1903 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



165 



extracted honey with which to put 

 the comb up. 



In packing bulk comb we cut out 

 the comb nicely and place it in the 

 cans, and afterward pour in extracted 

 honey to cover the comb and fill up 

 the crevices, and in this way about 

 one-thii-d extracted honey goes in, and 

 it must be remembered that this ex- 

 tracted honey goes in at the comb 

 honey price. It has been found both 

 practical and profitable to produce 

 both comb and extracted honey in the 

 same apiary and in fact on the same 

 hives at the same time, for many have 

 found that it pays them to have one 

 super of combs on top of the regular 

 brood nest so tliat the queen may fill 

 it with brood before the honey flow, 

 if she likes, and when the flow comes 

 these supers catch the first nectar, and 

 as soon as the flow Is on and the bees 

 have commenced to secrete wax this 

 super of combs is lifted and the empty 

 frames of foundation placed between 

 them and the brood, which is the most 

 effectual way of baiting bees into the 

 supers, and it will be found that where 

 colonies are so worked swarming is 

 kept in checlv if not entirely prevent- 

 ed, the queen is left in entire pos- 

 session of the regular brood nest and 

 by the time the flow is over the brood 

 will have hatched from the shallow 

 super of combs and the bees will have 

 filled it with extracted honey, and 

 this is just what we will want in put- 

 ting up our comb honey, as we have 

 already shown that at least one-third 

 the lioney must be extracted with 

 which to pack the comb. It has been 

 demonstrated time and again that bees 

 will store all the way from 50 per 

 cent, to 1100 per cent, more honey 

 when worken for bulk comb than they 

 will when worked for section honey, 

 and many believe, the writer included, 

 that where the bees are worked as 

 outlined above that nearly if not quite 

 as much bulk comb honey can be pro- 

 duced as could be produced of ex- 

 tracted honey alone, and especially 

 does this hold good where the locali- 

 ties have fast flows of honey, in which 

 a great amount of wax is always se- 

 creted whether there are any combs 

 to build or not 



We will now show the relative cost 

 of bulk honey to section honey. When 

 we buy bulk comb supers and frames 

 we have bought them to use for years. 

 When we buy sections they are only 



for one season's use, whether they be 

 be filled with honey or not. Then we 

 have to have costly separators, fol- 

 lowers, etc., that soon give out to be 

 replaced. When we go to ship we 

 have to have costly glass front ship- 

 ping cases and these cases in turn 

 packed in crates for shipment. When 

 we pack section honey we have to 

 take lots of time and patience to 

 scrape the sections. When we pack 

 bulk comb honey we buy cases of cans 

 and cut the honey out into them. 



When we get ready to ship we have 

 to pay a high rate of freight on sec- 

 tion honey, and more, run the risk of 

 having a good part of it badly dam- 

 aged or destroyed altogether. When 

 we ship bulk comb we get a low ex- 

 tracted honey rate and have the as- 

 surance that it will go through as safe- 

 ly as if it was extracted honey. When 

 we go to prepare supers for the har- 

 vest, all we have to do to our bulk 

 comb supers is to scrape the top bars 

 a little and fasten in the foundation, 

 but with section honey we have to 

 make up shipping cases and sections 

 and spend a long time putting the 

 foundation in just right. When the 

 supers are put on, the bees go to work 

 in the bulk comb supers at once and in 

 a big cluster and thereby forgetting to 

 swarm, but with section supers the 

 bees have to be carefully baited and 

 coaxed into the supers and when they 

 get there they are cut off into twenty- 

 four or more small compartments, 

 which they have to try to keep warm, 

 and to get them sealed out to the 

 woods we have to crowd the bees and 

 thereby losing honey. By crowding 

 we lose equally as much honey as we 

 do when the supers are first put on 

 by reason of the bees being slow to 

 enter the sections. Just how much 

 honey is lost by the bees being slow 

 to enter the sections, how. much is lost 

 by crowding and how much is lost by 

 swarming I am unable to say, but it 

 is considerable. 



You may take the items in the pro- 

 duction of the two honeys from be- 

 ginning to end and there is not an 

 item that is not in favor of bulk comb 

 honey, except solely in the matter of 

 price received, but friends, where un- 

 biased men have tried the production 

 of the two honeys side by side and 

 carefully taken into consideration 

 every factor they have invariably 

 found that they can make at least 50 



