THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



131 



Working for Extractor 

 Honey, 



BY II. M. liKWITT. 



1 will, Mr. Editor, through, the col- 

 umns of your valuable paper, tell your 

 many readers my plan of working for 

 extracted honey, and how 1 keep my 

 colonies all strong and have them 

 ready for the honey harvest. As 

 soon in the spring as the brood-cham- 

 ber is tilled with brood in the lower 

 story I put on the upper story con- 

 taining ten frames with about three 

 inch starters of comb foundation in 

 them. I use the Hoffman L frames 

 and then 1 take out about from two 

 to three frames of brood from the 

 lower story and place it in between 

 the starters of foundation in the up- 

 per story, and 1 put full sheets of 

 foundation in the lower story in place 

 of those two or three just taken out. 

 This will start the bees at work in the 

 upper story at once, and it will also 

 entice the queen up in the upper 

 story, and she will All the remaining 

 eight frames in the upper story with 

 brood. This 1 do early in the season 

 before the honey harvest arrives, and 

 by the time that the honey harvest 

 arrives I have both stories filled with 

 brood. 



Then I will put on queen excluders 

 to keep her out of the upper story. 

 That is, after I have got them as 

 strong as 1 want to get them, and as 

 fast as the}' fill the combs in the upper 

 story I remove them to the honey 

 room. After putting on the queen 

 excluders the brood in the upper 

 stories will all hatch, and the combs 

 will be filled with honey ready for ex- 

 tracting- 1 use the novice extractor 



and extract the honey and return the 

 empty combs to the I ices to be filled 

 again, and in a short space of time, 

 if the honey Mow is good. I can ex- 

 tract the honey and so on until the 

 end of the honey harvest. I gener- 

 ally let the bees fill up the combs of 

 buckwheat and basswood honey, pol- 

 len, etc. .and set a large lot away for 

 spring feeding. 1 like to have many 

 combs filled with pollen to give to the 

 bees in early spring to start and keep 

 up brood rearing to its highest de- 

 gree. But if we do not keep a close 

 watch of our bees and give them 

 plenty of room and plenty of empty 

 combs they are sure to swarm. 



The honey harvest has not been 

 very good here this season on account 

 of cold, wet weather early in the 

 spring. Locust gave us a fair crop 

 of fine honey, but it did not last long 

 and the rainy weather kept our bees 

 from working on it much, then the 

 white clover came in bloom very early 

 on account of so much rain, and it 

 continued wet so much that bees did 

 not get scarcely anything from that 

 source. Basswood gave a fair crop. 

 I never saw such a bloom before as 

 there was this season on them. 



Sang Run, Md. 



Wintering Bees, 



BY LIZZIE S. GOODELL. 



Perhaps my method of wintering 

 bees may be of interest to some, as it 

 was very successful last year ; taking 

 colonies through without loss and 

 bringing them out strong in the 

 spring. 



All bee-keepers recognize three im- 

 portant factors in successful winter- 

 ing. 1st, Keep the bees dry. 2d, 



