168 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



October 



repaired to the honey house, took down 

 some frames of honey I had stored 

 away, uncapped the'm and tried the 

 machine. As might be expected, the 

 thing was a failure, especially as this 

 extractor was one with no gearing, but 

 whose can and all revolved by means 

 of a handle, placed near the centre of 

 the can. Perhaps some of the older 

 readers may remember the "Peabody" 

 machine, that being the one I first 

 bought, and about the first really prac- 

 tical honey extractor in existence. 



Upon going to bed that night I 

 thought, of course, I could not svicceed 

 in throwing out frozen honey, for the 

 extractor was made for use in the sum- 

 mer time when the weather is general- 

 ly quite warm. Tt was nearly midnight 

 when I ceased planning, and the next 

 morning found me up bright and early, 

 with several combs hanging up near 

 the ceiling of a small room which I had 

 in my shop, with a fire built and a 

 thermometer hanging close by the 

 combs of honey. I soon had the tem- 

 perature of the room at the ceiling up 

 to 95 degrees, where T kept it from then 

 till near the middle of the afternoon. 

 for 'l called to mind the reading of 

 some of M. Quinby's writings, where 

 he said that if a comb of solid honey 

 was to be given to a colony of bees in 

 the winter, it should be left in a warm 

 room at least half a day before being 

 set in with the bees, so that it would 

 become thoroughly warmed through. 

 In the afternoon I again tried the ex- 

 tractor, when I could easily throw out 

 from 95 to 98 per cent, of the honey 

 any comb contained. Even what was 

 partially candied, or granulated, could 

 nearly all be thrown out, and the 

 combs hung away so clean that no bees 

 were needed to clean them off to keep 

 them from draining. By hanging the 

 combs near the ceiling of the room, it 

 does not take an extremely hot fire to 

 keep the temperature at from 90 to 100 

 degrees, or even higher, if we have old 

 tough combs. It is best to keep the 



combs in just as much heat as they 

 will bear without breaking down, for 

 from six to ten hours, and where kept 

 in this way no one need have a pound 

 of honey left in each comb, as was once 

 reported by one who tried winter ex- 

 tracting. Another thing, the extract- 

 ing, when done in this way, comes 

 when there is little else to do, as hinted 

 at by the correspondent, for late fall 

 and early winter is comparatively a 

 time of leisure with most bee-keepers, 

 and by tiering up and leaving the 

 honey on the hives until fall the ex- 



(i. M. DOOI.ITTLE. 



tracting can be done when the cares of 

 the busy season have passed by, and, 

 unless the flowers so bloom that you 

 must have a mixed honey, a quality of 

 honey be obtained which will be a ben- 

 efit to our market, instead of a curse, 

 as unripe honey always is a curse to 

 any market where put on the same. 



As to extracting honey from partly 

 filled sections, I will say that since I 

 found out this way of extracting honey 

 I always leave my partly filled sections 

 until I am through the hurry of my 

 summer and fall work, unless I wish to 

 feed the honey in them to the bees, and 

 have no difficulty by this plan of secur- 

 ing from 96 to 97 per cent, of the honey 

 in them without injury to the most fra- 

 gile combs. To best extract the honey 

 from these sections, I make a frame to 

 hold the largest number of sections 



