THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



read of to stop those pets from swarminjr, 

 but without success, I don't aim to stim- 

 ulate this spring. " 



As Mr. Hairston increased ten colonies 

 to forty-five, and secured 600 pounds of 

 extracted honey and seventy -five of comb, 

 I presume he does not feel like complain- 

 ing, even if he did have to ' ' .stay in the 

 trees ' ' a few days. 



BOOK-LEARNING IS GOOD, BUT IT ISN'T 

 EVERYTHING. 

 I honestly believe that many bee-keep- 

 ers who are well-versed in their business, 

 and could give us valuable facts, hestitate 

 to do so because they fear that their 

 spelling, or penmanship, or grammar, is 

 not good enough. I occasionally get 

 glimpses of this feeling in the letters that 

 come to me. For instance, at the end of 

 a nice, long letter that uow lies before 

 me, I find the following: 



You will readily see that I am no 

 scholar. I was raised an orphan, with- 

 out the advantages of schooling. What 

 little I know I got at night by a brush 

 fire, without so much as a candle or lamp. 

 I am still studying. 



I believe that I enjoy beautiful penman- 

 ship, correct spelling and well-construct- 

 ed sentences, as well as any one does, but 

 above all these come honesty, integrity 

 and the real mind or spirit shown by the 

 writer. When I get a letter in which the 

 handwriting is cramped and crooked, the 

 words mis-spelled, and the rules of gram- 

 mar and rhetoric violated, if the spirit is 

 right, I can easily overlook these short- 

 coming , and there comes over me a de- 

 sire to grasp the untrained fingers that 

 have with so much effort tried to comfort, 

 cheer, encourage, instruct, or advise their 

 friend. I hope no one will ever hesitate 

 one moment about writing me because of 

 a lack of book-learning. 



THE " GOI.DEN " SECTION - HONEY 

 CI^EANER. 



Cleaning sections of propolis by the 

 use of some sort or a machine will proba- 

 bly be the next step. Mr. Aspinwall 



illustrated such a machine in the Decem- 

 ber Review, and Mr. J. A. Golden of 

 Reinersville, Ohio, does the same thing 

 in the Amerdcah Journal, from which I 

 borrow the following description and the 

 cut. He says: — 



" Having an old sewing-machine table, 

 I nailed .some boards together and cut out 

 a wheel, which is 36 inches in circumfer- 

 ence, and has a 4-inch face. I attached 

 it on the old table, covered the face of 

 the wheel with medium-fine sand-paper, 

 by gluing it on, and aranging a cover 

 so that the face of the wheel protruded 

 from I -16 to % inch, as shown by the 

 picture, where Flora is in the act of pass- 

 ing a section over the wheel. ( Just 

 as I was ready to take the view. Flora 

 turned her head and said, 'Tell Mr. York 

 that I am just pretending to clean this 

 section' — when I touched the button and 

 caught her and her smile.) 



"It will be observed that there is plenty 

 of room for a full super of sections to be 

 placed on the table at a time. 



"Now as to how the machine works. 

 Well, it was just fun to clean sections 

 with it, and so clean and bright that no 

 one could tell by looking at them after- 

 wards, that the}' ever had propolis on 

 them, excepting at the scallops, which 

 have to be scraped out. But if the plain, 

 no-bee-way .section is used, a knife will 

 never be brought into use, as the machine 

 does it all, and very speedily. 



"I had intened to send a picture and 

 explanation of this device last summer, 

 but having quite a serious time in a finan- 

 cial way, caused by dishonest persons 

 ( but thanks to my bees, every dollar has 

 been canceled), the matter was forgotten 

 until I received the December Review, 

 where I was suprised to see that L. A. 

 Aspinwall of Michigan, had invented 

 nearly the same arrangement. 



"In conclusion, let me add: Bread and 

 table knives, pen-knives, scissors, or any 

 small edge-tools, can be quickh- ground 

 on this wheel the same as on an emety 

 wheel, so oxvc woman-folks will now have 

 no excuse for not lianng sharp knives, 

 as any one who can run a sewing-machine 

 can run this section-cleaner. " 



Mr. !•:. II. Schaeffle, of California, 

 writes me that he was very much inter- 

 ested in Mr. Aspinwall's article, but that 

 if he were going to construct a machine 

 for this purpose he would u.se a fourth- 

 inch, planer-bit, set so as to project 

 about one-eighth of an inch above the 



