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July 5, 1906 



American Itee Journal 



crop from the hives to the extractor. For this purpose we 

 use a wheelbarrow, on which the supers are placed. 



On extracting days, the first thing our boys provide is a 

 half-dozen brushes made of some green material, usually 

 asparagus tops, and sometimes other weeds. Good brushes 

 are sold in Europe, that are soft and efficient. I hope that 

 brushes will be made here, sooner or later, that will be 

 serviceable. Those now sold are either too firm or too 

 irregular to give very good service. Some people use a 

 goose wing or a turkey wing. These things are not good, for 

 they anger the beeS. 



If the Porter bee-escape is used, no brushing will be 

 needed, but we do not like to use the escape in very hot 

 weather, as it closes the super entirely and excludes ven- 

 tilation from it. In cool nights of summer or during the 

 fall, the bee-escape is quite useful. We place them on the 

 hives the previous evening. We have about 60 at each apiary. 



WHEELBARROW DADANT3 USE IN EXTRACTING. 



and it is not a very long job to place them on. But when 

 the out-apiary is far away, it requires going there one day 

 ahead of time. 



When the bee-escapes are not used, if the crop is at 

 end, it is necessary to use a great deal of caution not to 

 incite robbing. So we use what Dr. Miller calls the "rob- 

 ber-cloths," made strong gunny or sack cloth folded 

 double and tacked at both ends between two slats, to make 

 it easily movable. A shallow pan under the supers serves 

 to catch the dripping honey in case the bees have built 

 bridges and brace-combs. This happens only in very great 

 years. Usually, the bridges and brace-combs are almost 

 entirely beeswax and propolis, and do not contain any cells 

 of honey. This is where a thick, wide top-bar shows its 

 usefulness, for with a thin, narrow top-bar to the brood- 

 frames we would find many more brace-combs. 



When the honey is brought to the honey-room the combs 

 are uncapped and the brace-combs scraped off at the same 

 time from each of the frames, so that the frames are thus 

 cleaned of any projections built by the bees, before they 

 are returned. It is in the uncapping that we find the great- 

 est advantage of the 6-inch extracting frame. A single 

 stroke of the honey-knife will uncap either side neatly with- 

 out loss of time or labor. 



If the crop is still on, at the time of extracting, we re- 

 turn supers as fast as extracted. If there is no harvest, 

 returning the super would cause too much of an uproar, and 

 we pile them up in the honey-house till the end of the day, 

 when all hands turn out and in less than a half-hour all 

 the supers are put back on the hives. The excitement is 

 great, for a little while, but as night approaches it soon 

 subsides, and by morning everything is again quiet, for the 

 honey has all been licked up and the cells in many cases 

 have already assumed their cleanly appearance. The bees 

 are indeed industrious little creatures, and never lose a 

 minute to get things in ship-shape. 



Some of the Swiss apiarists do not return the combs 



to the bees at the end of the last extracting, but prefer 

 to keep them until spring, when, they say, it gives the bees 

 some encouragement to receive the supers still sticky with 

 honey. I do not like this method. The supers are apt to 

 leak more or less, owing to the few drops of honey left 

 about the edges of the combs. Then, the moisture during 

 rainy weather renders the honey watery and causes it to 

 run. Sometimes, during the warm days of fall, the honey 

 that remains and gathers moisture ferments and sours. 

 There is great danger of some of this honey being re- 

 tained and mixed with the honey of the new crop the fol- 

 lowing summer, and causing its fermentation. None of these 

 accidents are to be feared if we return the combs to the 

 bees immediately after extracting. The bees will at once 

 gather up everything, and what honey is left will be put into 

 compact shape so that there is no danger of its becoming 

 watery and fermenting. 



The supers of the June crop we usually leave on the 

 hives until the fall crop is ended. The two crops are not 

 equally productive, the clover crop being usually the best. 

 But we have occasionally made our largest harvest out of 

 the fall or summer crop. Sometimes the heartsease (or 

 Persicaria) yields abundantly in August. Then comes the 

 Spanish needles, especially in flat prairie meadows and stub- 

 ble, or along the sloughs of the Mississippi. So the fall 

 crop sometimes lasts a month, or a little longer — often till 

 frost. Hamilton, 111. 



m 



Relation of Bees to Horticulture 



Read before the Nebraska See-Keepers' Association by E. Kretchmer, 

 of the Kretchmer Mfg. Co. 



I SHALL not attempt to write an essay on bee culture, 

 as more complete information on that subject may be ob- 

 tained from text-books, but shall confine my remarks to 

 the relation of bees to horticulture, and items not generally 

 known, using only well-known information to explain my 

 subject. 



Nearly all flowers require fertilization through the 

 medium of pollen from another flower of the same species, 

 which is acomplished in various natural ways, some by grav- 

 ity, in dropping from a higher elevation, some by the winds 

 blowing the pollen from one flower to another. But such fer- 

 tilization is only incidental, always uncertain, and imperfect. 



An all-wise Creator placed nectar in nearly all flowers 

 to entice the bees to them. He covered the body of the bees 

 with fine hair and made their diet to consist of honey and 

 pollen. To obtain this the bees visit the flowers to extract 

 the nectar, and whilst doing so a single bee visits sometimes 

 as many as 50 flowers before obtaining a load to carry to the 

 hive. At each visit to the 50 or less of different flowers, the 

 pollen of the various flowers becomes entangled in their hair- 

 like covering, and in their effort to extract nectar from the 

 next visited flower, a sufficient portion of the pollen obtained 

 from a previously visited flower is dropped, and fertilization 

 is thus effected. This adherence of the pollen to the hair- 

 like covering of the bee is sometimes so complete as to 

 change, for the time being, the color of the bee. The writer 

 has seen bees, by nature black or brown, return to their hive 

 colored orange, yellow, white or a mixture of these colors, 

 so thoroughly were they covered with pollen. Not only does 

 a bee visit a flower once, but hundreds may visit the same 

 flower in a day, and for numbers of days in succession, and 

 thus the most perfect fertilization is brought about. 



In my earlier days, when I was as much of an enthu- 

 siastic horticulturist as an apiarist, I conducted many experi- 

 ments, and made many observations, and found that during 

 the blooming of fruit-trees, should the weather be too cool 

 to permit the bees to fly, an imperfect fruit-crop was the 

 result. Believing that the cool days might be the cause of 

 the imperfect fruit, rather than the absence of the bees, I 

 investigated a little further in the succeeding years, when 

 the weather was pleasant for the bees to visit the flowers, 

 by covering certain parts of blooming trees with wire-cloth 

 or netting to exclude the bees, yet permit the free access 

 of all pollen carried by the winds, and in every instance 

 limbs and trees thus covered produced either no fruit or 

 only a few small and imperfect specimens. After repeated 

 experiments it is my candid opinion that without bees our 

 fruit-crop would be reduced fully 90 per cent. 



