36 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Jan. 16, 



take to bees, 'Father, why can't we get some movable-frame 

 hives, and do as well with them as neighbor A. does ?'" 



He says also : " To the class of bee-keepers I had refer- 

 ence to, the very first attempt to improve the old box or gum 

 hive, by giving bees access to the supers, was a step backward, 

 for in taking away the surplus honey, so-called, stored in 

 these supers, often the honey absolutely needed to carry the 

 bees through until the next harvest was taken away from 

 them, and the colony unless fed perished." 



In Gleanings for June 15, 1892, page 476, Langstroth 

 is reported as saying : "That he questioned whether many 

 farmers were advanced enough to have movable-frame hives, 

 because with such hives they would not handle the frames if 

 they could. 



In Gleanings for July 1, 1893, Doolittle advises farmers 

 to use the box-hive, and finishes his article in this manner: 

 " Any farmer can do as much as I have here outlined, and I 

 have sometimes seriously questioned whether this will not give 

 any of us as good results as the more frequent manipulation 

 of each hive, which has been insisted upon in the past." 



In Gleanings for July 15, 1891. Mr. C. J. H. Graven- 

 horst, of Germany, saya : "In the course of several years I 

 also got more houey and wax in the old-fashioned way, with 

 my old Lunebergien straw skeps than with my accurately con- 

 structed and skillfully handled Dzierzon and Berlepsch hives ; 

 and last, but not least, with undoubtedly less cost, labor and 

 time." He says again : " Of course, my experience would 

 have prompted me to abandon the frame hive totally had I 

 been blind enough to misunderstand the great advantages of 

 the latter." Again, he says : " Experience soon convinced 

 me that the principal point was that I could handle my old 

 skeps instead of individual frames, and get a thousand pounds 

 of honey with less labor." 



In Gleanings for April 15, 1891, P. H. Elwood says: 

 "Quinby observed that bees did not winter well in the frame 

 hive; and Dzierzon also observed that the open frame in- 

 fringed upon the welfare of the bees." 



Mr. Abbott, late editor of the British Bee Journal, says 

 that it is unnatural to have the open spaces at the end of the 

 frames. The Langstroth hive has revolutionized bee-keeping, 

 and we have made discoveries into the wonders of bee-life 

 that could not have been made with the old-fashioned hive. 

 Bee-keeping has been specialized, for only a few individuals 

 are fit to become expert bee-keepers ; at the same time, 

 farmers, as a class, have discontinued to keep bees, because 

 it did not pay them as well with the improved hives as it did 

 when the gum or box hive only was in use. This is not as it 

 should be. Bees ought to be on nearly every farm, and not 

 aggregated in large quantities as is the case now, where it is 

 not uncommon to find individuals owning hundreds of colonies 

 in one or two apiaries. 



We are now ready for another advance in bee-keeping, 

 and one that will again place bees on every farm, and permit 

 nearly any one to handle bees with success, and give the 

 farmer a Ijee-hive that can be handled as the old straw-hive 

 used to be. It will be a compromise between the old and the 

 new ; it will be handled as easily as the straw-hive, and at the 

 same time retain all the advantages of the movable-frame 

 hive, and permit interior examinations: a hivo that will be 

 cheap, as we cannot get the old prices for honey, and honey 

 ought to be cheaper than it is, so as to be within the reach of 

 all, poor as well as the rich. 



If you care to know more about the hive of the future, I 

 shall tell you what it is In my next. Brock, Nebr. 



[Mr. Gabus, if you know of a better bee-hive for the 

 future than we now have, of course we want you to tell us 

 about it in your next. There are a few individuals who are 

 afraid there will be an over-production of honey, but we are 

 not among them. It will always be under-consumption, and 

 if the almost doubling of the crop of extracted honey by the 

 miserable glucose and syrup adulteration could be effectually 

 stopped, there wouldn't begin to be enough genuine honey 

 produced now to supply the demand. Certainly, farmers 

 ought to produce honey — just as they do apples, potatoes, and 

 other produce — for the city peojjle as well as for their own 

 use. The trouble is not in over-production, it's under-consump- 

 tion and the abominable adulteration. — Editors.] 



US'" " stop my paper ; times are too hard," says a reader. 

 Certainly — and if you are going to burn the bridge on which 

 you cross, you will find times much harder. Saving less than 

 10 cents a month is rather extravagant economy, if you be- 

 lieve a paper is worth anything at all. 



Interesting Experiments in Heating Houey. 



BY HON. R. L. TAYLOR, 



SupmHteHchid of the Michigan State Eirperlment Apiai-y. 



Perhaps no fact is better known to the skilled bee-keepers 

 than that honey is readily injured both in flavor and color by 

 over-heating it, and yet for want of exact knowledge of the 

 point at which heat begins to be detrimental, there is no ques- 

 tion that qualities of honey are greatly reduced in value even 

 by those who are well acquainted with the general truth of 

 the fact referred to ; of course, with those who keep but few 

 bees, and are content to neglect the latest and best sources of 

 information, and to accept the word of the bee-hunter and the 

 voice of tradition as all-sufficient to direct in the management 

 of the bees and their product, thedanger is greatly augmented. 



What is the highest degree of temperature to which honey 

 may be subjected without receiving damage ? It is not neces- 

 sary to explain to bee-keepers how important this question is. 

 Before the invention of the extractor, heat was an effective 

 assistant in the operation of separating the houey from the 

 wax, and in case of honey candied in the comb it was an in- 

 dispensable assistant ; and to those whose limited apiary and 

 slender resources do not warrant the purchase of all the con- 

 venient appliances, the age of the extractor has not yet come. 

 But the comiug of the extractor has, in fact, rendered the 

 question still more important, for it has to a degree revolu- 

 tionized the business of bee-keeping by the ability it gives the 

 apiarist to readily remove the honey from combs without at 

 all injuring them for the use of the bees, so that they may be 

 used over and over again for years ; and the means thus 

 secured of supplying the bees with ready-made receptacles 

 for their honey, has rendered the extractor vastly popular; 

 but with it has come the magnified inconvenience of handling 

 large quantities of candied or granulated honey, which often 

 can be done to advantage after securing its liquefaction by 

 the use of heat. 



I know of no thoroughly satisfactory way of accomplish- 

 ing the process of liquefaction. Either the process is a long 

 and nice one on account of the skill and care required to keep 

 the temperature below the danger point, as when the honey is 

 to be liquified in crocks, jars or other vessels in which it has 

 already been stored ; or else it must be placed in the melting- 

 vessel after cutting it out of the one in which it has been 

 stored — a slow and trying labor, if it has been allowed to be- 

 come thoroughly solidified, in which case the use of a spade, 

 or even of an ax, is necessary, in order to make any satisfac- 

 tory impression upon it, and even then the same skill and care 

 are required unless the melting-vessel is so constructed that 

 the honey may run off as fast as it becomes liquified. I have 

 invented a vessel to accomplish this, which is made as follows : 



The outer vessel (for it is double) is an upright cylinder, 

 as large as desired, and as the stove to be used will accommo- 

 date ; made of tin, galvanized iron or copper ; the inner one 

 would better be of tin, two or three inches less in height, and 

 four to six inches less in diameter, than the outer one. The in- 

 ner one is to be fastened on metal supports about an inch 

 above the bottom of the other, and so that the space between 

 the two is equal on all sides. Both vessels are to be perfor- 

 ated for a spout to run from the bottom of the inner one out 

 through the outer one, at a convenient distance to allow the 

 passage of the honey, as it melts, to a receptacle to be pro- 

 vided for it atone side of the stove. The spout is, of course, 

 to be soldered in place. It should be at least an inch in 

 diameter, and provided with a guard over and at some little 

 distance from the inner end, of very strong and somewhat 

 open wire-cloth, or other equivalent, to prevent the passage 

 of too much unliquified honey. The honey, as it emerges, 

 must pass into a strainer of cheese-cloth or other material, to 

 intercept grains of unmelted honey, which are to be returned 

 to the melting-can. The outer and the inner can should each 

 have a cover of its own. In operation, the space between the 

 two is filled with water, through which the heat is conveyed 

 to the granulated houey in the inner one. The spout should 

 also be provided with a faucet or other convenient cut-off at 

 the outer end. 



The most obvious way of effecting the liquefaction of 

 honey is to put it into an earthen or other fire-proof vessel 

 directly upon the stove. This course would make the honey 

 liquid as quickly as any, but the effect upon the honey would 

 bs disastrous. As candied honey is a poor conductor of heat, 

 that lying at the bottom of the vessel would become boiling- 

 hot, or even scorched, before that two inches higher up in the 

 vessel had become warm, if the fire were brisk, and the whole 

 in a short time would be entirely ruined. 



The next method that would be likely to occur to one, 

 would be to raise the vessel some little distance from the stove 

 by means of brick. This would render the process much 



