GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



take 60 next season. The trouble is to in- 

 duce them to buy the first lot, however small 

 it may be; but if the advertising and the 

 canvassing are left to the dealer we are lost. 



My idea is to sell all the best honey first, 

 tell the customer that all the best honey is 

 sold out, get him to taste Ihe other, and he 

 will take it and be satisfied, even if it is 

 inferior. But he will get in earlier next 

 season and buy more than ever. I sold all 

 my best first, and the fall honey Avent just 

 as (|uiokly afterward. 



Our Royal Agriculture Show took place 

 at Sydney at Easter time. The weathei- was 

 perfect, the attendance a record (95,000 

 people on Good Friday, the main day) ; but 

 the bees and lione}^ exhibits were very few 

 and poor. I went 360 miles to see it, and 

 I was very much disapijointed. I exhibited 



uuly in the district exhibit. There were 

 practically only two exhibitors and one ex- 

 perimental farm instead of about twenty or 

 thirty contributors; but our brother apiarists 

 do not seem to care or bother so long as 

 they get their honey away at any price. Our 

 district honey exhibit got 18 j^oints out of 

 a possible 20, so we did fairly well. 



Perhaps it would be interesting to some 

 of your readers to know that my grandfa- 

 ther brought one colony of bees from Ger- 

 many with him in 1848. Bees were then 

 unknown, so far as I know, in South Aus- 

 tralia. They were twenty weeks on the 

 water, and came out in good condition. The 

 first honey was sold at 25 cents a pound, 

 and the first swarm sold brought 5 ]iounds. 

 Those bees were ])ure blacks. 



Hentv, N. S. W., Australia. 



THE HODGSON BEE=ESCAPE BOARDS 



Aifltto Truck isii tine Apiary, and New Twelve-frame FricttioBi-drave Extractor 



BY R. F. HOLTERMANN 



There has already been some notice of the 

 Hodgson bee-escape board, which has a 

 wooden frame with the main part of it wire 

 cloth. This is the invention of Mr. Arthur 

 F. Hodg'son, Jarvis, Ontario. 



The ordinary bee-escape board lias been 

 objectionable to me because, owing to lack 

 'of ventilation when put under the supers, 

 only one super can be put above it at a 

 time. When we go into an apiary we want 

 to make a complete job of extracting in one 

 day. Next, the bees being off the combs for 

 some time before extracting, and the heat 

 of the bees being shut off by the solid bee- 

 escape board, the honey cools, and there- 

 fore it is more difficult to extract. Of course 

 this latter difficulty has been overcome in 

 part by t4ie use of power extracting-outfits. 



Last season I saw the way in which these 

 escape-boards worked at the apiary of my 

 son Ivar, and it Avas practically demonstrat- 

 ed to me that they are the proper thing for 

 a well-ef|uipped apiary. I have now 250 of 

 these escape-boards, made for me bj' Mr. 

 Hodgson. This is enough for the apiary we 

 may be extracting in, and for the apiary in 

 which Ave may want to extract the folloAving 

 day. T use a double-outlet Porter bee- 

 escape in each board; and because of these 

 two outlets instead of one I think the bees 

 leave the supers in about half the time. 



RESULTS. 



The boards have proved themselves a very 

 great success. We have i^ut them on at 

 almost every hour of the day. Our prac- 



tice for quick work is for one to lift the 

 super, another to smoke, and a third to slip 

 the escape-board on the hive. This is par- 

 ticularly desirable Avhen there are two supers 

 on a hive; but one can do the Avork by 

 removing the super and setting it down 

 until the escape-board has been placed on 

 the hive. This year, however, Ave did not 

 have many second supers, and in no case 

 Avas the second super full. The escape- 

 boards are best put on quickly after the 

 super is raised and the super returned as 

 quickly. This prevents, to a very great 

 extent, the bees from getting betAveen the 

 surfaces of contact, and thus, of course, 

 killing bees or taking a long time to brush 

 them away. 



As to the time it takes for the bees to 

 leave the supers Ave found it quite feasible 

 to remove the supers five or six hours after 

 the escape-boards Avere put under them, thus 

 enabling us to put some of the esca])e- 

 boards on in the morning, and extracting 

 from them the same day. 



I found that the bees begin to roar very 

 soon after they are separated from the 

 brood and queen below (their action is the 

 same as if they had been smoked loo much). 

 Mr. James Armstrong, ("heapside, Ontario, 

 a well-knoAvn beekeepei', told me that he and 

 Ids son go to the hives soon after putting on 

 escape-boards; and unless llie bees are roar- 

 ing, Avliieh can be heai-d from the outside, 

 they know there is something wrong, and 

 they investigate 1o find out Avhat it is. Per- 



