1182 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 1 



" No amount of crowding of the super room 

 will induce the bees to seal over the combs before 

 the honey is ripened to their liking. The raw 

 nectar must be evaporated, or dried out, if you 

 please — ripened and graded, so to speak, in that 

 wonderful manner in which the bees know how 

 to take the nectar product of to-day and make 

 the finished product of to-morrow or next day." 



"What do you mean by graded? You do not 

 think that each bee-load of raw nectar is graded 

 in accordance with the flowers such loads come 

 from.? " 



"No, not that. As it is evaporated it is grad- 

 ed in accordance with its thickness or richness, 

 inspected by a company of experts, and sealed up 

 when it arrives at perfection, at the close of the 

 honey-flow, when the wax secretion stops, with 

 quite a few cells of unsealed honey in the last 

 sections worked on." 



"But why not feed the bees extracted honey to 

 finish up such sections which are left unfinished.?" 



" Such unfinished sections have been a great 

 temptation for various experiments by way of 

 what has been called 'feeding back' duri ig the 

 past; but I must say, and that from considerable 

 experience, that such feeding of extracted honey 

 will most likely be unsatisfactory." 



" I am sorry to hear that, for I had thought 

 this might be made to pay." 



"Some claim it will pay; but the reports that 

 come to me from the rank and file, as well as my 

 own experiments, convince me that the majority 

 of those who have tried it pronounce the same 

 unsatisfactory when every thing is taken into 

 consideration." 



" How do you remove the supers at the end of 

 the season.?" 



"By the use of bee-escapes. " 



"Do these woik as well at this time of the year 

 as they do in midsummer?" 



" If it is cold at the time of putting them on, 

 and it continues cold, the bees will sometimes 

 fail to go out of the supers till it becomes warm 

 again; but as a rule I have no trouble along this 

 line." 



"How about robbers in taking off honey with 

 the escapes.? " 



"There is no trouble whatever from this source 

 if there is no crack about the supers large enough 

 to admit a bee. In fact, the overcoming of the 

 robbing tendency at this time of the year is one 

 of the great big items which come to the apiarists 

 of the world through the invention of the perfect- 

 ed bee-escape." 



" What is to be done with these unfinished sec- 

 tions when taken from the hives.?" 



"As soon after taking it from the hives as possi- 

 ble the honey should be graded; and the unfin- 

 ished sections that are not marketable should be 

 extracted, cleaned by the bees, and stored where 

 they can be protected until the next season, when 

 they can be profitably used again as bait-combs." 



"Would it not be more profitable to allow the 

 bees to carry the honey out of the sections, or 

 rob them, as it is termed, and thus save the labor 

 of extracting them? " 



"I hardly think so. The extracted honey 

 more than pays for the work; and unless the rob- 

 bing work is done very slowly by the bees they 

 are apt to tear the combs quite badly." 



" But does not the extracting break the comb. 



which is always tender and brittle at this time of 

 the year.? " 



" Not if properly done." 



"Tell me how to extract properly." 



"Several wide frames should be provided, into 

 which the unfinished sections are placed as we 

 come across them in grading the honey. As 

 these are filled they are set on shelves near the top 

 of the room in which we work, and where we can 

 have a fire when needed. When we have a lot 

 ready, or are through with all of our griding for 

 the season, a fire is built and allowed to burn 

 long enough to keep the top of the room at from 

 85 to 95 degrees for four or five hours, at the 

 end of which we can extract the honey from those 

 sections as easily and as safely as though it were 

 midsummer with the mercury at the same height. " 



" If I remember rightly I have read in some of 

 your writings that, where sections are two-thirds 

 or more finished, or the honey that much capped 

 over, you ship them to market." 



"Yes, to the Neiv York market." 



"Where such are shipped, do you not have to 

 send them off as soon as possible after they are 

 oflt the hive.? " 



" I do not. Why should any one do so? " 



" Because such unsealed honey, with me, be- 

 comes thin, and drips fiom the cells when han- 

 dling if I do not get it ready for market as soon 

 as off the hives. This is a very undesirable con- 

 dition of things, as I have experienced to my sor- 

 row. " 



"This is because the room in which you store 

 your honey is cold or damp, or both. Where 

 do you store your honey?" 



"In a loom over the cellar on the norih side of 

 the house. I supposed it should be kept in a cool 

 place. " 



"This is like the old idea of our fathers, who 

 thought there was no place suitable for storing 

 honey except in the cellar. The very best of 

 sealed honey will become thin and watery after a 

 while if left in such a room as you are using. A 

 warm dry room is the only suitable place in 

 which to store honey; for if the room is such that 

 the temperature will stay day and night at from 

 80 to 95 degrees, all honey in unsealed cells will 

 become so ripe and thick that at the end of two 

 or three weeks the sections can be handled as you 

 please without one single drop stirring in any 

 cell." 



GLEANINGS FROM OUR 

 EXCHANGES 



By W. K. Morrison 



BEE-KEEPING IN BRITISH GUIANA. 

 Away down near the equator, at Onderneem- 

 ing, there is a reform school for boys where bee- 

 keeping is taught. Last year they had 11 hives 

 in working order, from which the crop was 1140 

 lbs. This was sold for ,$177. The man in 

 charge of that school deserves a gold medal, for I 

 am safe in saying no reform school in all America 

 can come anywhere near his record. Inciden- 

 tally it shows what can be done in tropical coun- 

 tries when bee-keeping is properly prosecuted. 



