150 



Feb. 21, 1907 



American IBee Journal 



Mr. Byer said it depended a great 

 deal upon the time of the year that snow 

 fell. If a heavy fall came late in the 

 spring on strong colonies, disaster was 

 apt to follow. 



Some years ago D. W. Heise had a 

 number of strong colonies smother be- 

 fore the snow could be taken away. This 

 was early in April. 



Mr. Smith — Snow is apt to make 

 strong colonies too warm, and cause too 

 much early breeding. 



Brood in Hives in Winter. 



"Is it detrimental to have much 

 brood in the hive at this time of the 

 year?'' 



Mr. Smith would not want so much 

 brood so early. 



Mr. Byer thought that bees outside 

 had brood earlier in the winter than was 

 generally thought. He had helped to 

 destroy some colonies slightly affected 

 with foul brood about the middle of 



January, and ever}- colony had quite a 

 quantity of brood in all stages. 



Mr. Hershiser asked Mr. Holtermann 

 his experience with cellar-wintered bees 

 when first put out. 



Mr. Holtermann stated that usually 

 he found but little brood, and the less 

 there was, he thought, the better. 



Mr. Coggshall— Mr. Elthorp of my 

 State, lowers the temperature of his 

 cellar by throwing cold water on the 

 floor, and this discourages brood-rear- 

 ing. 



Mr. Smith one spring had his bees 

 with brood in every colony, and they 

 never did better. In common with other 

 speakers, he, too, would sacrifice ven- 

 tilation rather than temperature. 



Mr. Burke — Last year I wintered bees 

 without ventilation successfully, and this 

 year, by ventilating like Mr. Holter- 

 mann, was in hopes my bees would in- 

 crease. [Laughter.] 



(Continued next week.) 



Conducted by J. L. Bter, Markham, Ont. 



Wax-RendeFing- Methods 



In Jan. 1st and Jan. ISth issues of 

 Gleanings, Mr. H. H. Root gives re- 

 sults of some experiments in wax-ren- 

 dering, and the conclusions he reaches 

 makes me feel like saying, " I told you 

 so," as they are nothing more nor less 

 than a triumph for the Hatch-Gemmill 

 wax-press. 



Some time ago Mr. F. Greiner ex- 

 pressed himself as follows in the 

 American Bee Journal : 



" I can make but about 3 runs with the 

 German eteam wax -extractor, and the amount 

 of wax at the end of the day will be about 15 

 pounds. It is a mussy job, and I would 

 gladly give any man half, or more, of the 

 wax that he might be able to boil, squeeze, 

 extract, or get in any way out of the stufl, 

 provided I had nothing to do about it." 



From what experience I have had 

 with steam wax-presses, I judge that 

 Mr. Greiner accomplished about an 

 average day's work, and for a long 

 time I have wondered how bee-keepers 

 could have the patience to bother with 

 such a machine, when for a much less 

 cost they could have a press of ten 

 times as much value as far as actual 

 results are concerned. 



Mr. Root concludes that he can ren- 

 der, with the Hatch-Gemmill press, 

 from 7 to 10 pounds of wax per hour, 

 and this includes remelting the slum- 

 gum and giving it the second pressing. 

 He claims that with but one melting 

 the slnmgura, after pressing, will con- 

 tain from 8 to 12 percent of wax, but 

 after the second treatment only from 

 1 to 3 percent of wax will be left in the 



refuse. The amount left after the sec- 

 ond melting was determined by con- 

 tinued pressing and shaking up of the 

 slumgum for 2 hours in the German 

 steam-press. 



I have melted up a great many combs 

 and pressed out quite a few hundred 

 pounds of wax with the Hatch-Gem- 

 mill press, but have never given the 

 slumgum the second pressing. I did, 

 though, last winter, take the refuse 

 from which 82 pounds of wax had been 

 pressed, and run it through the steam- 

 press by way of experiment (experi- 

 ence, rather), securing in the operation 

 1>2 pounds of a poor quality of wax. 

 Needless to say I decided that it was 

 necessary to have some better machine 

 to secure the wax (if wax there was) 

 from slumgum, from the Hatch-Gem- 

 mill press. 



As to amount of combs that can be 

 handled, I will give the following as an 

 example, but by no means as a record, 

 as any one else could do as well: 



About 140 old combs were all broken 

 up small, and brought by the stove. In 

 a little over 3 hours from the time 

 melting operations were started, we 

 (Mrs. Byer and myself) had 71 pounds 

 of wax, which was ready for the mar- 

 ket, simply by scraping off the bottoms 

 of the cakes. A Toronto dealer bought 

 the wax, and I think he would vouch 

 for the statement that it was of good, 

 average quality. For some reason, 

 wax from the steam-presses is never of 

 as good a quality as that obtained by 

 other means. 



I might add that the slumgum from 

 the Hatch-Gemmill press has been 



saved for the past 2 years, and I am 

 looking forward with interest to hav- 

 ing the privilege of testing the same 

 in the Hershiser press. If spared, to 

 make the test I will, at my earliest op- 

 portunity, give the readers of the 

 American Bee Journal the result. 



Moving Bees in Winter 



In a letter received some time in 

 December, Mr. Whiteside, of Little 

 Britain, says : " I was moving bees 

 yesterday, to-day, and will be to-mor- 

 row." Formerly, I was much opposed 

 to moving bees in the winter, and if 

 any one asked my advice in the matter, 

 I always urged them not to undertake 

 such a thing, as it would almost cer- 

 tainly mean the death of the bees. You 

 see, I was going by what the other fel- 

 lows told me. However, while at the 

 Victoria County convention, 4 years 

 ago, this question came up, and Mr. 

 Whiteside and some others were in- 

 clined to laugh at me for the advice I 

 gave a gentleman who was contem- 

 plating moving some bees 14 miles on 

 the sleigh in December. Contrary to 

 my advice, the bees were moved and 

 wintered first-class, out-doors, in an 

 extremely hard winter. 



The following season, owing to the 

 farmer on whose land some of my bees 

 were, selling his farm and buying an- 

 other only a short distance away, it be- 

 came necessary for me to move the 

 bees something less than half a mile. 

 Moving bees such a short distance in 

 the summer season, is always attended 

 with the danger of losing a lot of the 

 field-force, by the bees going back to 

 their old location ; so in view of my 

 Victoria county friend's experience, I 

 decided to move them as soon as there 

 was enough snow for sleighing. The 

 bees were packed in chafi^, 2 hives in a 

 case, and sufficient snow being on the 

 ground on Dec. 10, teams were secured 

 and suSicient men, and in half a day 

 the 60 colonies were moved without a 

 mishap. Hive-entrances were closed 

 with pieces of wire-cloth, and it was 

 well that we did so, as the bees rushed 

 to the entrance when disturbed, as if 

 it were a summer's day, instead of the 

 thermometer being within a few de- 

 grees of zero. 



After being placed on their new loca- 

 tion, the screens were not removed till 

 near night, as the bees were around 

 the entrances, and numbers would have 

 rushed out and perished in the snow. 



As there were some 30 colonies at 

 this place, that had been moved there 

 the previous spring, here was a good 

 test to see if moving in the winter was 

 detrimental or not. Although none of 

 these bees had a flight previous to the 

 latter end of March, yet they wintered 

 in excellent condition, and, as far as 

 I could see, there was no difference in 

 the two lots of bees. 



Whether it would be safe to move 

 bees late in the winter, I will not ven- 

 ture an opinion. However, as far as I 

 am concerned, personally, I would 

 hesitate to move bees January or Feb- 

 ruary if they had no flight since say 

 Nov. 1. Yet I have no evidence to 

 prove that bad results would follow, 

 and there is a possibility that it might 



