1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



175 



of the section over a stove, and place the comb in 

 place (riijht side up), and lay the section aside for 

 the wax to cool. I then ifold the section. 



This starter is very much more attractive to 

 bees than comb foundation, as some honey will 

 be placed in the cell before any new comb is add- 

 ed to it. I use no zinc, and have but little trouble 

 because of queens laying in the drone-cells. 

 When this does occur it is generally in sections 

 from the previous year, nearly filled with comb, 

 and put on early for " baits. " Not more than 

 one queen in twenty enters the sections and lays 

 eggs. There is no " fishbone " in the sections; 

 and as the drone comb is naturally built thicker 

 1 think I can get straighter combs without sepa- 

 rators than if the cells were worker size. Further- 

 more, if the walls of all cells are of equal thick- 

 ness, there is one-third or more wax in worker 

 than in drone comb of the same thickness, and I 

 think the honey looks much nicer, as the large 

 cells show through the cappings more than the 

 smaller. I can tell my customers that I have the 

 natural comb honey with no "fishbone" in it. 



Some might ask how I get this drone comb. 

 Kor years I have bought but little comb founda- 

 tion, using it only for starters in brood-frames. 

 I hive my swarms on five or less frames with only 

 starters, and in two or three days or when there 

 are, say, five combs from one-half to two-thirds 

 built, I put on sections with drone-comb starters, 

 and the bees go at them with a rush. When the 

 five combs are built I add two more frames at the 

 center with starters. Thisspreadingcan becarried 

 on indefinitely. The drone comb the bees build 

 in the frames I cut out and place at the entrance 

 so the bees can empty it of any honey that might 

 have been placed in the cells. I then lay them 

 a^ay to be used in ths sections. I prefer comb 

 built from a drawn starter to that from founda- 

 tion, wired or not, and I think I can get fully as 

 much comb from the starter as I could frtom 

 loundation. If there is a fairly good flow, an 

 average colony will fill a frame in a day, or five 

 frames in five days. 



In cutting out drone comb, care must be used 

 to cut back as far as the cells are expanded, and 

 the bees will generally fill with worker comb, al- 

 though it is hard to keep the bees from building 

 some drone comb the second time. However, 

 such combs should be placed at the side, where 

 they will be used for storing honey. In the spring 

 the drone comb can be cut out, and a piece of 

 worker comb fitted in. 



St. Johns, Ore., Dec. 25. 



SOME EXPERIENCE WITH DIFFER- 

 ENT BEE-APPLIANCES. 



Hot Uncapping-knives Preferred; Shallow^ 

 vs. Deep Supers. 



BY THE NEW MEXICO CHAP. 



The Bingham uncapping-knife is excellent for 

 uncapping any kind or shape of comb except 

 comb-honey sections. For these I made a di- 

 minutive Bingham knife with about the same 

 drop from the tine of the handle to the tine of the 

 blade as the regular size, but short enough for 

 the whole blade to fit down into the section. I 

 find such knives indispensable, and should think 



they might well be put on the market. We en- 

 dorse the hot-knife plan. 



This fall we extracted honey so stiff that we 

 found it necessary to let an eight-frame power ex- 

 tractor hum for thirty minutes on each set of 

 combs — fifteen minutes to each side. 



Fancy uncapping //r<:i/ honey with a cold knife! 

 Knives from boiling water had to be given time 

 to melt their way through, and an unusually 

 strong man at the uncapping-box complained of 

 his wrist. The bees make a little honey here at 

 times, which can be uncapped with cold knives 

 without much injury to the combs; but if there 

 is a good lively " machine »Tian " at an eight- 

 frame power-driven extractor, and not more than 

 two men at the uncapping-can, they must use hot 

 knives to keep him in honey and not ruin combs. 

 It is fair to say that these conclusions are drawn 

 from actual experience, for we uncapped about 

 sixty tons of honey last summer. 



We like the Rauchfuss combined section-form- 

 er and foundation-fastener. We mounted twenty 

 thousand sections with one last spring, and it 

 gave entire satisfaction. 



I have known instances where bees secreted so 

 much more wax than they needed that it scaled 

 off their bodies and fell in little yellow or silvery 

 flakes on the floor of the hive, w^here it lay almost 

 thick enough to cover the bottom. I note this 

 more often in nuclei than any other place; in 

 fact, I am not certain I ever saw it in a full-sized 

 colony. One nucleus in which I noticed a spe- 

 cially large amount of these discarded wax scales 

 was a strong nucleus (about three frames), with 

 a poor queen which was missing a little later on 



Late this season we got on to a method of 

 brushing which was such an improvement on our 

 old style plan that I want to tell others abo t it. 

 Take an empty comb-honey super; set it down 

 by the hive; take off the extracting-super, set 

 it on the empty comb-honey super, and put 

 both back (on the hive). If the super contains 

 8 frames (it should contain only 7 for best re- 

 sults), take out one or two with the fewest bees and 

 lean these up against the hive. Prepare a brush 

 by tying together a bundle of soft green weeds 

 about as large as the wrist, and two feet long. 

 Thrust this down in the place where the frames 

 were taken out, and sweep it back and forth 

 quickly a few times, and no more bees will be 

 seen there. Then pull the next frame toward 

 you and get the brush into the opening it leaves 

 beyond, and so on until the bees are all below. 



We run for extracted honey mostly, with full- 

 depth frames; but we have three or four hundred 

 sets of shallow frames, and we find that, as a gen- 

 eral rule, a man can take off honey much faster 

 in full-depth frames, and the uncappers can un- 

 cap more pounds in full-depth frames, while the 

 man at the extractor bewails his fate when he sees 

 one end of the extracting-tent stacked full of 

 shallow-frame supers. I found these shallow 

 frames useful, however, to precede a comb-honey 

 super. 



EXTRACTING-TENTS. 



We do all our extracting in a tent, and we 

 move it from one to another of our seven yards, 

 in which we now have 1700 colonies. The tent 

 is a 12X16, with a 6-ft. wall. Near the back 

 end I took out one width of canvas on each side, 

 and put in window-screen, down to within a foot 



