Feb. 1. 1!)12 



only tV, inch thick, and of very soft timber. 

 My bees showed very little respect for them, 

 and gnawed them in a frightful manner. 

 They have long been out of commission, 

 and the supers have been entirely remodel- 

 ed to correspond with my regular stock. The 

 resulting honey had always the washboard 

 apiiearance, arid many legs were attached 

 to the faces and fences. There was another 

 peculiarity of these supers; the combs in 

 them ran crosswise of the frames in the 

 brood-chambers, making it necessary to 

 keej) hives perfectly level both ways. This 

 is, as every one knows, a very undesirable 

 feature, and can not be tolerjited except in 

 house-apiaries or tenement hives. 



The honey produced with the Danzenba- 

 ker fences also lacked in smoothness when 

 compared with that j^roduced with solid 

 separators. But the feature I wanted to 

 draw es]iecial attention to as being the re- 

 sult of the narrowness of the cleats is this: 

 The sealing of the cells next to the wood is 

 quite often so drawn out as to be slightly 

 attached to the cleats; and when the filled 

 sections are removed from the supers this 

 sealing is somewhat broken, and a leak is 

 the result. This may not be very serious, 

 for bee-keepers seem to be jjassing it by 

 without making objections, although few 

 have mentioned the matter. A wider cleat 

 entirely prevents this trouble, as is clearly 

 shown by the honey produced in my 100 or 

 more supers provided with such wide cleats. 

 The fences with the narrow X-i^ch cleats, 

 which I made some fifteen or more years ago, 

 have always given us the saiBC trouble, more 

 or less, just as the Danzenbaker fences did, 

 but have stood the wear exceptionally well — 

 probably because the material was good 

 sound timber, and of good thickness. I 

 doubt whether the thin Danzenbaker fences 

 will endure like that. My suggestion would 

 be to uiake thin separators or fences of hard 

 wood — maple, elm, or something of that na- 

 ture. 



Before I forget it I want to say that we can 

 get along with the "legs," or little attach- 

 ments the bees are apt to build between the 

 fences and the combs, much better than we 

 can with the other nuisance mentioned, of 

 having the sealings attached to the cleats. 

 The legs are easily detached by running an 

 eight-inch hack-saw blade through the bee- 

 spaces where the attachments appear. Be- 

 fore unloading filled supers we stand them 

 up on the bench so that the light will shine 

 into the spaces; thus we readily see where 

 there are any attachments. This past sea- 

 son we had some supers which looked very 

 discouraging to us on account of the many 

 legs. At first I thought I would not find a 

 single suitable section in a whole case for 

 shipment; but after sawing olT the legs there 

 was not a spoiled section to be found; while, 

 had we omitted this, not a section in some 

 of the worst cases would have been fit to ship. 

 But we have no remedy to prevent mutila- 

 tion when the sealings are attached to the 

 cleats. 



Naples, N. Y. 



87 

 FOUNDATION SPLINTS. 

 How Made and How Used. 



BY DR. C. C. MILLKR. 



M. C. Thompson, Milwaukee, Oregon, in- 

 quires about foundation splints. They are 

 made by sawing and also by slicing. Kirst 

 the wood is cut into sheets yV, of an inch 

 in thickness. Then a number of sheets are 

 laid together and cut into splints, making 

 the splints y^ of an inch square. A saw for 

 the purpose must, of course, be very fine, 

 and the slicing-machine is a large and pow- 

 erful affair that I suppose is quite expensive. 

 I have never made any splints, as I can buy 

 them for 60 cents per thousand with an ad- 

 ditional 10 cents for postage if sent by mail. 

 I couldn't make them nor have them made 

 locally for any such price. They would 

 work all right if made long enough to reach 

 from top to bottom-bar, but would be trou- 

 blesome to put in, so they are made % inch 

 shorter than that. For a frame of Lang- 

 stroth size, with top-bar V& thick and bot- 

 tom-bar X thick, that makes the splint 7^ 

 inches long. 



Broomcorn might work for splints, only 

 it w^ould take a good deal of care in selecting, 

 and at that would not be of such uniform 

 thickness as the spliced splints. I hardly 

 think you would make satisfactory work 

 splitting wood into splints, even if your ce- 

 dar and fir are very straight-grained. But 

 you can easily try it. 



Now the manner of putting in the splints. 

 The foundation is fastened to top and bot- 

 tom bars', then the frame is laid over a board 

 such as is commonly in use, being made to 

 fit rather loosely inside the frame with stops 

 on the edges to allow the foundation to rest 

 on the board. The splints are thrown into 

 a square shallow tin pan that contains hot 

 beeswax. They will froth up because of the 

 moisture frying out of them. When the 

 frothing ceases, and the splints are saturat- 

 ed with wax, then they are ready for use. 

 With a pair of plyers a splint is lifted out of 

 the wax (kept just hot enough over a stove), 

 and placed upon the foundation so that the 

 splint shall be perpendicular when the frame 

 is hung in the hive. As fast as a splint is 

 laid in place an assistant immediately press- 

 es it down into the foundation with the wet- 

 ted edge of a thin board. 



I have useddiflerent makes of brood-foun- 

 dation with .splints, and of different weights 

 — heavy, medium, and light. About lyi. 

 inches from each end-bar is i)laced a splint, 

 and between these three other si)lints at 

 equal distances, making five splints in the 

 frame. This for heavy or medium founda- 

 tion. For light foundation I have used sev- 

 en splints to the frame. 



I see no reason why the plan given by Mr. 

 Atwater, in April Beview, should not work 

 all right. 



If splints are given when the bees are not 

 busy gathering nectar and building comb, 

 they will be gnawed out. The thinner the 

 foundation the more likely the gnawing. 



