THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



647 



Charles C. Schubert — I would like to ask whether Mr. 

 Mclntyre uses a bee-escape? also, whether he has an en- 

 trance to the super above the queen-excluder ? 



Mr Mclntyre — No, to both questions. I bought SO Por- 

 ter escapes and tried them to that extent, and the bees did 

 not get out quick enough to suit me, so we went after them 

 with wet brushes. We use a smoker and a wet brush — a 

 brush made from manilla rope. I take a brush about five 

 inches long. That does not hurt the bees any, and empties 

 the supers quickly. I have tried diti'erent sized brood-cham- 

 bers. I thought the lOframe Langstroth was not big 

 enough and tried 60 frames once, but when the colony 

 swarms the swarm puts in too much time filling up the 

 brood-cham ber. 



John F. Crowder — I would like to ask Mr. Mclntyre 

 where the apiaries are not diseased do you put the same 

 combs back ? 



Mr. Mclntyre — I always change combs. We take the 

 empty pnes and put on top of the hive. These empty ones 

 are from some other hive. 



A. Arthur Hansen — I would like to ask Mr. Mclntyre 

 how that cross is in regard to swarming — the cross between 

 the Italian and Cyprian ? 



Mr. Mclntyre — Well, I have some years thought I had a 

 pretty fine non-swarming lot of bees. They swarmed 

 hardly any, but filled up their hives in grand shape. Then, 

 in other years, when we have had lots of honey coming in, 

 the apiary would just go wild, and nearly every colony 

 would swarm. I think they are not as bad as pure bees. I 

 can rear bees that never swarm, but they are very poor. 



Mrs. J. B. Cherry — My experience with bees showed me 

 for two seasons that our poorest hybrid black bees store 

 more surplus honey. How do you account for this ? 



Mr. Mclntyre — I have seen hybrid colonies that would 

 probably excel other colonies in the apiary — may be any 

 other colony in the apiary — and I suppose every bee-keeper 

 has seen the same thing. But I never made a practice of 

 breeding from that hybrid colony, for the simple reason 

 that if one should send out such queens as that over the 

 United States, they would soon get a bad reputation. If 

 everybody were writing back, " The queens you sent me 

 were hybrids," it would hardly do. I do not deny but what 

 the black blood in some colonies seems to have no detrimen- 

 tal effect, and yet, in other colonies — I have seen, may be, 

 20 cases where hybrids were very poor compared with the 

 strain of bees I have. 



Mr. Andrews — I want to say in reference to that knife 

 proposition, that I first got the idea of the cold knife from 

 Mr. Wilder. I found by keeping the knife very sharp, and 

 then cutting toward the top wall, I could always uncap two 

 combs with the hot knife while I was uncapping one with 

 the cold knife ; so I went back to the hot. 



A Member — I would like to ask if yon raise the combs 

 from underneath the queen-excluder, and place other empty 

 combs and foundation below to give the queen more room ? 

 I find they swarm a great deal unless I do that, and that 

 makes lots more work. 



Mr. Mclntyre — No, not as a rule. My practice is to 

 leave the super full of honey on the hives in the fall. if pos- 

 sible, and in the spring these colonies will breed up lively 

 without any assistance from me. I go over to see the 

 queen, clip her wing, and they get very little more atten- 

 tion until somewhere along about the first of April. They 

 will swarm, a good many of them, having the queen-ex- 

 cluder on. I catch the queen, set the hive back, and put the 

 brood-chamber, filled up with comb foundation, in the place 

 where the old one stood, and let the swarm go back. Then 

 I have every queen in the brood-chamber. That is the main 

 reason why I use queen excluders. They hinder the brood 

 some in going back into the supers, but I don't have second 

 swarms. If I have some queen-cells ready to hatch I put 

 one right in. The queen hatches and finds there are not 

 enough bees to keep the brood warm, sh3 tears the cells all 

 down. A little later in the season, when I get my apiary 

 full that way, I take the next lot, brush all the bees off of 

 these brood-combs, and put one set of them with each one 

 of these. I don't put it all on, mind you, because once in 

 awhile I find these have supers full of honey. Then I take 

 the honey and put it above, and put the brood below. In 

 that way every one of my colonies stores several supers full 

 of honey every season. I do not have a lot of little, weak 

 swarms where the bees do not get into the supers. 



Mr. Gilstrap — I have worked with bees in Central Cali- 

 fornia, Southern California, and in Colorado, and I find 

 location and quality of honey produced has a great deal to 

 do with the use of the hot or cold knife. Lacking 15 cans 

 we took off 9 tons of honey last year, and never used any- 



thing but a cold knife. I find keeping the knife sharp has 

 a great deal to do with it. There are only two locations 

 where I have worked with bees where I have found the hot 

 knife necessary. Where the honey is not very stiff the 

 cold knife can be used very satisfactorily. 



J. A. Delano — My experience with the hot knife and 

 cold has been during the last 1,S years I have been in the 

 bee-business. I started in with the idea that the cold knife 

 was a good plan. It saves a fire in the honey-house, the 

 heat, and bother. Another reason I thought it a good plan, 

 was because several of the large bee-keepers were using the 

 same plan. Mr. Charles Graham, one of the largest bee- 

 keepers, used that plan himself, keeping the knife sharp, 

 and running it on the same plan as Mr. Mclntyre. But I 

 found, after I had used it for about five years, that if we 

 had boiling water to put our knives in, and kept them 

 sharp, we could accomplish probably twice as much, and do 

 the work a good deal easier. In this State we have differ- 

 ent kinds of honey in different localities. With sage honey 

 your can use a cold knife very well, as there is dust you 

 have to wash off with a cloth ; but I find in general practice 

 the hot knife takes the lead in my experience. Mr. Graham 

 has al.so done away with the cold knife, and taken up with 

 the hot-water process. In extracting from an apiary where 



J. F. .VcIXTYRE. 



the honey-flow is coming fast, in sage honey, and where a 

 couple or three men have to handle so many combs in a daj', 

 a cold knife would be at a disadvantage. At least I think 

 it would be with us. When we take off a ton, or ton and a 

 half, with two or three men, we must use the easiest plan. 

 Along this coast the cold knife works very successfully be- 

 cause the honey is thinner, and you will find it will cut 

 easier, but you go inland, where it is drier, and it is harder 

 to run a cold knife. 



J. S. Harbison— I have inspected quite a large quantity 

 of extracted honey, and I find one of the evils is the exces- 

 sive use of smoke in handling the combs. Much very 

 choice honey has been ruined in that way, so much so that 

 a delicate taste would reject it on account of its bitter taste. 

 You can not be too careful with reference to this matter. 

 Honey is very sensitive to acquire a bad odor, as much so as 

 butter. Another thing, there is too much honey extracted 

 in an unripe state. It will never be the same honey as 

 when ripened in the hives. These two things are some- 

 thing you must give more attention to, or else extracted 

 honey will fall into disrepute. Carelessness in these mat- 

 ters is one thing that has prevented a more general use of 

 honey. I have had much experience along these lines, and 

 I caution you about using smoke, even on comb honey, be- 

 cause honey is always sensitive, and will acquire a bad 

 taste. The importance of these matters seems to have been 

 overlooked by a great many honey-producers. I warn you 



