American Bee Journal, 



DEVOTED EXCLUSIVELY TO BEE CULTURE. 



VOL. XII. 



CHICAGO, SEPTEMBER, 1876. 



No. 9. 



©uv garcltaitgcs^ 



Boil it down ! Boil it down! 

 Give ustiie new and useful points— 

 The good— and that's enough ! 

 Boil it down ! 



GLEANINGS. 



Novice says: ''After some quite expen- 

 sive experiineuts in the way of green- 

 houses, liouse apiaries, etc., we liave come 

 back to the out - door arrangement for 

 hives." A sensible conchision. He then 

 advises the hexagonal arrangement, with 

 hives 6 feet from centre to centre, with 

 honey house in the middle and grape trellis 

 to each hive. This is a good arrangement 

 where the ground is all clear, but in the 

 majority of cases, trees, buildings, etc., al- 

 ready standing, will have much to do with 

 the location of hives. 



How TO Keep Box Honey.— G. M. Doo- 

 little says: 



Box honey should be kept, if possible, in 

 a honey house made for that very purpose. 

 This house should not be over 7 feet high, 

 and should be large enough to hold all flie 

 honey you think you will ever produce, 

 with room enough besides, for crating it. 

 Some one asks, "Why not have a house 

 higher?" Because we want to secure all 

 the heat possible without a fire, during 

 August and September: for this heat causes 

 your honey to grow thicker every day in- 

 stead of becoming transi)arent and standing 

 in drops on the surface as did Mr. Wolfen- 

 den's. Honey swells only as it becomes 

 damp from some cause, and the first you 

 will see of that dampness will be in the un- 

 sealed cells, where the honey will have be- 

 come so thin that it will stand out beyond 

 the cells; or in other words the cells will be 

 "heaping full." If the dampness remains, 

 the sealed honey will l)ec()me transparent, 

 and eventually soak througii and stand in 

 drops on the surface of the comb. Now if 

 you keep the room thus warm you will be 

 liable to be troubled with the moth worm. 

 Let your first honey taken off l>e separate, 

 examine it every few days, and if you see 

 many boxes with little white places on 

 tliem (generally near Ixittom of box) resem- 

 bling flour, yoii will have to brimstone it, 

 as the moths will eventually eat the sealing 

 all off and make a bad job of it. 



We have always sulphured our honey 

 with the exception of one year, the last 

 thing before orating it. To do this, fix a 

 solid foundation of scantling two feet above 

 the floor, on this place your honey and 



whenever you think the moth should be 

 headed off, get a pan of coals and set them 

 in a kettle, or fix in some way to prevent 

 danger from fire, and pour on K ft- of sul- 

 phur to every ;i()o cubic feet contained in 

 your room. Sulphur the last thing before 

 crating if you wish to get a nanu^ as produc- 

 ing nice box honey. We have frequently 

 seen honey in market with moth worms in 

 the boxes from 1 to 1}4 inches long and 

 nearly as large as a pipe stem. Such honey 

 is not very tempting to the consumer. Pile 

 the boxes so that all entrances will be open. 

 The section boxes are nice on this account, 

 as they will pile compactly tier on tier, and 

 still leave H i»ch space between every 

 comb all through the pile. Never let box 

 honev freeze on any account, as it cracks it 

 loose" from the Ijox or through the centre of 

 combs when it contracts. If you do not sell 

 before freezing weather comes, keep fire in 

 your room night and day. To deliver honey 

 in cold weather, pile the crates up so the 

 air from your room can circulate all around 

 each crate, keep the temperature of room 

 from 90'' to 05'' for 36 hours before moving 

 it, and it will ride in open air 35 miles on a 

 spring wagon, before it will get cold enougli 

 to be brittle. 



With regard to marketable size of honey 

 packages. Novice says: 



A honey l)«x can scarcely be made, to be 

 sold, honey and all. for less than a half dol- 

 lar; and a' four or five pound box, even at 

 the low price of 25 cents per lb., amounts to 

 over a dollar. You may place them so as to 

 catch the eye of the passer by, and they 

 will inquire the price, but the number that 

 can spare a dollar are few, compared .with 

 those with those who will hand over a quar- 

 ter, or 30 or 40 cents for one of the neat lit- 

 tle square cakes such as the section boxes 

 contain. 



Time to Divide.— Novice says: "We 

 think it an excellent plan to divide very 

 strong stocks after the honey harvest." We 

 want light on this subject. May it not be a 

 good plan for some and a bad one for others? 

 The honey harvest in some places comes 

 (luite early, and in that case it would seem 

 to be wise to keep the whole force gather- 

 ing honey until the main harvest is over, 

 and then divide. In other places thn main 

 harvest conu>s very late, and it would then 

 seem wise to divide early, and build up an 

 increased numl)er of colonies to be ready 

 for the harvest. Does it not require more 

 iudgnient and experience to make an arti- 

 ficial swarm later in the season? Tln-re is 

 a possibility of an insufficient amount of 

 pollen being left in one or the other of the 



