862 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15. 



THAT "SWEETKNED WATER;" THE SPECIFIC 

 GRAVITY, AND HOW DETERMINED OF FLOR- 

 IDA honey; TWO-STORY TEN-FRAME HIVES; 

 AN ARRAY OF VALUABLE STATISTICS ON 

 FLORIDA DURING THE PAST SEASON. 



By W. S. Hart. 



After reading Mr. A. F. Brown's letter, on 

 page 796, wherein I find some remarkably 

 sweeping statements that, uncorrected, are cal- 

 culated to give the world the impression that 

 the greater portion of the honey from this 

 section is but " sweetened water," from being 

 extracted before it should be, and that the ma- 

 jority of the apiarists are either knaves or 

 fools, with Mr. H. W. Mitchell and myself at 

 the head of the procession, I loaded up my big- 

 gest gun, metaphorically speaking, with a 

 charge that would pepper that letter, from 

 address to signature, so full of holes that it 

 would not hold oranges if used for a wrapper. 

 This charge would have blackened the face of 

 three pages, at least, of your journal, and was 

 made up of statements of facts and figui'es and 

 essays on proper size of hives for this section, 

 curing honey, winter stores, migratory bee- 

 keeping, and stimulative feeding — the sum- 

 ming-up of the most valuable lessons learned 

 in 18 years of study, experience, and observa- 

 tion, of exceptionally successful bee-keeping. 

 Having a soft spot in my heart for friend 

 Brown, however, and not desiring to "shoot to 

 kill," I gave him notice that something was 

 going to happen, in consequence of his stric- 

 tures, so that he might shelter himself and get 

 hurt as little as possible by the fusillade. In re- 

 ply I got a letter from him, thanking me for 

 the notice 



[Mr. Hart here gave extracts from Mr. Brown's 

 letter; but as it is in substance like what he lias 

 written in reply to Mr. Mitchell above I omit it here 

 to avoid repetition.— Ed,] 



Well, after getting this letter, which so care- 

 fully disclaims all evil intent, and at the same 

 time sets myself and some others partly right, I 

 rolled up my MS., and for the present, at least, 

 its valuable contents is lost to the bee-keeping 

 world. I have not the time to give to the dis- 

 cussion and correspondence that it would call 

 out. I may at some future time give the parts 

 that treat of curing honev, and the secrets of 

 obtaining large crops of extracted, for I am 

 egotist enough to think that they contain 

 methods that, if adopted, would add very large- 

 ly to the income of many of the apiaries of 

 America, and at the same time furnish as good 

 (or a better) quality of honey. 



There are a few points in Mr. Brown's letter, 

 however, that I will touch upon before I leave 

 it. 



My orange crop kept my men and myself 

 busy picking, packing, and shipping, almost 

 constantly from Dec. 9, 1893, up to April 14. 1894, 

 except that I was called away about the middle 

 of March, and kept from home a month, at 

 just the time of all others that my bees needed 



me. I had been so busy for over four months 

 that ray bees had been examined but twice in 

 that time— once by myself and once by a novice 

 at the business. No stimulative feeding was 

 done in April, as is my custom. The result 

 was, I went into the summer flow with about 

 twelve very poor or queenless colonies, 116 in 

 all. I came out of the flow with 116 colonies in 

 fine shape, a little over 41,000 lbs. of honey, and 

 300 to 400 lbs. of wax, nearly all from cappings, 

 that can not be excelled. This gives me an 

 average, right through, of 3.53}^ lbs. of honey 

 per colony, instead of 344, as Mr. Brown gave 

 it. A colony that has been kept on scales for 

 three years past, but has had no extra atten- 

 tion of any kind, except its weight being often 

 taken, yielded 534V4 lbs., carefully weighed. I 

 had considerably more than that from a few 

 hives, and I am satisfied that two or three gave 

 me 600 lbs. each. I am glad to say I tested the 

 specific gravity of this honey with my hygrome- 

 ter, and Messrs. Brown and Storer'sas well, and 

 I have them as well as other witnesses to testify 

 that it tests fully as high as theirs, and ten 

 and twelve degrees, according to kind, higher 

 than the " usual thickness of ordinary extract- 

 ed honey," as given on page 408 of same issue 

 of Gleanings (I think you, Mr. Editor, must 

 have made an error of ten degrees there). 



[I tind that tlie scales vary on the different makes 

 of liygTometeis. Perhaps yours is a different make, 

 and lience the different readings. — Ed.] 



As to extracting twice a week, I will confess 

 that I could not do that, as I am not up to ex- 

 tracting 2500 lbs. of fully capped honey in 41.2 

 hours, even if it is all at hand, and I have an 

 assistant. It takes me 3>.2 days to make a 

 round of extracting, with one man to help, and 

 I have other business to attend to ouside of my 

 apiary. I made one round a week most of the 

 season, but not as often toward the last. My 

 hives are two-story ten-frame, with but nine 

 frames in the top story. I extract only from 

 these nine frames. Mr. Mitchell's eight-frame 

 hives were mostly tiered three high. 



Mr. Brown says, in his published letter, 

 " Again, some extracted so close that their bees 

 will regain a good share of it back before they 

 will meet any more coming in." "Others left 

 .50, 75, or 100 lbs. in their hives. All these items 

 figure in and materially change the face of 

 many of the yields." 



I hope no one will commit the error of count- 

 ing me as one among the first. My hives will 

 average now, after the August and September 

 drouth, about .50 lbs., and honey is coming in 

 faster than it is used. Nor do I want to be 

 counted still more foolishly at the other ex- 

 treme, crowding my queens with a full hive of 

 our choicest white honey wiiile the field-bees 

 mix it with the dark fall crop by tucking the 

 latter into what few available empty cells they 

 can find here and there, or else lie idle for want 

 of room for it. I hardly think Mr. Brown 



