774 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Dec. 15 



of it in the granulated form. If our comb 

 honey does not come up to the desired 

 grades we make chunk honey of it; and 

 if it granulates before we sell it we feed 

 it back to the bees and then put the comb 

 through the wax- extractor; or we sometimes 

 put the whole thing through the extractors 

 and then feed the liquid honey to the bees 

 afterward. 



WE RAISE OUR OWN QUEENS. 



We raise our own queens, although we 

 purchase extra good breeders as occasion 

 demands. In the past, this has caused a 

 good deal of extra work; for at the end of 

 the season we have a lot of fine queens left, 

 which we endeavor to winter in nuclei, and 

 our winters are often so open that we are 

 compelled to feed continually. In the future 

 we do not intend to do this, as we expect to 

 take up queen-rearing on a commercial basis, 

 arranging the work accordingly, This sea- 

 son we endeavored to use two full-depth 

 ten-frame bodies as a brood-chamber; but 

 we never could get over fourteen Hoffman 

 frames of brood at one time. We use eight 

 and ten frame hives, each frame having two 

 horizontal wires and two oblique, filled with 

 a full sheet of foundation. 



THIN OR THICK TOP-BARS. 



We have used the ten-frame extracting- 

 supers for a sectional hive, using about five 

 supers for each colony. The thin top-bar of 

 the frame always sags, and there is no good 

 way of quickly fastening the foundation to 

 it; so in the future we shall use the thick 

 Hoffman top-bars. We also use Massie 

 hives and find them very satisfactory. 



We make our increase on the shaking-out 

 plan. I shake or brush the bees from five 

 full frames of brood, confine them for six 

 hours, then take them to another yard and 

 give them a queen, and the work is done. 



Hagerman, N. M. 



PERMANENT SHEDS FOR BEES. 



Why it Pays in Dollars and Cents to Keep 

 the Hives Sheltered in a Shed. 



BY J. T. WILLIAMS. 



For nearly fifty years I have kept bees to 

 some extent. I have used "gums," boxes, 

 kegs, and hives of nearly every pattern. I 

 have tried keeping the hives in the open 

 under shade-trees, under shade-boards, and 

 in sheds of different kinds. The photo- 

 graph shows my latest shed that I built after 

 my extended experience. By having a good 

 shelter from the winds, as well as from the 

 rain and snow, I can get my colonies built 

 up strong much earlier in the spring, so that 

 I can have good work done in the supers as 

 early as April 12 in this locality. The hives 

 remain in the shed the year round. 



It will be noticed that the bees are clus- 

 tered on the front of the hive considerably. 

 The reason for this is that, at the time the 

 photograph was taken (July 29), the bees 

 were all in from the field, and some of the 

 supers had been removed, for I had already 

 taken off a part of the honey crop. 



The front, roof, and back of the sheds are 

 made of corrugated iron, the posts of cedar 

 being set in the ground two feet. The front 

 of the shed is 6 ft. 8 in. high, and the rear 

 only 6 ft. The iron is well covered with red 

 wagon-paint, while the hives are painted 

 different shades of green. 



The passageways of ten feet or so are for 

 going in and out of the shed. I do all the 

 work behind the hives, without a veil and 

 often without even a hat. There is plenty of 

 room in the shed behind the hives to run a 

 loaded wheelbarrow. 



As to whether it pays in dollars and cents 

 to have hives under sheds, I will say that I 

 think it pays just as well as it pays a farmer 

 to build a barn to shelter his stock. Of 



