THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



169 



that support the comb are Jib. square 

 steel and Fastens securely at top and 

 bottom. There is a brake wheel 20 in. 

 in diameter and 3 in. face, and bev- 

 elled gear. The horizontal shaft is 2-§ 

 in. round steel, with two pulleys 14 

 in. in diameter, one tight and one 

 loose, 6 in. face. The extractor with- 

 out the can weighs 1,540 lbs, and the 

 can 1,730 lbs., so you see it is no toy 

 or plaything, nor will it break every 

 time I get in a hurry. The engine is 

 a 3 h. p. Book waiter, built by the 

 James Laffel & Co., Springfield, O. 



Why all this expense to extract 

 honey ? Simply to get the honey out 

 of the combs, a thing I have never 

 been able to do yet by hand. I could 

 not do it myself, nor could I hire men 

 to do it. I have as good men as ever 

 turned an extractor, but they could 

 not extract honey to suit me, I want 

 honey gotten out of the combs. That is 

 what I take them into the honey house 

 for, and I do not wish to carry them 

 back into the apiary with so much 

 honey in that the bees will seal them 

 over again without putting another 

 drop of honey in them, as I have had 

 them do by hundreds and hundreds. 

 That is not business to suit me. Now 

 I am going to try what I can do with 

 steam. My extractor will make 240 

 revolutions a minute, and will travel 

 about 23 ft. to the revolvtion. At 

 that speed I think I will get the honey 

 out. Last year, or the last crop, I suc- 

 ceeded in getting 73,100 lbs., but 1 

 know we did not get near the honey 

 that we would if we could have gotten 

 it all out of the combs. 



Now this idea of fastening the top 

 of the upright shaft securely so that 

 it cannot move is original with me, as 

 far as 1 know, but I think you will 



agree with me that it is the correct 

 principle when you think that it will 

 make little or no difference how you 

 load the extractor. If light combs are 

 in one side and heavy in the other it 

 cannot wobble and twist and shake all 

 over the room. When I first set it up 

 I put 40 lbs. of wax in one side and 

 nothing at all in the other, and run it 

 at full speed, and it did not even 

 tremble. 



Such a condition of things is what I 

 have been looking for for many years, 

 i. e., an extractor that I could load 

 with combs just as I came to them, and 

 not be obliged to select and place 

 them in the machine just so, without 

 making it next to impossible to keep 

 the extractor in the building. 



When I wrote you in Dec, 1890, 

 our prospects were very flattering for 

 a large crop of honey. But six days 

 after I wrote you, the cold wave from 

 the north-east struck us, and for 47 

 days it was the coldest weather I ever 

 saw in Cuba. That brought us to the 

 27th of Jan., and our season for the 

 white honey flow was practically gone, 

 but our bees were strong, hives full to 

 overflowing, and the spring floweis 

 yielded well, and by our having such 

 a large force of workers they stored a 

 vast amount of honey, which helped 

 us out with a very fair crop. This 

 last spring's result should go a long- 

 way in proving the truth of what I 

 have been telling the world at large, 

 that there is no such thing as over- 

 stocking nere for at least ten or elev- 

 en months in the year. 



What have our bees done this sum- 

 mer? Well, we have had 000 colonies 

 and they have come through the sum- 

 mer in fine shape, until the 20th of 

 Sept., when we had 500 lbs. of old 



