July 5, 1906 



579 



American Bee Journal 



i Convention 

 ' Proceedings 



NATIONAL AT CHICAGO 



Report of the 36th Annual Convention of the 



National Bee-Keepers' Association, held in 



Chicago, 111., Dec. 19, 20 and 21, 1905 



[Continued from page 562.] 



The Secretary then read a paper by James A. Green, 

 of Colorado, on 



PRODUCINQ BOTH COMB AND EXTRACTED HONEY 

 ON THE SAME COLONY 



Whether comb or extracted honey can be produced most 

 profitably is a question that is often asked, and one that each 

 man must settle for himself according to the conditions under 

 which he must work. Having settled this, he is too apt to as- 

 sume that he should confine himself entirely to the production 

 of one or the other. We all know something of the advan- 

 tages of specialty, and I would be one of the last to decry 

 them. Yet I think that in many cases, at least, the bee-keeper 

 is making a mistake in so deciding. The extracted-honey man 

 is all right. He has no need to produce any comb honey, 

 and in most cases, it will not pay him to do so. 



With the comb-honey producer it is different. All prac- 

 tical comb-honey producers know that it is a difficult matter 

 to get all colonies in such condition that they will enter the 

 supers promptly at the beginning of the honey-flow. A colony 

 that is in just the right condition will go into the sections 

 with a rush and keep things moving right from the start. 

 Another, apparently as strong in numbers, will hesitate about 

 going into the super, and do nothing for some days except 

 to crowd the brood-combs as full as possible of honey. This 

 perhaps results in swarming, which in many localities and 

 with some systems of management, effectually spoils the 

 chances of any comb honey from that colony. In any case, 

 the colony that started promptly in the super is pretty sure to 

 have a great deal more honey to its credit than the one that 

 is slow about starting, even when they are apparently equal 

 in all other respects. It is exceedingly important that the 

 bees form the habit as early as possible of storing their 

 honey in the super. 



Bee-keepers generally are in the habit of using "bait- 

 combs" in the supers to secure this early start. But even 

 a full super of drawn combs in sections is not as good for 

 this purpose as a nice set of extracting combs. 



For a number of years I have combined the production 

 of extracted honey with that of comb. My extracting 

 supers are only 6 inches deep with the frames at fixed dis- 

 tances, firmly held in place by a thumb-screw through the 

 side of the hive, after the style of the Heddon hive. This 

 makes them easily handled as a whole, and none of the 

 frames are ever handled separately until they come to the 

 extracting room. 



One of these supers is placed on each colony at the be- 

 ginning of the honey-flow. The bees enter this readily and 

 if there is any surplus to be gathered, it goes into the super. 

 After the bees are well at work in it, a super of sections is 

 placed under it, after the usual tiering plan, or sometimes 

 the extracting super is removed altogether and replaced by 

 the super of sections. The combs thus removed are placed 

 over the poorer working colonies. There will always be 

 some colonies that will not do good work in the sections, 

 because they are not strong enough in numbers, because 

 they are not good comb-builders, or because they do not 

 cap their honey with the nice white finish so necessary for a 

 fancy article. On these colonies the extracting combs may 

 be tiered up to any desired height and left to be finished, or 

 until you are ready to extract the honey. This gives you the 

 ability to use profitably those colonies that are not good for 

 comb honey. In most apiaries there are bees that are not 



fit for producing comb honey ; simply because they fill the 

 cells so full that their combs have a water-soaked appear- 

 ance that detracts largely from its market value. These 

 should be culled out, if comb honey is what you are trying 

 to produce, and their queens superseded with better stock as 

 soon as possible. In the meantime, they are just as good for 

 oxtracted honey as any. 



It takes a strong force of workers to work comb honey 

 profitably. A colony that will do very fair work at storing 

 honey in combs already built, may do little or nothing at 

 building comb in a super. That foundation principle of bee- 

 keeping, " Keep your colonies strong," applies with much 

 greater force to colonies producing comb honey than to those 

 run for extracting. 



For this reason, I keep extracting combs on all colonies 

 that are not yet strong enough for the profitable production 

 of comb. When they have reached the point where they 

 can build comb profitably, the extracting combs may be ex- 

 changed for sections. When a colony swarms or is divided, 

 its comb supers go with the swarm, while a set of extract- 

 ing combs is put on the old colony until it is in good working 

 condition again. Any colony that at any time during the 

 honey-flow is found to be doing poor work in the sections, 

 has those sections promptly removed and replaced with ex- 

 tracting combs. 



One of the greatest advantages of this combination sys- 

 tem is seen at the end of the season. As the honey-flow 

 draws to a close, instead of giving new sections that may 

 never be completed, give extracted combs to the colonies 

 that are doing the poorest work in the sections and give 

 their sections to other colonies to complete. In this way 

 you not only secure a larger amount of finished honey, but 

 you avoid the expensive nuisance of having a lot of unfin- 

 ished sections on your hands at the close of the season. 



By working in this way I have sometimes had nearly 

 every section in an apiary of over ioo colonies, run mostly 

 for comb honey, finished up into marketable condition at the 



JAME9 A. GREEN 



close of the season. Another important point to be consid- 

 ered is that in many localities, the last honey gathered is not 

 fit to be put into sections, but can be much more profitably 

 handled in the extracted form. 



It will be seen that by this system there is considerable 

 changing about of unfinished supers. Usually the supers are 

 first freed of bees by the use of Dee-escapes, but during the 

 honey-flow I simply get out the greater part of the bees by 

 smoking, and then shaking or "jouncing." The few bees 

 that are left do no harm and are just as useful in one hive as 

 another. 



Of course a queen-excluding honey-board is a practical 

 necessity with this system, but its advantages are so many 

 and so great that I would not think of doing without it. 



Several years ago I was much taken up with the idea 

 that has been made public during the past season of using 

 one or more extracting combs in each comb super, but I 



