings are cut up once in a 

 while with the uncapping-knife, and this cut- 

 ting helps very much in the draining. 



In this way one gets the lower hive-body 

 just about full from the cappings that the up- 

 per one will hold. 



Have a pail of water and a good whetstone 

 handy by, and keep the knife in perfect cut- 

 ting order. Then when you cut, cut. Many 

 people take off the cappings as though the 

 combs were something precious, and not to be 

 handled roughly. By cutting just into the 

 honey one can cut much faster, and will have 

 more wax. If a comb bulges, cut it down 

 level. By putting eight in a ten-frame super 

 they mostly do bulge some ; but it is easier to 

 take the honey from eight big thick combs 

 than from ten thin ones. 



W. Iv. Coggshall has been listening to the 

 fellow who advises out-apiaries. He now has 

 them in Wisconsin, New Mexico, and Cuba, 

 besides seventeen or twenty in New York. It 

 is said that he also has his eye on the Philip- 

 pines, and is planning a system to keep the 

 boys extracting the year round. But he can 

 not get all the honey. There are others. Doo- 

 little seems to feel bad because we are selling 

 more than we buy. His idea seems to be that 

 true prosperity consists in producing $500.00 

 worth of honey a year and buying $600.00 

 worth of groceries and clothes. Then perhaps 

 he has been hearing Niver talk about single 

 tax. A man who can talk people into buying 

 buckwheat honey in preference to Cuban bell- 

 flower, and who can sell "blue sky" by the 

 township, should not talk politics. 



Osburn's figures on increase and bee-loads 

 is a trifle startling, but he meant all right. In 

 this locality one bee often gets a load from 

 one bellflower in the morning, and in the aft- 

 ernoon it may take very many. 



When the long tongues are a fixed fact, 

 then breed from the best hustlers among them, 

 and there you have it. One of nature's laws 

 seems to be that the offspring from parents 

 that vary from their parents are more apt to 

 vary. Or, to put it another way, variation is 

 a characteristic itself. For instance, "five- 

 banders" would be more apt to vary than 

 black ; and five-banders with long tongues 

 more yet. For this reason, in-breeding is nec- 

 essary to fix the desirable change when once 

 it is achieved. 



Artemisa, Cuba. 



[Your uncapping-box is so simple that any 

 one can make a good one out of the material 

 at hand. 



That man Coggshall if he keeps on will 

 have more bees than any one else in the 

 world, if he has not already ; but one should 



look out and not get too many at "long 

 reach." It is one thing to manage a business 

 when one can give his personal supervision, 

 and another when he has to depend on hired 

 help a thousand or more miles away. This 

 is not intended as "gratuitous advice" to 

 Coggshall, but to some others who might at- 

 tempt to follow his example. Coggshall is a 

 good business man, and where he would suc- 

 ceed others might fail. — Ed.] 



HOME-MADE HIVES. 



Suggestions for a Simple Method of Transferring ; 

 Hive-covers Boiled in Linseed Oil; that Cheap 

 Land in Florida; Comb Honey vs. Extracted. 



BY E. H, SCHAE:FFI.E. 



In home-made hives the strip cut out at the 

 ends warps badly. To remedy this defect I 

 have made some hives in which the ends come 

 up to the bottom of the rabbet, and a strip is 

 then nailed on that extends across and secures 

 both the end of the rabbet and the side of the 

 hive. This saves material, labor, and effectu- 

 ally prevents warping. 



I have this season transferred bees by smok- 

 ing them down on to other frames, then slip- 

 ping a queen-excluding zinc under, and, when 

 the brood has all hatched out, placing a bee- 

 escape board on, running the bees all down, 

 and leaving the old combs free from bees to 

 be taken to the bee-house and cut out at lei- 

 sure. No dead bees, no smear, no stings. 



Bottlers of honey tell me, "We can take 

 one can of your honey and add three of glu- 

 cose to it, as it has a strong honey flavor, 



