SOUTHERN BEE CULTURE 67 



BEE-ENTRANCE GUARDS AND DRONE-TRAPS. 



These implements are to be used over the entrances of hives when the 

 apiarist is away from his bees during swarming-time. The queens can not go 

 out through them should the bees swarm, and the swarm will return ; and they 

 are good to confine inferior drones to their hives while the queens are being 

 mated. 



WAX-EXTRACTORS. 



Saving wax is no small item in bee-keeping, and every particle of comb 

 should be saved and rendered into wax. The most convenient wax-extractor 

 is the solar, which should be set in the middle of the apiary where all the 

 scrapings from the interior of the hives and the pieces of comb can be easily 

 dropped into it, when the heat of the sun will melt them up. One of these 

 extractors will render up all the comb in a small apiary. Where the apiary 

 is large, and much comb is to be rendered into wax, the solar cannot do 

 all the work. Then a wax-press is necessary to render up the bulk o£ the 

 comb. These presses are simple, and easy to operate, and do away with the 

 sticky and mussy work we had in the old-style way of making beeswax; 

 and, besides, all the wax is saved. 



In the production of comb honey it is no small job to clear the supers of 

 honey or bees, for it requires time to smoke them down out of the supers; 

 and the whole hive- is molested; and to shake the bees out is laborious. 

 ^\ nen the supers of honey are ready to be removed, set them on top of those 

 that are not ready to be removed, and slip the board with the bee-escape under 

 it, and one by one the bees will march out of it. 



BEE-SMOKERS. 



There is no implement in the apiary more handy than the bee-smoker; 

 and every one who has only one colony of bees should by all means have, 

 one. I have seen people blow smoke among bees with their breath, to con- 

 quer them, from a bundle of burning rags, until they would exhaust them- 

 selves and be sick from being strangled on the smoke, and it has been 

 attributed to the honey they ate. 



BEE-VEILS- 



Bee-veils are next to smokers in usefulness, and no one should keep 

 bees without them or go among the bees to do any work without one on, 

 for they will save many painful stings, and, to a great extent, remove the 

 fear of bees. A few of them should be kept on hand to put on our in- 

 terested bee-keeping friends when they come to see us handle bees. 



Bee-gloves are a great protection to the hands while handling bees. 

 Timid bee-keepers very often receive painful stings about the hands, and es- 

 pecially . about the wrist around the bottom of the sleeves, where it seems 



