Jan. 12, 190S 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



21 



N. E. France (Wis.)— Yes, but not all with a profit. 

 Some will be ill-shaped. 



R. h. Taylor (Mich.) — Markets generally now demand 

 honey produced with separators. 



S. T. PettiT (Ont.) — Not now. Some of us used to do 

 it, but the standard is higher now. 



O. O. POPPLETON (Fla.) — Not as a rule. Sometimes one 

 can be successful, but I would not risk it. 



C. Davenport (Minn.) — Yes, but with me a good many 

 are bulged, or so uneven that they can not be cased. 



C. P. Dadant (111.)— Yes, but they are not quite so 

 easily put into shipping-cases. They are usually heavier 

 than the others. 



R. C. AiKiN (Colo.)— No, except with strong colonies 

 and in rapid honey-flows ; these come about once in 10 

 years, and about once in a thousand miles. I say No ! 



E. D. TowNSEND (Mich.) — Yes. Use i;4-inch spacing, 

 full sheets of comb foundation without bait-sections. I 

 have seen bee-keepers that would better stick to the separa- 

 tors. 



E. Whitcomb (Nebr.) — I think not; at least I have 

 never seen any. Sometimes we see them on exhibition at 

 the honey shows, but the judges have a faculty of gently 

 setting them aside. 



E. S. LovESY (Utah)— Hardly, but if the beekeeper 

 uses full sheets of foundation it will often pass, as it is 

 generally heavier than a full section, but, as a rule, it 

 doesn't give satisfaction. 



Dr. C. C. Miller (111.) — That depends upon the market. 

 For most markets, and especially for distant markets, sep- 

 arators are a necessity with me. If honey would always 

 come in a flood, they would not be so necessary. 



Jas. a. Stone (111.) — No. When we were getting honey 

 for display at the Chicago World's Fair, we agreed to take 

 all out of 2300 pounds from one man (who had gotten it 

 without separators) that would crate without the combs 

 rubbing, and he got us only a little over 600 pounds. 



James A. Green (Colo.) — Yes. It would have to be a 

 very poor article of honey that was not marketable — at some 

 price. But I do not believe it is profitable to dispense with 

 separators. I do not believe it is possible to produce with- 

 out separators, in a commercial way, that is, on any large 

 scale, honey that can be satisfactorily packed, shipped and 

 retailed. 'There is certain to be a great deal more break- 

 age, leakage, and consequent loss and dissatisfaction than 

 with separatored honey. I have met grocers who declared 

 they would never handle any more honey because of their 

 experience with unseparatored honey, and I am sure that if 

 I were a consumer the average unseparatored article would 

 tend to discourage my use of honey. 



G. W. Demaree (Ky.) — It depends upon your market 

 for honey in the comb. In my locality so many people pre- 

 fer their comb honey packed in buckets and jars, and cov- 

 ered with honey in the extracted form, that it is no trouble 

 to sell all the "out of shape" sections produced without 

 separators, and at a better profit than is realized from the 

 fancy pick. When the impractical fancyites quit writing 

 about "chunk honey" to discourage the introduction of 

 really fancy-packed comb honey, the way will be opened for 

 better profits, at least in a small way in apiary work. Sev- 

 eral years ago I shipped to L,ouisviile, Ky., from 100 to 200 

 buckets of comb honey cut from the section boxes and 

 packed in the buckets (4 to 8 quart buckets) in an upright 

 position, and covered with extracted honey, and the profit 

 exceeded that of my fancy crated sections. 



Honey as a Health-Food.— This is a 16-page honey- 

 pamphlet intended to help increase the demand for honey. 

 The first part of it contains a short article on " Honey as 

 Food ", written by Dr. C. C. Miller. It tells where to keep 

 honey, how to liquefy it, etc. The last part is devoted to 

 " Honey-Cooking Recipes " and "Remedies Using Honey ". 

 It should be widely circulated by those selling honey. The 

 more the people are educated on the value and uses of honey 

 the more honey they will buy. 



Prices, prepaid — Sample copy for a two-cent stamp ; SO 

 copies for 70 cts.; 100 for $1.25 : 250 for $2.25 ; 500 for 54.00 ; 

 or 1000 for $7.50. Your business card printed free at the 

 bottom of the front page on all orders for 100 or more copies. 

 Send all orders to the office of the American Bee Journal. 



\ (£ontributcb -f 

 Special Clrticles 



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No. 1— What is the Best Bee-Hive? 



BY ALLEN LATHAM. 



CLIMATE, local conditions, purpose, and individual 

 taste have all combined to bring into use a great variety 

 of hives, and few of these hives are without their stanch 

 supporters — supporters so stanch that only the most cogent 

 argument backed up by the strongest of confirmatory facts 

 will persuade them to desert their hive for some other of 

 different style. It is possible, but not likely, that they are 

 using the hive best suited to their needs, and however much 

 a bee-keeper believes in his own hive, he should be ready to 

 listen to arguments in favor of, other hives, and even ready 

 to try for himself the principles of these new hives, so that, 

 should he find them superior to those of his own hives, he 

 can with the least possible delay substitute the better for 

 the inferior. 



I used for 17 years a hive with free hanging frames 

 made according to descriptions found in an old edition of 

 Father Langstroth's book. I liked the hive and still use_ a 

 few, but as I learned more and more of the needs of bees in 

 this climate, I saw more and more weaknesses in this hive. 

 For some three years I studied and planned a hive which I 

 only waited an opportunity to construct and make trial of. 

 My business was so pressing, however, that it was only 

 three years ago that I finally made a hive which involved 

 as many of the desirable points as I could work into it. 



That year I had occasion to travel about a great deal, 

 and I was greatly impressed by the vast extent of unoccu- 

 pied bee-territory. If only I could get small apiaries estab- 

 lished here and there to gather the honey which was yearly 

 running to waste, I might add to my income in a most satis- 

 factory way. 



But to keep two or three hundred colonies of bees widely 

 scattered in ordinary hives would call for such an expendi- 

 ture of time and energy that the project would surely fail ; 

 and my whole attention was therefore turned to the making 

 of a hive which would run itself eleven and nine-tenths 

 months of the year, and which would require no care be- 

 yond the keeping up of the quality of the bees and the re- 

 moval of the honey. A hive that would be cool in summer 

 but warm in winter ; a hive which would have a right en- 

 trance the whole year through ; a hive which would keep 

 out mice and other intruders ; a hive which would be proof 

 against rain, wind and all other elements— one, in fact, 

 which was practically automatic. 



Such a hive must be large, and yet small. 

 I finally built four hives which apparently solved the 

 problem, for they were sufficiently successful to warrant my 

 making 28 more, and their continued success is such that I 

 hope to make many more this winter. 



The hives were made double-walled with air-space lined 

 on both sides with many thicknesses of newspaper, and the 

 outside was covered with Paroid roofing-paper. The cover 

 was made to telescope over the whole, and was arranged to 

 nail or screw on. The bottom was made fast and also 

 double. The frames, 20 in number, and measuring 14 by 11 

 inches inside measure, were closed ends and closed tops, 

 and were hung crosswise of the hive. The inner bottom of 

 the hive sloped from the back to the front, so that there 

 was a space about an inch deep under the front frame, and 

 only a bee-space under the backmost frame. A wedge- 

 shaped strip of wood was nailed on the bottom thick end to 

 the front to serve as a ladder for the bees under the middle 

 of the frames, while either side-wall also furnished easy 

 access to the frames. The entrance was made the full 

 width of the hive and of varying depth. I now make the 

 entrance >s of an inch deep and run through it a row of 

 wire nails y% of an inch apart to keep out mice in winter. 



The hive has other kinks which I will not take the 

 space here to describe, as I have pointed out its salient 

 features. 



Such a system of bee-keeping would not admit of the 

 use of sections, nor would it lend itself readily to the pro- 

 duction of extracted honey, and the production of chunk- 

 honey seemed in every way to meet best the needs of the 

 case. The long hive was adopted rather than the tall for 



