1896. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



183 



j 



Another disadvantage of extracting is that winter losses 

 are too heavy. There is a tendency to extract too close. The 

 colonies are not in as good condition as when run for comb 

 honey. I don't know the reason exactly. Possibly the bees 

 are benefited by producing wax. 



Mrs. Booth — Somebody stole my extractor 10 years ago, 

 and I was glad of it. 



Mr. Porter— It is hard to keep up the stock when extract- 

 ing. Colonies out of honey and weak in bees are very apt to 

 result. A man took charge of an apiary for me for several 

 years, and extracted altogether. He understood his business ; 

 he never extracted from the brood-chamber ; but that apiary 

 kept running down. The bees do not store so much below. 

 Of course, extra frames of honey can be saved, and the stock 

 can be kept up ; but does it pay ? 



Mr. Rauchfuss — If a queen-excluder is used, more honey 

 is stored below than otherwise. 



Mr. Blair — I have no trouble in educating people. Quite 

 a number of my colonies are set aside for strengthening others 

 by frames of brood. When the flow comes, the strengthened 

 colonies roll it in. 



Pres. Aikin — My experience is much like Mr. Porter's. 

 When colonies are given full sets of combs, they put almost 

 every bit of honey above, if they are good ones. Therefore, 

 we want large hives. Plenty of honey in the spring means 

 plenty of bees. The 8-frame hive here is a mistake. It will 

 not succeed. But I have an idea that in the future we might 

 produce extracted honey and let the bees build the comb. We 

 could let somebody steal our extractors, run the combs through 

 rollers so as to thoroughly crush them, drain the mass, and 

 get the finest honey and wax. 



Mr. Rauchfuss — We once let the bees build their combs 

 from starters in producing extracted honey. We transferred 

 47 colonies. They each had 4 or 5 combs, after being trans- 

 ferred, and built the rest. We also put on an upper story 

 with inch starters. They averaged 109 pounds in 17 days. 

 But of course there was a loss iu profit. These colonies did 

 not swarm, because we gave them young queens. 



Mr. Devinny — There is always a little difference of taste 

 in favor of comb honey. Possibly there is some chemical 

 action by contact of the honey with the wax. 

 (Continued next week.) 



llONGTllitrtAPK 



Swarming Contagious. 



L. A. Aspinwall says in Review: "Although my chief ob- 

 ject in the production of artificial comb [made of wood] was to 

 prevent swarming, I saw other possibilities ; and, although, as 

 a non-swarmer it was not a complete success where located 

 among swarming colonies, still, when isolated I have never 

 known colonies in artificial comb to cast a single swarm. 

 This was abundant evidence to my mind that the swarm- 

 ing impulse is contagious. The aggregation of num- 

 erous colonies under the control of man, places the bee under 

 unnatural circumstances which favor contagion of every kind. 

 When isolated, the absence of drones is sufficient to prevent 

 swarming. Modern bee-keeping, with the use of comb found- 

 ation to exclude drone-comb, certainly restrains swarming to 

 some extent." 



Many Bees, Much Honey. 



In the spring I selected an ordinary colony of bees, and 

 set it apart for extracted honey. I built them up as fast as 

 possible and when the fruit-trees came in bloom the queen had 

 brood in 12 frames, and from that source I obtained \iS}i 

 pounds. A few days after this the 12 frames, bees and all. 

 were set in a hive four feet long, and a division-board placed 

 at the rear of the frame of comb. Once a week two more 

 empty combs were inserted in the center of the brood-nest 

 until the hive contained 20 combs well filled with brood. As 

 white clover was not yielding honey, the hive was filled out 

 with frames of empty comb, which numbered .32. I did not 

 expect that queen would occupy any of these last 12 combs, 

 but in this I was mistaken, for before white clover was through 



yielding honey I found brood in every one of the 32 combs, 

 which if blaced compactly together, was fully equal to 15 

 frames of brood, coming out to the wood all around. Each 

 frame would give at least 100 square inches, making all due 

 allowance for the few cells of pollen that would be scattered 

 about in different cells, and each square inch gives 50 work- 

 er-bees, hence there were 5,000 bees to hatch out each of 

 these frames every 21 days, or 75,000 from the fifteen 

 frames. The average life of the bee in the' working season is 

 45 days, hence it will be seen that the queen can place two 

 and one-seventh generations of bees on the stage of action, to 

 where one generation dies off. Two and one-seventh times 

 75,000 equal 160,700, as the number of bees in the hive dur- 

 ing the basswood yield. Prom clover, they gave 186 pounds ; 

 from basswood 2873-2 pounds, and from buckwheat, 76 

 pounds, making 566 in all. — G. M. Doolittle, in American 

 Bee- Keeper. 



Building Out Drone Foundation Quicker Than Worker. 



I wrote an article about a year ago, telling the result of my 

 experience in using drone-foundation in the sections. I claimed 

 that, when the regular (or worker) size was used, the bees 

 would not finish it and cap it as soon as they would when drone 

 size was used ; and when a starter was used, the bees would 

 change it to drone. 



I have experimented by having each alternate section all 

 drone and all regular ; and last season I " kept tab " on 550 

 sections and find : The drone sections are finished 13 to 68 

 hours before the regular, or average of about 32 hours. In 

 the height of the honey-flow, hours are worth money. I wish 

 some of the older bee-keepers would give us their experience 

 on this point. I will use drone foundation in all my sections 

 hereafter. — Harry Dwight. 



[At the time your article was published I called for re- 

 ports ; but, if I am correct, none were received. Bees, it is 

 true, seem to prefer, for storage, drone-comb ; but the trouble, 

 as I then pointed out, was that the queen, not having drone- 

 comb in the brood-nest, was quite sure to go into the sections 

 if filled with drone-foundation. But this can be overcome by 

 the use of perforated-zinc. — Ed.] 



The New Weed Process Comb Foundation. 



Just as soon as we got the new Weed process of making 

 foundation nicely under way, we sent Mr. 0. O. Poppleton, of 

 Stewart, Fla., sample sheets of the product, and sample sheets 

 of the old foundation, same weights and size. These he was 

 to test in the apiary as soon as the weather would permit, to 

 determine the relative sag or stretch of two kinds of foundation 

 in the hive. After he had made his first tests, he wrote us 

 that the difference was slightly in favor of the new process ; 

 but the weather was hardly suitable to arrive at satisfactory 

 results. A month or so later we heard from him again, under 

 date of Feb. 19, giving more exhaustive experiments, the result 

 of which showed that the sag by the old process, or dipped 

 foundation, he had been trying, was nearly five times greater 

 than by the new process. 



Mr. Poppleton, cautious as he is, desires to test the mat- 

 ter further, when the weather is hotter, and will report again. 

 He adds :" It looks as though your claim — that the new 

 method gives extra toughness to the wax — is correct." Any- 

 one who works the two kinds, the new and the old, in his hands 

 can readily see the difference ; and it is not surprising at all 

 that the bees should discover the marked difference in favor 

 of the new foundation. Incidentally it may be remarked that 

 the bees can work this wax in a much cooler temperature than 

 the old dipped product. — Gleanings. 



Syrup by the Cold Process vs. that by the Old Way. 



Last winter, and so far this winter, we tried, and are try- 

 ing, syrup by the cold process, and so far as we can see, it is 

 fully equal (if not superior) to the ordinary syrup made % 

 water and "3 sugar where heat was used ; and by the cold pro- 

 cess we have used the sugar and water half and half, and it 

 was then brought more nearly to the consistency in which bees 

 find the raw nectar in the flowers. Such thin syrup, I am sure, 

 is ripened better whether heat is used or not ; and when sealed 

 in the combs, for us at least, it makes very much better stores. 

 Mone of sugar syrup has shown the least tendency toward 

 granulation, and the bees last winter came out on it in perfect 

 condition. I do not believe heat has very much to do with it 

 either way. Mechanical mixtures can be effected perfectly by 

 vigorous stirring, either hot or cold, providing the sugar is iu 

 proportion of half and half, and this, in our experience, is 

 quite thick enough in order to insure ripening on the part of 

 the bees. They will then reduce it down themselves to the 

 right contistency, if you give them a chance. — Gleanings. 



