1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



461 



PRODUCING EXTRACTED HONEY. 



The Use and Non^use of Foundation ; Experiments 

 in Wiring Frames ; do Bees Prefer Natural Comb 

 to that Built off from Foundation, for Storage 

 Purposes ? Prevention of Swarming during Ex= 

 tracting ; Useless Consumers ; some Interesting 

 Observations by a Practical Man. 



BY C. DAVENPORT. 



Last season I chang-ed the fixtures of part 

 of my colonies, and ran them for extracted 

 honey, and secured a little over 9000 lbs. of 

 our product in the liquid form. This was 

 all sold in my home market at a fair price. 

 By "home market" I mean the surround- 

 ing- towns and cities that I am able to reach 

 by team. The larger part was sold in a 

 jobbing- way to grocers. Not having nearly 

 enough drawn combs to supply this in- 

 creased force that was to be run for ex- 

 tracted honey, I purchased 100 lbs. of your 

 Weed medium brood foundation, part of 

 which was put in wired frames; but, so far 

 as stretching or sagging was concerned, 

 the wires were entirely unnecessarj-^ — that 

 is, with established colonies — for I used un- 

 wired frames containing full sheets in al- 

 most all sorts of waj's. With some colonies 

 the upper storj-^ was filled with partl3^ 

 drawn- comb and part foundation. With 

 others the upper 'story was filled with 

 frames, all of which had full sheets unwir- 

 ed. In other cases part of the brood-combs 

 were removed to the upper story, and frames 

 containing- full sheets put in their place; 

 and in no instance was there any trace of 

 stretching that I could observe or find bj' 

 careful measurement. But if full sheets 

 unwired were given to swarms, the condi- 

 tions would be somewhat different from anj' 

 thing- I tried, and in this case there might 

 be some sagging. I believe, though, it pays 

 to have extracting-combs well wired, for I 

 found that, on hot da} s, these new unwired 

 combs had to be handled with great care 

 when extracting-, while it seemed to be a 

 hard matter to break a comb out of a frame 

 that was properly wired. 



I tried a number of different ways of 

 wiring, but I believe that four horizontal 

 wires are superior to any other plan that I 

 have seen advocated. But when wiring- in 

 this way we are told not to draw the wires 

 too tight or the foundation will buckle. I 

 heeded this at first, but kept trj^ing them 

 tighter, and found there was no trace of 

 buckling with the wires drawn jis tight as 

 possible. It might, of course, be different 

 with other kinds or grades of foundation. 

 But I can not say from experience, for, al- 

 though I am one of the few who depend on 

 bees alone for a living, I have previously 

 had but a limited experience with full 



sheets in brood-frames, for I have produced 

 comb honey principally, and in my locality 

 there is no question that more surplus can 

 be secured when swarms are hived on 

 frames containing- only small starters. 



I found last season one curious matter in 

 regard to these new extracting-combs drawn 

 out from full sheets. For instance, in the 

 upper stories, where frames containing full 

 sheets were alternated with frames of drawn 

 comb, the bees, as might be expected, filled 

 and bulged out these ready-built natural 

 combs before drawing out the foundation. 

 They seemed loath to draw it out in the up- 

 per story, though they took hold of it readi- 

 I3' enough, and soon drew or built beauti- 

 ful comb from it when it was placed in the 

 brood-chamber, and a good deal of it was 

 finally put in and drawn out, or at least 

 well started, in the brood-nest. 



I used queen-excluding zinc between the 

 lower and upper stories ; and I will say 

 here that, by carefully conducted experi- 

 ments in previous years, I found that I 

 could, on an average, secure at least one- 

 third more surplus when the queen is con- 

 fined to eight or ten frames below than 

 when she had the range of two or more sto- 

 ries. This may be far from being the case 

 in the majority of localities; but there is no 

 doubt about the matter here. The princi- 

 pal reason for this is the great horde of 

 useless bees that are reared out of season 

 to be producers but which must, instead, be 

 consumers. 



There has been a good deal of fun and 

 ridicule made by some in regard to "use- 

 less consumers;" but if these same parties 

 were set down in my localit3% and obliged 

 to make a living from bees alone, they 

 would change their practice or else starve 

 to death. It would not be difficult for me 

 to run a yard so that these useless consum- 

 ers would consume all the surplus that 

 might otherwise be secured. In fact, some 

 farmers around here who keep a few colo- 

 nies run them on this plan. One who lives 

 less than a mile from me keeps from ten to 

 thirty colonies, and usually does not secure 

 enough surplus for his own use, some sea- 

 sons, when I have had a fair crop. He has 

 not had a pound of surplus unless he "took 

 up" some colonies in the fall. Now, for all 

 I know it may be natural for even strong 

 colonies to hesitate or seem to dislike to 

 build comb from full sheets in the upper 

 stories. But what I regard as curious in 

 regard to the matter is the fact that, after 

 the combs had been drawn out, filled, and 

 extracted, the bees seemed still to have an 

 aversion or dislike for them. If the upper 

 story contained part of these new and part 

 natural combs, the latter would be filled 

 iind bulged out again before anj'^ thing was 

 stored in the others, and this without re- 

 gard to the position the frames occupied. 

 In some instances I put only two natural 

 combs in an upper storj', and, though plac- 

 ed on the outside, they would always be 

 filled first, and this continued all through 

 the season after some of the new combs had 



