March, 1912. 



healthy colonies that may be in the 

 yard or near-by. 



Another part of the treatment — the 

 one that generally causes the less ex- 

 perienced bee-keeper a great deal of 



Fig. I.— Greiners Queen-Sieve. 



anxiety — is catching the old queens. 

 To be prepared for the shaking, it is 

 very convenient to have them all caught 

 and caged before hand. As they are 

 supposed to be blacks (as the great 

 majority of mine happened to be), they 

 are not easily found, in many instances 

 baffling the skill of the most experi- 

 enced expert. For this reason it is 

 well enough to begin hunting for them 

 a week or 10 days ahead of the time 

 they are wanted. If a queen is not 

 found at one time, by examining the 

 hive the next day she may come in 

 sight on one of the first combs taken 

 out. In this way I caged the queens of 

 nearly all my diseased colonies (some 

 44 or 4l3) before the white clover flow 

 began. Only in two or three cases I 

 failed to find " the ladies "in spite of 

 my repeated search, and research, and 

 I was finally compelled to resort to the 

 excluder at the time of the treatment. 



The principle of the device illustrated 

 at Fig. 1, is not a new idea. To find a 

 queen by means of the excluder has 

 been repeatedly mentioned in our bee- 

 papers, but, as far as I know, no de- 

 tailed description of its application has 

 been given. It is a simple affair; still, 

 when we are compelled to resort to our 

 own resources it is sometimes a great 

 help to have some one else's experi- 

 ence to fall back on. Bees are very 

 apt to clog up the excluder, and are 

 thereby a great hindrance when trying 

 to find the queen. To overcome this 

 trouble, in a measure, the excluder 

 should be as large as possible, and at 

 the same time slant forward at the bot- 

 tom. Tins seems to give the bees bet- 

 ter chance to pass through the perfora- 

 tions than an excluder in perpendicular 



American ISee Journal 



ing zinc is nailed, are simply a couple 

 of pieces of V^-inch board that slip on 

 each side of the hive and stand, and 

 with a small wire-nail, partly driven in, 

 in each, the whole rig is securely held 

 in position. As a last resort to find a 

 queen, I can recommend this device as 

 almost infallible to any one in trouble 

 along this line. 



Another point which I found by ex- 

 perience to be of great importance, is 

 this: A colony should not be shaken 

 off and made queenless at the same time. 

 In their consternation and excitement, 

 trying to find their mother, the ma- 

 jority of them will take wing and enter 

 any hive where bees are in sight except 

 the one we intend they should. If the 

 colony under treatment is not entirely 

 ruined by this desertion, it is so re- 

 duced that it is likely to prove next to 

 a failure during the season. In case 

 the queen has Ijeen previously caged, 

 she should be suspended for a few days 

 among the frames of the newly pre- 

 pared hive the colony is to occupy (see 

 illustration. Fig. 3), and if the new Ital- 

 ian queens are on hand, as they should 

 be, they, too, may be introduced in the 

 suspended cages at the same time. But 

 if the queen has to be caught at the 

 shaking off, she should be placed in the 

 new hive as soon as found, and the ex- 

 cluder removed instantly. 



The cage I use (shown at Fig. 2) has 

 a number of advantages over the coni- 



Fk;. 2.— Wire-Cage with Qi'EEN K.nc losed 



position. The one I use (see drawing) 

 reaches from the cleat at the top to 

 about midway of the stand alighting- 

 board. Then it should fit any hive and 

 be adjustable and removable instantly. 

 The two wings, to which the exclud- 



FiG. 3-— Suspended Cage Between Frames 



mon mailing-cage used by the queen- 

 breeding trade, which make it better 

 adapted for this purpose, and, in fact, 

 for introducing queens at any time. 

 Made of common window-screen, with 

 a piece of stove-pipe wire wrapped 

 around it to serve as supports when 

 suspended between the frames, it pre- 

 sents more open surface to come in 

 contact with the bees than the mailing- 

 cage. One of the end-plugs is perma- 

 nently fastened by two or three little 

 tacks, and the other, being the one re- 

 movable, should have the selvedge-end 

 of the wire-screen for its passage. 

 This, too, makes a smoother passage 

 for the queen, when being caged, than 

 the sharp ends of the wires on the op- 

 posite end. 



La Salle, N. Y. 



The Solar Wax-Extractor 



uv I. I'. ii.\i).\xr. 



A beginner in bee-culture has re- 

 cently asked me about the advisability 

 of investing in a solar wax-extractor 

 to the exclusion of other wax-render- 



ing machines. Although I believe in 

 the usefulness of solar wax-extractors, 

 most practical bee-keepers who have 

 tried them recognize that they are not 

 by any means to be used in all circum- 

 stances. 



The first mention I ever saw of this 

 method of rendering beeswax by solar 

 rays was in the '70's, in L'Apicoltore, 

 the Italian bee-paper. Italy is under 

 the same latitude as our Middle States. 

 The sun has a great deal of power in 

 that country, and shines most of the 

 time. No one thinks of Italy without 

 the prefix "sunny." At the first de- 

 scription of the solar wax-extractor, 

 we had no rest until we had made one. 

 A little later, in this country, O. O. 

 Poppleton made the invention of a 

 similar machine without having ever 

 heard of them. 



The solar extractor proved very 

 beneficial in rendering the odds and 

 ends of the apiary. We are in the habit 

 of gathering the dribs of brace-combs 

 and bridges which the bees usually 

 build between their combs and over 

 the top of them. These we roll into a 

 ball which is put away until some suit- 

 able time. With a wax-extractor these 

 small lots may be rendered as fast as 

 they are gathered. This saves them 

 from possible loss or destruction by 

 the moth, if they were left exposed. 

 With an apiary of oO to 100 colonies I 

 believe that the careful apiarist will 

 save enough to pay for the cost of his 

 solar extractor in one or two seasons. 



But when we tried the solar extrac- 

 tor for old combs we were very much 

 disappointed in ascertaining that the 

 cocoons and residue absorbed nearly 

 all the wax which they contained. 



Many apiarists assert that there is no 

 wax worthy of mention, in the old, 

 black combs. The trouble lies with 

 their metlfbd of rendering them. If 

 dry, black combs are heated with little 

 or no water, the dry cocoons and resi- 

 due become soaked with wax and give 

 it up afterwards with difficulty. Our 

 water-melting process has always been 

 to crush those old combs during the 

 cold weather, at the time when they are 

 most brittle, and afterwards soak them 

 thoroughly in soft water, either by put- 

 ting them in a sack or under a cover and 

 loading them with stones to sink them 

 in the water. If the reader tries this, 

 he will find that in a very few days the 

 water has become yellow or muddy 

 from the dissolvin.t; of a great deal of 

 the slumgum. But the wax does not 

 dissolve or rot, even if it were left un- 

 der long enough to have acquired an 

 unpleasant smell. The effect of this 

 soaking is to prevent the absorption of 

 wax, since the thoroughly wetted resi- 

 dues can no longer absorb the wax. 

 The breaking or crushing of the combs 

 previously, helps this soaking, and pre- 

 vents the wax, when it is melted, from 

 lodging into the cell-shaped cocoons, 

 from which it would afterwards be re- 

 moved with dirtjculty. With the use of 

 the solar extractor, it is out of the 

 question thus to soak the residues, for 

 the first effect of this soaking would be 

 to create a great deal of steam by evap- 

 oration of the water, as soon as we 

 placed our soaked combs into the ex- 

 tractor; neither would the wax melt 

 until those combs were again dry. 



It may therefore readily be compre- 



