182 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Dec, 



entirely to honey gathering. I had near twenty 

 stocks which I used mostly, though not exchi- 

 sively, for this latter purjiose, and extracted from 

 their combs a fraction over two forty-i'our gallon 

 barrels of linden and white clover honey. Had 

 the honey yield been propitious from the latter, 

 I feel confident that my yield would have been 

 doubled. I give the extractor credit for at least 

 three-fovirths of the honey I obtained during the 

 past season. 



From the foregoing considerations, namely, 

 that I fouud my bees unduly slow, and in nearly 

 every instance almost wholly unwilling to work 

 in boxes, I recommend the use of tlie melex- 

 tractor to the beekeejiers of the country, as the 

 best means of securing the largest yield of honey 

 possible. True, it will be a little more difficult 

 to sell it, until the beekeeper establishes for 

 himself and his honey an honorable reputation. 

 In some instances this is already accomplished, 

 and such honey sells rapidly and at fair prices, 

 so far as facts have come to my knowledge. 



I commenced extracting honey on the 10th of 

 June, and left oft" near the 12th of July. From 

 this it will be seen and understood that it is 

 proper to begin to extract honey as soon as the 

 combs begin to get heavy, and to leave off" when- 

 ever there are indications that the honey yield 

 is closing up. I did not wait for the bees to cap 

 the honey over in the combs before extracting it, 

 as with us the season was dry, and the honey, as 

 a natural consequence, was not thinned down to 

 the consistence that would render it liable to sour. 

 Had this been the case, I should probably have 

 been more tardy about extracting it. 



At first I operated in my cellar, where I was 

 not exposed to bees, and the ttmperature was 

 quite cool anfl ijleasaut, after I had got quite 

 warm in opening hives. But as I could not take 

 the combs from more than one hive at a time, I 

 found myself exposed to such a succession of 

 sudden changes from hot to cold and the reverse, 

 in going to and from the cellar, as was about to 

 make me sick. I therefore moved my quaiters to 

 a room above ground, where I operated with 

 closed doors. I find that to operate in the open 

 air causes more or less bees to follow ujj the 

 machine and prove a great source of annoyance, 

 besides many of them get drowned in the honey. 



I got the adhering bees off" the combs partly 

 by gently shaking the comb either directly over 

 the breeding chamber, or at the entrance of the 

 hive. The remainder I brushed off" with a small 

 hard broom, made by tying six or more tojjs of 

 broom corn together with a piece of wrapping 

 twine. I was of course careful to see that the 

 queen got safely back inside of her hive in each 

 case. I found it necessary to run the extractor 

 with care, in cases where I was extracting honey 

 from combs containing unsealed brood, as many 

 larva3 were thrown out when the machine was 

 run at a high speed. Persons using the extrac- 

 tor will, in a short time, learn about what speed 

 to give the machine. 



I used Gray & Winders extractor, and found 

 it to be a most excellent machine. It is geared, 

 which requires much less labor in getting up the 

 necessary speed. It does its work well, and is, 

 I think, decidedly the easiest to clean of any 



machine I have yet seen. It is also constructed 

 in such a manner as to entirely prevent any of 

 the lubricating grease from getting into the 

 honey. The honey, on being extracted from the 

 combs, runs out of the machine into a vessel 

 underneath the can, as soon as the speed is 

 stopped and the extractor brought to a stand 

 still. 



I make it a custom to run the honey through 

 a common meal sieve before putting it into per- 

 manent receptacles. By this means very small 

 particles of comb or cocoons are separated from 

 the honey, and it is left in a perfectly pure state. 



In conclusion, I would say in regard to ex- 

 tractors, that I feel a delicacy in recommending 

 any particular machine in an article like this. 

 Yet I feel in duty bound to say that unless an 

 extractor is geared it must require much more 

 labor to bring its speed up to the proper point 

 for throwing out thick honey than one having 

 two wheels and a crank attached. I have not 

 seen all the geared machines. There may be 

 several good ones, but in my opinion, one that 

 is made so as entirely to prevent the honey from 

 coming in contact with wood is preferable to one 

 that does not possess this quality. I have already 

 stated that I put my honey into large barrels, 

 but I do not like the pla:i in case I wish to sell 

 in quantities to suit the grocers in our cities, as 

 they will not in many cases purchase as much as 

 a barrel at one time. I would therefore recom- 

 mend it to be put into ten gallon casks, and it 

 will sell readily in most cases. Some, however, 

 prefer putting it into two or four pound jars, 

 with a handsome label attached, giving an 

 account of the kind of honey the jar contains. 

 This, I believe, is the manner in which Novice 

 puts up honey for market. 



I hope to be pardoned for making this article 

 so long. 



G. BOHRER. 



Alexandria, Ind. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



A Oolonv of Bees without Brood, 

 On September 22d. 



A half bred Italian colony was deprived of its 

 queen, and sui^plied with a queen cell from pure 

 stock. When the time came round that young 

 workers should have hatched, that colony was 

 examined, and neither any brood nor any hatched 

 workers were found. Only five eggs were fouud 

 at the bottom of cells in the middle worker comb. 

 I concluded that I had one of those queens whose 

 eggs do not hatch, and immediately removed her 

 to a nucleus, for preservation and experiment — 

 knowing that the bees in the colony thus un- 

 queened would hatch those eggs, if they were 

 hatchable. 



A week later the colony was again examined, 

 and to my surprise, a queen cell was found built 

 over each of those cells with the eggs, and several 

 of them were already sealed. It was evident 

 that the bees had stopped breeding at the be- 

 ginning of the month of September, on account 

 probably of the very dry weather. 



