June 2(), 1902. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



405 



had a few sections that were broken more or less just a 

 few spoonfuls of drip-and it took hours of time to clean up 

 those sections. Sometimes the drip would be in the ccjrners 

 of sections, and had to be gotten at. It has cost mo at least 

 'SSO to handle over cases like that, and I can see no sense in 

 havinjf those shallow drip-sticks. Mr. Root wrote nie on 

 the matter, that so many beekeepers wanted shallow drip- 

 sticks because their honey was so thick ; I repliid that 

 thick honey required more drip-sticks. The shippitif;-c:ises 

 that are so commonly sent out have paper in them that 

 won't hold the honey, in case there is a drip ; it is not 

 manilla paper ; it will tear easily and soak through, and if 

 there is any drip to amount to anything, it is apt to get in 

 the dilTerent cases. The original non-drip cases had ma- 

 nilla paper. 



Mr. Moore — The honey is not dripping when it leaves 

 us, why is it that it is when it reaches its destitiation ? 

 What is it that makes the drip '.' Is it because the sections 

 break down ? or why is it you have the drip ? 



Mr. Burnett— I arose to endorse what Mr. Walker has 

 said. It is a fact that we find now that the best honey is 

 thick honey, and that the space between the sections and 

 the bottom of the case, that is the drip sticks, are not thick 

 enough ; they do not raise the honey enough, so that when 

 it drips out, it gets up against the section, and it causes the 

 difficulty that lie mentions ; it had not occurred to me to be 

 as technical about it as he is ; he has evidently thought the 

 matter out carefully. As to the leakage, there ought not to 

 be any leakage in comb honey at any time, and I suppose 

 the reason for it is that these drip-sticks are not large 

 enough. We are pleased to have the inventor with us ; it 

 is a very great privilege to have heard from him. The cal- 

 culation is that the combs should not be broken ; if they 

 do the drip-sticks would not be of much service, but it is for 

 the little drip that may get out of the injured cell or cells 

 that has not been capped properly. 



Dr. Miller — Now, if these men who receive the honey 

 find that there are so many unsealed cells, and that the 

 honey is so thin that it runs out, then there is something 

 wrong on the part of the bee-keeper. It seems to me that it 

 ought not to be a matter of necessity that unsealed cells 

 containing honey so thin it will run ought to be shipped. 

 Do all the sections break out alike ? Will a section that is 

 thoroughly fastened, top and bottom, break out? 



Mr. Dadant — Yes, lots of them. 



Dr. Miller — Fastened on all four sides ? 



Mr. Dadant — On all four sides, yes. 



Dr. Miller — I believe the great trouble is, a section is 

 put in that is not thoroughly fastened. 



Mr. Dadant — I have known of honey being shipped in 

 car-load lots all the way from California, and not get 

 broken, but in single packages they break often. The rail- 

 road companies manage us, we do not manage the railroad 

 companies, and we have no recourse. I do believe we have 

 not gotten hold of the railroad companies as we ought to ; 

 they ought to handle the honey so as not to break it. Our 

 attention should be directed towards compelling them to 

 transport our honey safely. They charge us well for it, 

 and they ought to pay if they break the sections. 



Mr. Burnett — I should be sorry to have a false impres- 

 sion go abroad. Where there will be some apparently not 

 well fastened sections that do not break down, I have 

 noticed that, as Mr. Dadant says, apparently a well-filled 

 section will be broken out ; but on examination I find that 

 it was not really well fastened : it was fastened, as it were, 

 down the center where the foundation was, but not outside 

 of that. And then, again, I have thought that a section 

 had at times been put in a case that had been jarred loose 

 after it was put in there. As to the light weights breaking 

 down, that is accounted for by the fact that the weight is 

 not there to break it out, even though it is only fastened 

 partially on two sides, and fairly well on top, and open on 

 the bottom ; the weight is not there, but the heavy section 

 will be full, and it would seem as though it was fastened on 

 the section, but it is only slightly fastened there, and not 

 fastened on the outside. Years ago — when I was young, 

 like Mr. York — I used to go to the depots and try to have 

 the honey handled carefully, especially when it would 

 arrive, and we sought various ways of getting honey from 

 the railroad company with the least possible breakage. We 

 got the men so that they would carry it out of the cars in- 

 stead of dragging it out. The warehousemen had been 

 accustomed, in carrying out the honey, in setting it down, 

 to stoop over and then let it fall to the floor the rest of the 

 way. Nearly all of the railroad companies now notify us 

 when any honey arrives for us, if it is any considerable 

 amount, and some railroad companies will for only one 



case, and we will go and get it out of the car ; they leave it 

 in the car until we seiul for it, and we have very little 

 breakage of honey in that way ; the breakage is nearly all 

 where it is unloaded, as a rule — very nearly always at the 

 destination. 



Mr. Dadant— Or at the transfer 7 



Mr. Burnett Orat the transfer. Of course, the railroad 

 coiniianics now have gotten fairly well educated on that; 

 they won't transfer it if they can help it. 



Mr. Walker — I wish to ratify what Mr. Burnett says 

 about fastening combs in sections; those that are well 

 fastened in proportion to their weight are the ones that 

 usually come through in good shape. 



Mr. Dadant — I imagine it is a case of luck if they come 

 through all right only slightly fastened. 



*' How would you fasten the strips in the no-drip cases ?" 



Dr. Miller Use light nails. 



Concluded lu-xl week.j 



Contributed Articles. { 



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Honey-Crop Prospects Finding and Clipping 

 Qiueens. 



BY C. DAVENPORT. 



The season here, so far, has been about the most un- 

 favorable I have ever known, it being cold and windy most 

 of the time through April and the first part of May. The 

 bees secured but very little from the spring flow of soft 

 maple, fruit and dandelion bloom, as it was so cold and 

 windy while they were in bloom that they were not able to 

 fly much, and since the weather has warmed up there has 

 been nothing for them to work on. 



For some reason, unknown to me, basswood has failed 

 to bud. Although, as I have said, the spring has been ex- 

 ceptionally cold, there were no hard frosts late enough to 

 kill the basswood buds, if they had started. 



Last summer we had the worst drouth known since the 

 country was settled. Possibly this may be the cause. This 

 spring there have been an unusual amount of rain and 

 floods. A good deal of the white clover died out last season, 

 owing to the dry weather. What was left started up well 

 this spring, but all the low pasture lands, where the most 

 of it was, have been flooded and under water a number of 

 times, which has greatly injured it, for a good deal of it is 

 buried under mud and sand. What will the harvest be ? It 

 looks now as if it might not be anything, but if the season 

 is a failure it will be the first one here in my time, and I 

 have a number of times seen the prospects fully as unfa- 

 vorable looking as they are now, when a fair crop — and in 

 one case a big one — was secured before the season closed. 



I have been going ahead, getting things right side up, 

 and am about ready to handle anything in the way of a 

 crop that may come. I am glad to say that at this date the 

 queen in every colony I own is clipped, and clipped short, 

 too. The last few years I have not practiced clipping to 

 any extent, for I practice artificial swarming mostly, so 

 there was no climbing for swarms, anyway. But last year 

 I was ill at the time this work should have been done, and 

 was unable to secure any one that was competent to do it. 



Swarming was soon on in full blast ; of course, I had 

 men to hive the swarms, but they were not able to handle 

 all of them. One day, when I was not able to walk around, 

 I lay under a tree, near one of the yards, and watched 

 swarm after swarm fly off to the woods. There were two 

 men for this yard, both of whom were a failure, but the best 

 and all I could get at the time. I resolved then that another 

 season I would have every queen clipped, but I had a hard 

 time doing it this spring ; in fact, I had to clip the most of 

 them in the night. It was so cold the most of the time early 

 in the spring that I disliked opening the hives and exposing 

 the brood as much as is often necessary to find a queen, and 

 when the weather became suitable there was nothing in the 

 fields for the bees to work on, so they were all at home 

 ready to rob and pounce on a colony the minute a hive was 

 opened. 



I have said before that whenever I wished to open a 

 hive and handle a colony for any purpose I always did so. 



