1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



527 



CONVERSATIONS WITH 

 DOOLITTLE 



AT Borodino, New York. 



TAKING OFF COMB HONEY. 



"Mr. Doolittle, I want to know if it is best 

 to wait till the end of the season, and then 

 take off all the comb honey at once, or take 

 off all sections as soon as half a super of 

 them, or such a matter, are sealed over." 



"That depends very largely on the time 

 vou have at your disposal, Mr. Jones. If you 

 have plenty of time, then it will undoubted- 

 ly pay you to take off the sections when fif- 

 teen or twenty in any super are finished, for 

 by so doing such sections will not have their 

 nice white cappings soiled in the least." 



"But how shall I proceed?" 



"You will want a lighted smoker and a 

 wheelbarrow, and on the wheelbarrow a lot 

 of sections which are filled with foundation 

 ready to go in the place of those you will 

 take off. Remove the cover over the sec- 

 tions and blow smoke down between the 

 ranges of them till the bees have quite well 

 gone below, when you can see about how 

 many are finished. If from fifteen to twenty, 

 unkey the super and take these out, putting 

 those from your wheelbarrow in their places. 

 If you do not see as many as ten or twelve 

 which are finished, I should not bother to 

 take any out. In this way you can go over 

 all the hives. If the flow of nectar is good 

 you can go over the yard again in a week, 

 or at least that is about the way I did when 

 I took off sections often so as to have all the 

 combs nice and white." 



"Is there no other way to do this?" 



"Yes, you can use bee-escape boards, as 

 at the end of the season, thus running all of 

 the bees down below, off from all the sec- 

 tions whether finished or not." 



"Then what will be done with the unfin- 

 ished ones?" 



"After you have the supers free from 

 bees thev are to be wheeled into the honey- 

 room, where all are taken out, the finished 

 and the unfinished, piling the finished ones 

 away, while those not finished are put in the 

 supers, filling each super full, so that they 

 may be put on the hive again for finishing." 



"But does this not cause a break of one 

 or two days with the bees?" 



"It is supposed that other supers will be 

 pn the hives, so that the bees can be at work 

 in them while you are taking the others off 

 and sorting them; but the bees seem to be 

 broken up much more by this way of proce- 

 dure than they do by the other way, so that 

 when I take off any but full supers I gen- 

 erally adopt the plan first spoken of." 



"Then you take off only full or nearly full 

 supers, ot late years?" 



"That is what I have done mostly for the 

 past twenty years; but during the twenty 

 years before, I took off tons of honey the 

 other way." 



"With full supers how do you proceed?" 



"There are various ways advocated by 



different apiarists, such as smoking the most 

 of the bees below, then carrying the supers 

 to the honey-room, and by bee-escapes at 

 the windows allowing the bees still in the 

 supers to come out to the window and then 

 crawl out through the escape. Others pile 

 up these partially beeless supers in a pile in 

 the apiary, with an empty super on top, over 

 which is spread a cloth, on which the bees 

 collect, when the cloth is turned a few times, 

 thus ridding the sections of bees. If at a 

 time when so much nectar is being gathered 

 that the bees are not disposed to rob, the su- 

 pers can be set near the entrance of the hive, 

 or on top, immediately over the entrance, 

 when the bees will all run out into the hive 

 below. But after having tried all of these I 

 prefer to use the escape-ooard." 



"Tell me how to put it on so the bees will 

 promptly go out of the supers." 



"If at the height of the season, when more 

 supers are to be put on to take the place of 

 the full ones taken off, there is no better 

 way than to lift the full super from the hive, 

 arrange the others as you wish them, when 

 the board, with the escape in place, is put on 

 top of them, the full super over this, and, last- 

 ly, the cover over the whole. At times when 

 the bees are inclined to rob, great care must 

 be taken to see that there is no place or crack 

 big enough to admit a bee, for there will be 

 no bees in this full super to defend it after 

 they begin to run out. Several have report- 

 ed all the nice sections in a full super spoil- 

 ed by some little hole found by robber bees 

 where they went in and carried off all of the 

 honey, or enough from each section so as to 

 spoil their sale. But with this caution you 

 should have no trouble about this." 



"How long does it take for the bees to 

 get out?" 



"With the Porter bee-escape, most of 

 them will go out in from four to eight hours; 

 but at the home apiary I generally put on 

 the escapes during the forenoon, and take 

 off the supers free from bees the next morn- 

 ing before the bees begin to fly much." 



"But suppose it is at the end of the sea- 

 son, and you want to take all of the supers 

 off at once. How do you proceed then?" 



"Take your smoker, a good stout chisel, 

 and a wooden wedge, together with the es- 

 cape-board. Set the board down by the hive, 

 and the smoker on it. Now insert the point 

 of the chisel between the supers and top of 

 the hive, and pry down on the handle till 

 you can get the point of the wedge in the 

 crack, which should not be large enough to 

 allow a bee to come out. Now blow some 

 smoke through the crack, which will drive 

 the bees away; raise the supers with the 

 chisel; push the wedge in halfway, and blow 

 in more smoke. Now grasp the escape-board 

 with one hand and the handholein the lower 

 super with the other, and raise the supers as 

 far as possible and not have them slide off 

 the hive, when the escape-board may be 

 pushed in as far as it will go, and the supers 

 lowered on to it. Now by the help of the 

 chisel bring the supers squarely over the 

 board and the board squarely over the hive." 



