18 THE BEE-KEEPERS REVIEW 



smoke. ]\Iy wife runs the smoker and is niggardly of smoke, at 

 least I think so when she is helping me. Sometimes she forgets the 

 smoker in watching me and the bees. When working by herself she 

 is even worse — she lets it go out entirely, but I like a little smoke 

 over the hive when handling. It is true, as our friend in Jamaica 

 says, bee-keeping in the tropics is different from Maine or Califor- 

 nia, although we shall have many acres of wild sage bloom next 

 month. The only fault I find with the Rf.view is, there is not 

 enough of it. If this will not do it, please write something that will 

 stir up the American bee-keepers in Cuba. 



I have a colony of stingless Cuban bees. They are about one- 

 half the size of the Italians and look very much like them. They 

 have fine yellow bands and store a very clear honey indeed. They 

 will kill the common bee at once, but never sting. 



Some Things to Observe in Extensive Bee-Keeping. 



ADVOCATES STEAM-H EATED UNCAPPING KNIFE: PORTABLE EX- 

 TRACTING OUTFITS; A SIX OR EIGHT FRAME EXTRACTOR. 

 SELLS 2,0C0 TO 50,000 POUNDS OF HONEY EACH YEAR 

 MOSTLY TO CONSUMERS. HEATS HONEY 

 AS SOON AS EXTRACTED. 



By VIRGIL SIRES, North Yakima, Wash. 



[While we are puttering around with a little dinky outfit, working our heads 

 off to care for an apiary or t\^ o, we are apt to find that our neighbor has been ' 

 doing several times the work, but with a system that makes it comparatively easy 

 for him. Mr. Sires uses a large storage tank and heats the noney as suun us 

 extracted. This is done automatically, and saves much time in remelting candied 

 honey later. If you have ever had experience in buving candied honey which 

 you had to melt to resell vou can appreciate the advantage of this system. There 

 is anc)ther point in favor of this plan, and that is that many buyers think candied 

 honey is last year's honey. I had an experience of that kind just lately, when I 

 had to put up a stiff argument on behalf of one of our members, where a buyer of 

 his honey thought it was not this year's honey because it was candied.] 



'^^^ HE cappings-melter and the steam heated uncapping knife are 



^J two of the most important inventions of recent years to help 



solve the problems of handling large crops of extracted honeVo 



Where a number of apiaries are kept scattered over a large ter- 

 ritory the best plan for extracting is the portable extracting outfit 

 on wheels. It should be fitted with all machinery in place ready to 

 commence operations very soon after arriving at a yard. 



An outfit to enable two or three operators to extract from fifteen 

 hundred to four thousand pounds per day, should consist of a six 

 or eight frame power extractor, a cappings melter, a steam-heated 

 imcapping knife, a heater to heat and clarify the honey as fast as 

 extracted, and a large tank large enough to hold at least a half day's 

 extractinsf. 



