24 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



its quality, while other samples are 

 ruined without coming to a boil. I 

 am inclined to think that every can of 

 hone)' ought to go out to its destiny 

 with a plainly printed warning stuck 

 upon it, and a very emphatically 

 worded one too, ending up with, "Sam- 

 ple this honey before you heat it, or I 

 will not be responsible for its quality. 

 Billy Fairplay." 



Some good authorities, notably Mr. 

 C. F. Muth, incline to rule out all 

 dark comb honey as a thing which 

 ought not to be produced or put on the 

 market. From the wholesale mer- 

 chant's point of view this may be good 

 sense, in fact as the public mind and 

 market are just now I am well aware 

 it is bo, but such an arbitrary and 

 damaging decision should by no means 

 be accepted as a finality. I sell direct- 

 ly to consumers, and not half of my 

 crop of honey is No. 1 white, yet with 

 a moderate concession in price dark 

 comb honey moves off with little more 

 difficulty than the whitest. " Be frank 

 with your neighbor," and "cultivate 

 your local market," are the paths which 

 lead out of this "Darkest Africa " of 

 our vocation. 



As for the honey that is too poor to 

 be eaten at all, it would be a rather 

 risky business to stock the bees up for 

 Winter with it. To feed it to them 

 when Spring opens out nicely, or dur- 

 ing a temporary famine just after 

 apple bloom, seems to be the proper 

 thing to do. 



Richards, Ohio. 



The Bee World'dnA Queen .Bee are two new 

 publications, the former published by W. S 

 YHmhifi', Waynesburgh, Pa., anil the latter 

 by R. L. Pratt. Beverly, Mas-. Both are of 

 neat appearance anil contain much valuable 

 information. 



The Wood-Zinc Queen Ex- 

 cluder.— How to Con- 

 struct and use it. 



BY DR. < ; . L . TINKER. 



The frame-work is best made of \ 

 inch stuff, which I prefer dovetailed 

 at the corners and rabbeted on the in- 

 ner edges to receive the slats, which 

 should be f wide and 3-16 thick. The 

 edges of the slats are grooved with a 

 thin saw, No. 24 guage, to receive the 

 strips of two-rowed zinc which alone 

 should be used. One-rowed zinc has 

 been used to a large extent, but it is 

 objectionable for the reason that it 

 obstructs the proper ventilation of the 

 supers and results in slow ripening of 

 the stores. The only perfect and alto- 

 gether satisfactory queen excluder is 

 made up with two-rowed zinc strips | 

 of an inch wide. The best wood to 

 make them of is the yellow poplar, 

 often called whitewood, and the slats 

 should be nailed with ^ inch wire 

 Inads. No. ID guage. Made as above 

 described an expert hand will make 

 up 50 of them in 10 hours. 



The Blats should be nailed to the 

 frame-work so as to come over the top 

 bars of the brood frames and the zinc 

 over the spaces between the frames of 

 comb, thus makingeontinuous passage- 

 ways. 1 consider these excluders, made 

 up on the break-joint principle, as 

 highly objectionable, without a single 

 point to recommend them. I reached 

 this conclusion some three years ago, 

 and every fact since developed has 

 confirmed the superior value of the 

 continuous passage-way queen ex- 

 cluder. 



I have already intimated that few 

 bee-keepers as yet know how to use 

 the queen excluder in the production 

 of comb honey. As heretofore used 



