350 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 16 



pers filled with sections lying over till the 

 next year, or may be longer. 



With regard to practicing all that kind of 

 economy, I have a single word of advice — 

 don't. 



Let us take the last item first. I can't 

 take the time to give you all the reasons for 

 it, but I advise that you get ready, before 

 bees fly, all the supers of sections you will 

 get readv for that year. One of the reasons 

 for it is that you will not then be caught with 

 a heavy flow of honey, no dish ready to catch 

 it, and a lot of honey lost while you send off 

 to the supply-dealer for the dish. 



How many supers of sections shall you 

 have ready in advance? In the first place 

 you should have for each colony one super- 

 ful of sections that you deliberately count 

 on as not to be filled at all that season; for 

 toward the close of the season there will 

 come a time when you think no more room 

 will be needed, and yet there is a possibility 

 that some colonies may need it. You don't 

 know just which they are, and the safe way 

 is to give the extra room to all. Given on 

 top, the bees will do little or nothing with it 

 if they don't need it; and if you take it off as 

 soon as the bees stop storing, it will be all 

 right for a future harvest. Besides that ex- 

 tra super you must have enough ready, not 

 for an average season, but for the biggest 

 season that may occur. If you can find out 

 that in the past the biggest season that ever 

 happened yielded an average of five supers 

 per colony, then you must have ready five 

 supers and one extra, or six supers in all for 

 each colony. 



"That's a lot of expense every year for 

 nothing?" Look here. Every year for many 

 a year I've had my house insured against 

 fire, and have paid out a lot of money for 

 nothing, for my house never burned down. 

 I expect to keep on paying, and I don't ex- 

 pect my house to burn down; but if it should 

 — see the point? Same way about insuring 

 against loss by not being ready for that big 

 year. 



Let me earnestly advise that you invest in 

 at least one super-spring for each super. 

 With a wooden wedge you can make the sec- 

 tions crowd up tight, perhaps even tighter 

 than with springs, but they'll not stay so. 

 The sections will shrink, and then they'll be 

 loose unless you have springs that will follow 

 up and keep crowding in spite of the shrink- 

 ing. 



Just as earnestly — yes, a little more ear- 

 nestly — I want to advise that you do not 

 make the mistake of trying to economize on 

 foundation. You know it is generally be- 

 lieved that 50 per cent more extracted honey 

 than comb can be obtained — some claim two 

 or three times as much. That's because the 

 bees are saved the labor of building comb 

 for the extracted. Well, don't you see that 

 at least part of that labor is saved by having 

 full sheets of foundation? and so the crop 

 ought to be increased by that much. 



Another thing: The chief secret of prevent- 

 ing brood in sections is to have them filled 

 full of tvorker foundation. If only a small 



starter is used, the bees are pretty sure to 

 build some drone comb in the vacancy, and 

 then the queen will come up for the sake of 

 laying in the drone-cells. With full founda- 

 tion in sections it is so rare a thing for the 

 queen to come up that I never thiuK of hav- 

 ing an excluder under sections. 



A very important item in this connection 

 is the manner in which the section is filled 

 with foundation. Let the starter reach clear 

 down to the bottom-bar, and when warmed 

 up by the bees it will bag and buckle. To 

 avoid that, the starter must fall a little short 

 of reaching the bottom. There will then be 

 no buckling, but another trouble arises. In 

 too many cases the bees, instead of fastening 

 the foundation to the bottom-bar of the sec- 

 tion, will gnaw away a passage beneath it, 

 making an unsightly section and one not 

 safe for shipment. The case is aggravated 

 by the fact that, when there is a space be- 

 low, there is likely to be more or less space 

 at the sides. 



Some have fastened the foundation on all 

 four sides with satisfactory results, but oth- 

 ers who have tried it say that the foundation 

 still bags, as reported especially by E. F. At- 

 water. 



To solve the problem of having the comb 

 well built down to the bottom, and at the 

 same time to have no bagging, the vacancy 

 to allow for stretching must be, not clear 

 down at the bottom, but a little higher up. 

 This is accomplished by having the starter 

 in two parts, the bottom starter standing up 

 about I inch, and the top starter coming 

 down within \ inch or so of the bottom start- 

 er. With such starters coming within about 

 j^^ inch of the wood at the sides, I have had 

 no trouble in getting tons of sections beau- 

 tifully built out on all four sides. Even if 

 the sections are not to be shipped, the in- 

 creased beauty of appearance pays well for 

 the little extra time required to put in the 

 two starters; for it requires no more founda- 

 tion than for a single starter reaching down 

 nearly to the wood. 



To those who have never tried it I can 

 hardly commend too highly the use of the 

 bottom starter. 



Marengo, 111. 



HONEY AS A FOOD. 



The Prairie Farmer publishes the follow- 

 ing: 



Late investigations lead to the belief that honey, 

 tV:e earliest form of sugar that human beings could 

 obtain, is still about the best. It is counted, as the 

 result of these experiments, among the most nutri- 

 tious and delicate of foods. Not only does honey 

 seem to act as a cure for diseases of the throat, but as 

 a somewhat remarkable purifier of the blood. The 

 only obstacle in the way of its more general use ap- 

 pears to be that many people can not eat it without 

 stomachic pain. 



We wonder where the editor of the Prai- 

 rie Farmer obtained the idea that honey 

 causes stomachic pain. To those who are 

 not used to it, honey tastes so well that they 

 are induced to eat too much of it when the 

 chance is given them. It is unfair to blame 

 the honey for this indiscretion, however. 

 Please place the blame where it belongs. ^^-^ 



