1897. 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



327 



over, on account of a large bulk of 

 liquid being in the cell afterward 

 than there was at the tiaie the bees 

 sealed the cell. This can come from 

 only one source, which is always 

 brought about by either cold, damp 

 weatlier or a non-circulatiou of air, 

 or both. 



Honey swells only as it becomes 

 damp, and the first that will be seen 

 of that dampness will be in the unseal- 

 ed cells where the honey will hav6 

 become so thin that it will stand out 

 beyond the cells, or, in other words, 

 the cell will be heaping full. If the 

 dampness remains, the sealed honey 

 will soon become watery or transpa- 

 rent, while the honey from the un- 

 sealed cells will commence to run out, 

 daubing everything below it ; and 

 eventually, if the cause is not removed, 

 the capping of the cells will burst, and 

 the whule will become a souring mass. 

 In one or two instances I have seen 

 honey left in such cold rooms, where 

 the moisture was also apparent, that 

 it became so very thin that it ran 

 down fiom the combs and stood in 

 puddles on the Hoor all around the 

 bottoms of the nice white ca^es in 

 which it was stored. It was evident 

 that this honey had once been of the 

 very best quality, from the nice ap- 

 pearance of the cases ; but the grocer 

 had put it in the cellar when it arriv- 

 ed at his store, and there it had been 

 left till it tiad thus become very near- 

 ly good for nothing, while be was won- 

 dering why the bee-keeper who pro- 

 duced it could not have left it on the 

 hive till it was " ripe." 



When I first commenced to keep 

 bees 1 stored my honey in a tight 

 room on the north side of the house, 

 where it usually remained for from 



four to six weeks before crating for 

 market. In crating this honey I al- 

 ways found the center and rear side 

 of tha pile watery and transparent in 

 appearance. As that which was stor- 

 ed first was always the worst, I thought 

 that it must be owing to that being 

 the poorest or the least ripened, un- 

 til one year I chanced to place this 

 early honey by itself in a warm, dry, 

 airy room, when, to my surprise. I 

 found upon crating it that this first 

 honey had kept perfectly, and was bet- 

 ter and nicer than first taken from 

 the hive, while the later or more per- 

 fect honey, as it came from the hive, 

 stored in the old room was as watery 

 as ever. 



This gave me the clew to the whole 

 matter ; so, when I built my shop I 

 located the honey-room in the south- 

 west corner, and painted the whole of 

 a dark color to absorb the heat of the 

 midday and aftern(jon sun. On two 

 sides of this room I fixed platforms 

 for the honey, and the sections were 

 so piled on these platforms that the 

 air couM circulate all through the 

 whole pile, even if it reached the top 

 of the room. During the afternoons 

 of August and September the temper- 

 ature of the room would often be rais- 

 ed to nearly or quite 100,° which 

 would warm the i)ile of honey to near-, 

 ly that degree of heat ; and as this 

 large body of honey once heated re- 

 tained the same for some length of 

 time, the temperature of. the room 

 would often be from 80 to 90° in the 

 morning after a warm day, when it 

 was as low as 50 to 60° outside at 6 

 o'clock a. m. 



By this means the honey was being 

 ripened each day, and that in the un- 

 sealed cells became thicker and thick- 



