308 



September, 1915. 



American Hee Journal 



Making Winter Cases from a 

 Mechanical Standpoint 



BY G. C. GREINER. 



WHEN I exchanged my formerhome 

 among the Naples hills, where I 

 had ihe use of a serviceable bee- 

 cellar, dug in the bank, for the level 

 plains of my present habitation, the 

 wintering problem became one of the 

 most important features for my consid- 

 eration. Digging a bee cellar on level 

 ground does not offer the advantages 

 of a rolling or hilly surface, and as 

 wintering on the summer stand had be- 

 come a favorite method of many older 

 members of the beekeeping fraternity 

 at that time, I decided to adopt outdoor 

 wintering for my future beekeeping 

 operations. 



With the exception of a few experi- 

 mental chafT hives (see Fig. 1), my en- 

 tire outfit consisted ot single-wall hives 

 made of '4-inch lumber, and to make 

 wintering in our zero latitude a reason- 

 ably safe undertaking, I decided to 

 protect those thin hives by winter 

 cases. 



When ready to build them, the first 

 point that demanded a decision was 

 the lumber question. Repeatedly we 

 find in our bee magazines the advice to 

 use dry-goods boxes for winter cases, 

 it being cheap materia! and plenty good 

 enough for that purpose. This is not 

 good advice in all cases. For the ama- 

 teur who keeps a few colonies for 

 pleasure or as a side-issue, these dry- 

 goods-box winter cases answer all the 

 purposes. But for the professional 

 beekeeper who has to make his winter 

 cases by the dozens or hundreds, this 

 cheap dry-goods material is the most 

 e.xpensive he can use. Nothing but 

 regular stock lumber, which may be of 

 the cheaper grade, will fill the bill. If 

 our hives are uniformly made, and no 

 business beekeeper will have them 

 otherwise, our winter cases must also 

 be uniformly made, if we expect to do 

 the work of making them and later of 

 packing and unpacking systematically. 

 To have our cases air and water tight, 

 or at least practically so, they must be 

 made in workmanlike manner, and this 

 is next to impossible if our lumber is 

 of all sizes, length, breadth and thick- 

 ness. 



Dissecting these boxes and saving 

 the lumber, cleaning out the nails, etc., 

 is a slow job, and careful as we may be, 

 in spite of our scrutiny, we run our 

 rip or cross-cut saw occasionally onto 

 a nail, and then, of course, the work- 

 man has to take an hour or two off 

 filing saws as a recreation. 



A short time ago I undertook to 

 make a few hive stands out of some 

 dry-goods boxes I had set aside for 

 this purpose. It is the only part of our 

 outfit that can be made of haphazard 

 lumber, provided we cannot use our 

 time to better advantage. After the 

 boxes had been taken to pieces, nails 

 pulled, etc., 1 managed to fit the mate- 

 rial for one half dozen stands during 

 the day. Every side piece had to be 

 sawed at both ends and ripped on one 

 edge at least, some on both! The lum- 

 ber being of different thicknesses the 

 end-pieces could not be cut after a 

 pattern, but had to be fitted separately 

 to each etant], The same with the 



FIG- i.-CHAFF HIVES MADE OF DRY-GOODS BOXES 



FIG. 2.— WINTER CASK Oi'K.NKU iu KKCKIVE BEES 





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^ n a ^'niiMiii 



i 



FIG. 3.-WINTER CASE COMFI.KIHD 



alighting-board. No regular breadth 

 being available, they had to be spliced 

 and fitted each one to its place. Now 

 the question arises, which is the more 

 economical, use these cheap cast-away 

 boxes and waste your time trying to 

 make something out of nothing, or 

 use regular stock lumber and have 

 something to show for your day's 

 work. With lumber of the right 



dimensions, several dozens would have 

 been 'an easier and much pleasanter 

 task than the half dozen mentioned. 



In the construction of our winter 

 cases the lumber plays a still more im- 

 portant part. After trying various 

 kinds, rough, dressed, matched, soft 

 and hard wood, etc., I have finally de- 

 cided that second quality of white pine 

 flooring gives the best satisfaction all 



