560 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE 



Those of our readers who have taken a 

 bee journal for the last 25 years will prob- 

 ably take issue with the now defunct jour- 

 nal. No wonder it died. Let us see what 

 has happened since that time: 



The evolution of the lai-ge power honey- 

 extractor; automatic reversing of combs; 

 the steam uncapping-knif e ; the melting of 

 eappings as fast as they come from the 

 knife, and the separation of the wax auto- 

 matically; the honey-pump; simplified and 

 improved appliances for the production of 

 comb honey ; cut comb honey ; bulk or chunk 

 comb honey; the bee-escape; queen-exclud- 

 ers ; new and better methods of dealing with 

 the swarming problen^ specialist beekeep- 

 ing — that is, where one man is owner and 

 proprietor of from five hundred to several 

 thousand colonies; syndicated beekeeping, 

 where great corporations in the tropics are 

 producing honey almost by the shipload; 

 the development of new bee territoiy; mi- 

 gratory beekeeping; shipping bees without 

 combs ; bee-disease laws in two-thirds of the 

 States; apicultural stations; government 

 apicultural work ; back-lot beekeeping ; pure 

 honey in nearly every State in the Union, 

 backed by federal and State pure-food laws, 

 and last, but not least, millions and millions 

 of dollars' worth of honey produced annu- 

 ally where only thousands were produced 

 when that editor who knew it all said we 

 had reached the zenith of honey production. 



THE VENTILATED BEE-ESCAPE BOARD. 



We would call attention to an article by 

 Mr. Arthur F. Hodgson, in this issue, page 

 577, on the subject of ventilated bee-escape 

 boards. While the idea is not new (see 

 Gleanings for 1892 and 1893), it is, never- 

 theless, good. There are two important ad- 

 vantages in the ventilated escape-board. 

 One is the elimination of all possibility of 

 the bees suffocating, and melting down the 

 honey; and the other, having the honey 

 warmed for the extractor as well as free 

 from bees. In regard to the first named, a 

 solid board escape, if it should clog up dur- 

 ing hot weather, may kill all the bees above 

 the super; and the intense heat developed 

 by the suffocating bees will melt down the 

 honey. The use of the wire cloth, as shown 

 in this issue, permits free ventilation; and 

 should the escape fail to operate for any 

 reason, no harm would be done, either to 

 the colony or to the bees. 



The second reason, warm combs for the 

 extractor, is very important, as every prac- 

 tical extraeted-honey producer will recog- 

 nize. Cold combs in cool weather are very 

 hard to extract clean. In fact, it is almost 

 impossible to get them clean. But combs 



that have the heat of the cluster of bees, 98 

 Fah., will extract very readil3\ 



A great many have objected to the use 

 of bee-escapes on the ground that, after the 

 supers are deserted, the combs are cold; 

 and this would be true of solid board es- 

 capes. For that reason many large honey- 

 producers have preferred to brush or shake 

 the combs. If new honey is coming in at 

 the time, shaking will scatter much of it on 

 the ground and on the bees. Xor is this all. 

 The bees crawl all over the gi'ound, get 

 under the trousers, and, of course, the op- 

 erator is stung more or less. If the honey- 

 flow ceases, there is danger of robbing ; and 

 last, but not least important, the bee-escape 

 saves all interruption to the colony. Shak- 

 ing or brushing stops work, and some little 

 time will elapse before the bees get down 

 to normal again. From every point of view 

 the bee-escape method of freeing the bees 

 from the comb is greatly to be pi'eferred, 

 providing the objections to such methods 

 can be eliminated, and the Hodgson plan, 

 as shown in this issue, does it. 



HONEY-CROP CONDITIONS AND PRICES. 



The mass of reports that have been re- 

 ceived from the central States shows that it 

 has been unquestionably a good year for 

 the production of clover hone3\ The peak 

 of the yield seems to have centered down 

 through the Ohio Valley, including Indiana 

 and northward into southern Michigan and 

 southern Ontario. Generally speaking, the 

 yield decreases from that area, either east 

 or west, north or south; but there ai'e ex- 

 ceptions, for even in favored portions of 

 the clover districts there have been almost 

 c«.-mplete failures ; and in regions where the 

 clever yield has been light, there has been 

 an occasional record-breaking crop. In 

 most of the New England States the season 

 has been, perhaps, below the normal. In 

 Eastern New York, Pennsylvania, and New 

 Jersey the yield has been fair to poor. In 

 parts of Illinois there have been good and 

 poor yields. The same is true of Minnesota. 

 In eastern Wisconsin the season has been 

 good, and in the western part poor. Iowa 

 seems to have had a fair yield in most 

 places. 



Taking it all in all, the aggregate produc- 

 tion of clover will be above noi'mal, for 

 there have been record-breaking yields 

 :n favored localities. The price of clover 

 extracted will perhaps be somewhat easier; 

 but on fancy and No. 1 comb the prices 

 ought to be up to normal, for we have never 

 yet seen either too much fancy or No. 1 

 clover comb honey. 



Very little basswood honey has been re- 



