n LEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July, 1919 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



have are good healtliy, husky bees, and they 

 do not tolerate any undue familiarities. 

 There is only one hive that I have which I 

 would attempt to handle in the wa}' you 

 suggest and that is the one that contains 

 the dead bees. I am quite willing to find 

 the queen in that outfit and remove her. 

 The one word in your letter which stands 

 out and appeals to me most strongly is the 

 word ' run, ' when you make the suggestion 

 that it would seem worth while to ' run for 

 extracted honey. ' Just eliminate every- 

 thing else in your letter and leave the word 

 'run' and I will say 'amen.' For the rest, 

 dear brother, nothing doing! 



"Perhaps you might wonder from the 

 foregoing why I have any bees at all. I will 

 confide to you that up to a month ago I had 

 a man working for me that had the strange 

 hallucination that one could play with the 

 bees and get away with it, and he it was 

 who brought in the hives and looked after 

 them. As far as I am concerned, they are 

 an inheritance. All I am wondering is how 

 long they will stay on the premises if I am 

 willing to leave them stricth' alone. I 

 would like to have them stick around to fer- 

 tilize the fruit trees and the melon vines. 

 Whatever honey they make they can keep, or 

 anybody else is welcome to it if they have 

 the nerve to come and get it. 



' ' I am a subscriber to ' Gleanings in Bee 

 Culture,' and I love to read about the bees; 

 but as for finding the queen and removing 

 her, I wiM look for the queen the way Mark 

 Twain climbed the Alps, i. e., with a tele- 

 scope^. Charles Staff. 



"Royal Oak, Mich." 



IDEAS ON EXTRACTING 



With Suitable Knife, Deep Combs Easier Extracted 

 than Shallow 



A correspondent, who has been an exten- 

 sive comb-honej' producer for many years, 

 writes that he would like to run a little 

 more for extracted honey and wishes advice 

 on the style of combs to use for extracting. 

 He states that he has quite a surplus of 

 comb-honey supers which would go together 

 in pairs to just fit combs of Laiigstroth 

 depth, but has been advised that shallower 

 combs would give better results, because 

 they are more easily uncapped and may be 

 used with his brood-chambers which" are 

 Quinby depth without excluders. 



I have gone very carefully into the claims 

 of those who advocate shallow frames for 

 exti acting, and with all respect for their 

 wisdom, I can see only two or possibly three 

 advantages they may have. When used 

 tvcv deep brood-combs they may enable one 

 to dispense with excluders to advantage. 

 When the colonies are weak, or when short 



light flows of different varieties are to be 

 kept separate, their smaller capacity may be 

 an advantage. They are also more conveni- 

 ent for beekeepers who lack physical 

 strength and do not run a large enough busi- 

 ness to emplo}' labor. Any advantage they 

 may have over a deeper comb in uncapping 

 is the fault of the knife and not of the 

 standard comb. All will remember the old 

 riddle, "How long should a man's legs be?" 

 The answer is, ' ' Long enough to reach the 

 ground. ' ' 



The disadvantage of shallow combs in ex- 

 tracted-honey production is obvious: So 

 many more j^ieces to handle for the same 

 amount of honey produced. Whether they 

 may be used without wires and cost slightly 

 less need scarcely be discussed when one 

 considers that there is practically no limit 

 to the length of their life. And as for time- 

 saving, one of the best ' ' records ' ' in ex-. 

 tracting I ever made was with supers which 

 held 100 pounds of honey each, in 11 combs. 

 It was a four-frame non-reversing extractor 

 turned by hand; but the quantity of honey 

 coming from each set of four enabled us to 

 roll up a record which would do credit to 

 modern machinery. I would not object to 

 extracting with combs deeper than the 

 Langstroth, but know of nothing now to 

 persuade me to use anything shallower. 



A stationary beehive near Perris, CaL A colony 

 has occupied a crevice in this rock for many years. 



The knife we use is what is called a 

 "sandwich knife," with a copper steam- 

 jacket added by a local smith. The blade 

 is twelve inches long and about one and a 

 quarter inches wide. As there is only one 

 cutting edge, it is necessary to decide 

 whether you prefer to cut up or down when 

 putting on the steam-jacket. Of course the 

 handle is straight in line with the blade, 

 so we escape the tiresome offset of the stock 

 knife, which is only a relic of the days 

 when the beekeeper laid his comb flat on 

 the kitchen table and scraped off the cap- 

 pings with a little curved knife. When the 

 inventor turned the handle of his little thin 

 knife up at an angle to keep his knuckles 

 out of the honey, if at the same time he 

 had only thought to make his knife longer so 



