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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Nov. 1 



whole arrangement makes a pretty good fire- 

 less cooker, a tip-top incubator, and a splendid 

 brooder. In order to keep the temperature, 

 say, not lower than 106 to 108, and not high- 

 er than 114 to 115, you will need to dip out 

 some of the water when it gets too cold, and 

 pour in some hot water to warm it up. A 

 little experimenting will tell you how much 

 and how hot the water needs to be. As near- 

 ly as I can make out, the water should be 

 kept as close 111 or 112as possible. My best 

 hatches have been at this temperature. If 

 you wish to be spared the trouble of having 

 hot water every 8 hours in readiness, make 

 a hole through the bottom of your wooden 

 bowl, and put a lamp under it. It will be 

 better economy of heat to have a tea-kettle 

 made with a tube soldered in the bottom, 

 running up through the opening where the 

 cover goes on. This tube will form a sort of 

 lamp-chimney. Of course, this chimney 

 must go up through the upper wooden bowl. 

 With this latter arrangement a very small 

 lamp with a narrow wick and a little flame 

 will keep up the temperature of your kettle 

 of water. You will need a little damper in 

 the top of your chimney. This is to be shut 

 up as nearly as you can, without making the 

 lamp smoke. 



On page 448 of our issue for July 15 there 

 is a brooder described warmed by a jug of 

 water, said jug kept warm by means of a 

 lamp. Now, this jug may take the place of 

 a tea-kettle by cutting a hole through the 

 wooden bowl large enough to hold the jug, re- 

 placing it with a piece of galvanized iron . That 

 a jug of water will hatch chickens was prov- 

 ed some years ago by one of the women 

 teachers (now Mrs. Sarah Pritchard) in our 

 Medina schools. I asked her a few days ago 

 in regard to the particulars. She said she 

 replenished the jug with hot water only 

 twice a day. The eggs were placed around 

 the outside of the jus, they being supported 

 up against the jug oy woolen cloths. If I 

 am correct, she did not use any thermome- 

 ter. She simply kept the jug warm enough 

 so that the eggs, when taken in her hand, 

 felt about as warm as eggs are under a sit- 

 ting hen; and I have about decided of late 

 that I can tell by feeling of eggs when they 

 are warm enough, almost as well as if I used 

 a thermometer; in fact, I am told this is the 

 way they do in China, where they hatch 

 chickens almost by the millions, with no 

 thermometer at all. To do this you must be 

 sure that your hands are at a normal temper- 

 ature at the time; for if you should come in 

 from outdoors with cold fingers it would 

 not only be bad for your eggs, but you would 

 not be in condition to judge of the tempera- 

 ture. 



Some of you may wonder why I selected 

 any thing so awkward and ungainly as a 

 wooden dowI. Well, it is because my ex- 

 periments during the past summer have 

 seemed to indicate that wood is much better 

 than metal to be under the eggs. Sometliing 

 thinner than a wooden bowl, say a shelf 

 made of wood veneer, would be desirable; 

 but I have not been able to make the wood 



veneer or strawboard keep its place. The 

 wooden bowls are not expensive, and I think 

 they can be made considerably thinner than 

 those in the market if made for this particu- 

 lar purpose. It is a very good idea to have 

 the bottom bowl thick and heavy in order to 

 retain the heat. This form of incubator, by 

 its shape, economizes heat so well that a very 

 small amount of oil is needed to run it and 

 keep up the proper temperature. In fact, 

 you want about the smallest size of burner 

 made, for this purpose. If you use a large 

 burner, when you turn the flame down to 

 where it is required, when the eggs are near 

 hatching, the flame is liable to go out. 



There has been objection made to the 

 amount of work necessary to turn the eggs 

 or swap places every eight hours. With the 

 wooden bowl and tea-kettle I have describ- 

 ed, you have only to pick up the egg in con- 

 tact with the hot kettle, and the one back of 

 it will roll into its place; then just drop the 

 egg in your fingers so as to occupy the place 

 ot the one that rolled in. You can swap 40 

 or 50 eggs in this way almost as quickly as 

 you can turn by hand the eggs in any incu- 

 bator in the market. When the chickens 

 commence hatching out I take the shells out 

 of their way, and see that each chick gets up 

 against the kettle until it is dried off. You 

 will soon want a little fence made of a circle 

 of rolled-up pasteboard, to keep the chicks 

 from climbing out and going all over the 

 room; and, by the way, this arrangement is 

 the very best brooder I know of, either in- 

 doors or outdoors. If you put it outdoors in 

 cool weather, of course you will have to have 

 it inside of a little house. 



You can adjust the flame of the lamp very 

 nicely by looking down the chimney. Now, 

 if we have a thermostat attached we should 

 have a complete incubator; but after trying 

 both ways, with a thermostat and without, 

 I made up my mind that it was but little more 

 trouble to regulate the heat by turning the 

 lamp up or down than to use the thermostat; 

 and I have just been delighted to find that 

 this cheap book I have oeen mentioning, 

 "Profits in Poultry," states that the hot-wa- 

 ter incubator described there is being run 

 successfully without any thermostat at all. 

 You can test this home-made incubator in 

 winter, when you have but little to do, so as 

 to be ready to go to work successfully when 

 spring opens once more. Do noi lorget to 

 use the cheap egg-tester I have described. 

 You can tell in five or six days, if you have 

 sunshiny weather, whether your eggs are 

 going to hatch; and if your apparatus does 

 not work your e^gs are just as good to use 

 for cooking as it they had been anywhere 

 else for that length of time in hot summer 

 weather. 



If you want to enlarge the capacity of your 

 "tea-kettle incubator," got a second wooden 

 bowl and cut out the center so it will just fit 

 over the tea-kettle and rest a sufficient dis- 

 tance above the lower shelf to permit you to 

 swap the eggs below. The tea-kettle spout 

 will probably be in your way unless you cut 

 out the bowl so as to go around it. Of course 



