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A customer lately said to the writer : 

 " I was down in Florida last April; 

 wont up the St. John's and down in 

 the Indian river country. So many 

 flowers, and a shower nearly ever}' 

 day; everything sparkling with drops 

 of water. But I tell you Mrs. Harri- 

 son, God never made a better State 

 than Illinois." I fully endorse this 

 sentiment ; He may be able to make a 

 better one, but He never has. 



There are many views to be taken 

 of this question. If hone}- only is the 

 object sought, then locate where most 

 of it is to be had. If a good market 

 for honey is desirable, then locate 

 where there is less honey, but a good 

 market for it. I know a bee-keeper 

 who lives about twenty miles from me, 

 who gets a great deal more honey per 

 colony than I do, but I would not pay 

 the price for it that he docs if I never 

 had a pound. He lives in the Illinois 

 river bottom, with overflowed lands in 

 close pro.ximit}', where the fog is thick 

 enough to cut with a knife, and peo- 

 ple have the " shakes." True, his bees 

 have abundant pasture ; there are 

 tliousands of acres of button-wood, 

 with water up to the chin, and no fear 

 of drouth. The wet, uncultivated 

 lands abound in motherwort, Spanish- 

 needles and golden-rod, ad infinitum. 



Peoria, Ills. 



HONEY-BOARDS. 



Tlicir History, Uses and Adapt- 

 ability Considered. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY JAMES HEDUON. 



Honey-boards are getting to be quite 

 popular, as well as some other things 

 I might mention, over which I have 

 been drawn into considerable con- 

 troversy while trying to upliold and 

 introduce among my brother bee- 

 keepers. When a bee-keeper invents 

 something that is good, tests it until he 

 knows it to be so, there is an internal 

 enthusiasm, tliat knows no self-interest 

 and no bounds, winch im)iels him to 

 write about it for the benefit of others, 

 simply because it is a fact. There is 

 some splendid things about the human 

 mind, which grows enthusiastic over 

 truth vs. error, and it is gooil that the 

 world is possessed of that beneflcent 

 principle. 



It may be of interest to the readers 

 of the American Bee Joi;unal to hear 

 something about the history of honej'- 

 boards. I will not attempt to e.\haust 

 the subject, for I do not know all of 

 the experiments and uses that others 

 have made with honey-boards, but I 

 do know something of my own strug- 

 gles in inventing and popularizing their 

 use. 



Older bee-keepers will remember 

 that Father Langstroth made and in- 

 troduced witli his excellent hive, a 

 rack, frame or board, whichever we 

 may choose to call it, which was placed 

 intermediately between tlie surplus re- 

 ceptacles and the brood-chamber. This 

 was a J-inch ))oard with three slots 

 running crosswise, and co'usequenth' 

 crosswise of the brood-chamber and 

 frames below. Upon this board, sur- 

 plus receptacles were placed, having 

 slots which were made to range with 

 the sluts of the honey-board, making a 

 passage for bees, keeping the bottoms 

 of the receptacles clean, and facilitat- 

 ing the operation of getting the boxes 

 on and off — a very important aid in 

 the days when we had no smokers and 

 less knowledge of how to handle 

 bees. 



From this board I began wtj opera- 

 tions, which resulted in the break- 

 joint, bee-space hone3'-board, which 

 has now become so popular the world 

 over. I got my ttrst idea of a bee- 

 space in the honey-board, from a de- 

 sire to use a lioney-board which would 

 maintain perfect bee-spaces, everj-- 

 where, and leave a perfect bee-space 

 between the surplus receptacles and 

 the brood-chamber, when it was not in 

 use. Of course no honey-board could 

 do this, unless it contained a bee- 

 space in one of its surfaces. Very 

 soon after constructing and testing, to 

 my great satisfaction, the bee-space 

 principle of the honey-board, I struck 

 upon the plan of having many open- 

 ings, creating the general surface of 

 the board of slats, and having these 

 slats and the spaces between them so 

 arranged that the slats and spaces ex- 

 actly break joints with the top-bars 

 (and spaces between them) of the 

 brood-frames below ; which, while it 

 gives a perfectly free communication 

 to the hive, making a passage for the 

 bees from below to the surplus re- 

 ceptacles above, at the same time it 

 breaks the direct communication, al- 

 most wholly preventing the building 

 of brace-combs Ijetween the top sur- 

 face of the honey-board and the bot- 

 tom of the surplus honej' receiJtaeles 

 above. 



While it has a tendency to lessen the 

 amount of brace-combs which will be 

 built in the bee-space between the top- 

 bars of the brood-frames below and 

 the lower siu'faee of the honey-board, 

 yet it does not entirely prevent the 

 brace-comb building there ; but this 

 does not nuitter nuich, as we do not 

 remove the iioney-board anj-where 

 near as frequently as we do the sur- 

 plus receptacles which rest upon the 

 honej'-board. So now we can- work 

 the tiering-up process with surplus re- 

 ceptacles, without the annoyance of 

 brace-combs. 



63- the way, I might say, right here, 

 that though I was not the first to prac- 

 tice the tiering of surplus receptacles, 

 yet nearl}' twenty years ago I did dis- 

 cover its worth as a .system, and had 

 many tilts through the bee-periodicals 

 while defending tlie same. Now it is 

 a popular method, and nearly all the 

 great and successful honey-producers 

 of the day use it. 



If I remember correctl}% our friend 

 A. I. Root opposed me considerably, 

 greatly fearing that any kind of a 

 honey-board w(juld retard the work of 

 the bees and greatly lessen the surplus 

 honey crop ; but I did the best I could 

 in its defense, after I had proven the 

 correctness of mj' ground, and with 

 the aid of the ever-living principle 

 that, 



" Truth will conquer at the last, 

 For round and rouud we run. 



And ever the right comes uppermost. 

 And ever is j ustice done." 



A little study ^\ill soon convince the 

 practical hive-maker that no honej'- 

 board of any value can be made, that 

 does not contain either one or both, 

 the bee-space and break-joint princi- 

 ples. If a honey-board is made with- 

 out the bee-space principle, the ma- 

 terial in it must be thick ; and the 

 thicker the slats which form the gen- 

 eral surface of the hive, the more apt 

 are the bees to build brace-combs be- 

 tween their edges, and the heavier, 

 more bungling and expensive is the 

 hone3'-board. It must be thicker, in 

 order to have any solidity, l)ut where 

 the bee-space is used, the space is 

 formed by the thick outer rim which 

 gives the honey-board its solidity. 



Then again, the only way the tier- 

 ing ])rocess can be worked with the 

 surplus receptacles over a honey-board, 

 without a bee-space, is by putting the 

 bee-spaces in the supers, at the bot- 

 tom, rather than the top, whicdi is very 

 objectionable, for reasons too numerous 

 to mention here. There are few bee- 

 keepers but that have discovered their 

 mistake, if they ever put the bee-space 

 at the bottom. 



This break-joint principle also tends 

 to keep the queen below, and I will 

 say that there is so little trouble from 

 queens getting into the surplus re- 

 ceptacles, when these honey-boards 

 arc used, and comb-honej' is the pro- 

 duction, that it is hardly worth while 

 to make them queen-excluding. But 

 for the production of extracted honej-, 

 it is well to have them so, and there 

 are many conveniences, even in comb- 

 honey production, in having the boards 

 queen-excluding ; consequently for the 

 last four years we have used all of 

 ours, that way. 



The best method of making them 

 queen-excluding, is to run a nai-row 

 saw-kerf into the edges of the slats, 



