THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



97 



thinner ; still, the bees plugged the ])er- 

 fo'rations to such an extent that it be- 

 came necessary to clean out the hard 

 wax each spring. 



The G. B. Lewis Co. of Watertown, 

 Wis., is now making an all-wood queen- 

 excluder similar to this, the only differ- 

 ence being that the perforations are 

 made across the grain. If some enter- 

 prising manufacturer will invent a 

 machine to countersink the openings, 

 that is, chamfer off the wood around the 

 opening until the edges are only about 

 one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness, I 

 believe that in this manner an all wood 

 queen-excluder could be made a suc- 

 cess. It is my opinion that across the 

 grain is the proj)er direction in which 

 to make the perforations. The edges 

 would be less likely to be injured or to 

 be gnawed by the bees. 



At present, the best queen- excluding 

 honey-board is the wood zinc. It is 

 simply the Heddon slatted honey-board 

 with saw kerfs in the edges of the slats, 

 and strips of perforated zinc slit into 

 the kerfs, between the slats. To Dr. 

 G. S. 'linker belongs the honor of hav- 

 ing been the first to introduce strips of 

 perforated metal, in this peculiar man- 

 ner, between the slats of the Heddon 

 honey- board. 



Whole sheets of zinc have been used 

 as honey boards. The greatest objec- 

 tion seems to be that such large sheets 

 are lacking in rigidity. They are likely 

 to sng, or bend, or kink, thus destroy- 

 ing the perfection of the bee-spaces. 

 If a sheet sags, the space above becomes 

 so large that there is a likelihood of 

 comb being built therein ; while the 

 space below becomes so small that pro- 

 polis is placed between the zinc and 

 the tops of the brood-frames. The 

 wood-zinc honey-board is free from this 

 defect. 



During the last year or two there has 

 been an effort to do away with honey- 

 boards. It has been found that wide, 

 deep top-bars, accurately spaced, have, 

 at least, a great tendency to reduce the 

 building of brace-combs. The spaces 

 between the top-bars should be as near 



five-sixteenths of an inch as is practi- 

 cable. If greater than this, the danger 

 of comb-building is greatly increased; 

 if less, there is a tendency to plug the 

 spaces with hard wax — not comb, but 

 hard, solid wax. With the ordinary 

 hanging, open- end frame it is not prac- 

 ticable to space the frames sufficiently 

 accurate to prevent the brace-comb 

 nuisance ; that is, not unless some spac- 

 ing device is used. Closed-end frames 

 are the best adapted to bring about the 

 necessary accuracy of spacing. 



When there is any necessity for the 

 use of a queen-excluder, the only prac- 

 tical way in which it can be used is in 

 the shape of a honey-board. In raising 

 comb honey, there is little need of a 

 queen-excluder over an old-established 

 colony ; but when a swarm is hived in a 

 contracted brood-chamber, and given 

 the supers from the old hive, a queen- 

 excluder is almost a necessity. In 

 raising extracted honey, queen- exclud- 

 ers are a great convenience. If they 

 are not used, the operator must always 

 be on the lookout for brood in the ex- 

 tracting supers. Some combs will be 

 found containing only a little brood ; 

 yet they cannot be extracted without 

 throwing out some of the brood into the 

 honey. Some beekeepers, when they 

 find brood in the upper story, exchange 

 the combs for the outside combs of the 

 lower story, if they can find any such 

 without brood, but this takes time. To 

 successfully conduct an apiary, the fix- 

 tures and methods should be such that 

 the work will move along smoothly and 

 in a systematic manner, without any 

 "hitches." There is also another point 

 to be considered in connection with the 

 use of queen-excluders when raising ex- 

 tracted honey, and that is the freeing of 

 the supers by the use of "bee-escapes." 

 If the super contains several combs of 

 brood and the queen, it is doubtful if 

 the bees could be made to desert it by 

 the use of the escape. If they did 

 desert it, then something would have 

 to be done with the brood when it was 

 discovered. In short, advanced bee- 

 culture has divided the bee-hive into 



