584 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



JUI.Y 15. 



away with soiled hands, and at the same time 

 is useful as a means of keeping the garments 

 clean. Takecomraon table oilcloth; cut out an 

 apron of any size you may desire ; be sure to 

 have it seamless. Cut notches around the edge, 

 to save hemming, as that makes it heavy. Now 

 cut two wide deep pockets; sew them fiat on 

 the outside of the apron, holding them a little 

 full so that they will not tear at the corners 

 when filled. Fasten on two stout strings. Wet 

 a sponge, or a piece of Turkish crash. Put it 

 in one pocket; use it to wipe your fingers on. 

 The remaining pocket is intended for miscella- 

 neous articles, such as tablet, pencil, a small 

 file, which I use to pry off covers with. Of 

 course, this is simply a matter of choice. When 

 you go out to work among the bees, tie this 

 apron on; adjust your veil as directed by Miss 

 Wilson, and you will be (or ought to be) happy, 

 cheerful, serene — yes, even though the bees 

 sting your hands, and the playful zephyrs burn 

 your face to a beautiful red. A. C. N. 



Kice Lake, Wis., June :^0. 



[We do not know that absorbents over col- 

 onies in the cellar are absolutely necessary. 

 Mr. A. A. Rice, however, was successful in 

 their use. It would be doubtful, if he were 

 alive, whether he would risk going without 

 them. Dr. A. B. Mason, who winters most suc- 

 cessfully in the cellar, uses nothing but thin 

 cloths over the bees. 



The Individual who makes a practice of lick- 

 ing his fingers when daubed with honey is 

 Ernest, and he is the chap who always uses 

 the pronoun we in the footnotes. We have no 

 doubt that a damp sponge would be cleaner 

 and nicer. But what a pocketful it must 

 make ! Somehow or other we find it conven- 

 ient to get along with as few tools as possible. 

 A light thin veil, a knife, and a smoker, are 

 about all the tools we ever use when working 

 with bees. — Ed.] 



PAPER PANS FOR SHIPPING-CASES. 



Question.— I understand that you use paper 

 pans inside of your shipping-cases, to catch the 

 drip from any section that may chance to 

 '• bleed " from any reason, thus preventing this 

 drip from soiling the cases of honey which may 

 be below it, as it otherwise would, were no 

 such thing used. What I should like to know 

 is, how you fold these paper pans. I have a 

 way of folding them over a sheet of tin, cut to 

 fit the inside of the case ; but it is rather slow 

 where hundreds of them have to be prepared in 

 a single season. It seems to rae that some 

 simple machine might be devised to do the 

 folding with one or two motions, without hav- 

 ing to go over each edge and corner separately. 

 You would oblige by describing youi' method 



in Gl,EANIN(JS. 



^?i.sM'er.— This question comes in very op- 

 portunely, as now is the time we should pre- 

 pare our honey for market; and I know of no 

 one thing which helps as much to bring favor 

 to our goods as do these paper pans in the bot- 

 tom of each case. While in New York, some 

 years ago, I saw cases of honey piled ten and 

 twelve high, and the drip from the upper cases 

 ran all the way down to the fioor, daubing the 

 snow-white cases, which had been gotten out 

 and put up with great pains, not only spoiling 

 all their beauty, but making them a sticky, 

 nasty mess to handle. Up to that time I had 

 not used paper pans; but then resolved that I 

 would try to fix some way so that my honey 

 should not appear in market in that condition. 

 That winter I met Samuel Snow, a quiet bee- 

 keeper residing in our county, at the New York 

 Stute Bee-keepers' Convention, and in a private 

 conversation wUh him he told me that he used 

 paper pans for the prevention of drip through 

 shipping-cases, telling minutely how he made 

 them, kind of paper used, etc. The next sea- 

 son found me buying manilla paper, of a quali- 

 ty costing lU cts. per pound, in quantities of 

 from five to ten pounds, when a piece of board 

 was fitted to the inside of the case, the board 

 being J4 inch thick. The paper was now cut 

 1% larger each way than was this board, so 

 that, when this paper was folded up evenly all 

 around it, the sides of the paper pans were just 

 % deep. The pan was now slipped inside of the 

 case, and a little strip of wood, just as long as 

 the case was wide, and K inch wide by ^V thick, 

 was placed at such distances along the inside 

 of the paper pan as was necessary, so that the 

 ends of the sections rested upon it, thus keep- 

 ing them up ^,i of an inch from the paper, thus 

 allowing the drip to rest below the sections so 

 that the outside of the cases was never soiled 

 while the bottoms of the sections were kept 

 clean also, if any thing should occur to start 

 the honey in them to leaking. This, of course, 

 requires the cases to be made i\. deeper than they 

 would be were it not for these little strips of 

 wood; but the keeping of the sections clean is 

 of fully as much importance as the preventing 

 of the drip througii the cases. I have kept 

 leaking honey standing all winter in such 

 cases with paper pans, and the manilla paper 

 seemed sufhcient to stand a wetting of honey 

 that length of time, as none of it soaked through 

 so as to come through the case any. I am well 

 aware that, so far, I have not answered the 

 question ; but I thought that, if I said any 

 thing on the subject, it should be made plain, 

 so that any one could make and use the paper 

 pans who wished. I have no other mode of 

 folding than that described above, or the one- 

 by-one method, and think that, by this plan, 

 with the board, I can fold from 80 to 100 an 

 hour, so that it is not such a serious job unless 

 honey is produced up into the tons. However, 

 if there is a quicker way, or one where several 



