April 11, 1907 



.^11 



Amc»rican l^ee Journal 



season of the year, to put it up, then 

 by next spring it is almost a solid 

 granulation ; and it docs not granulate 

 that year if I pay proper atention to 

 it, and by proper attention I mean keep 

 it dry. I do that by building charcoal 

 fires in my honey-room at intervals, ow- 

 ing to the state of the weather. If 

 the weather should be damp and foggy 

 I then go to the honey-house, build up 

 a fire and keep it there until the house 

 is dried out; but if, from any cause, 

 I neglect it, then it granulates in the 

 comb, and I think probably that would 

 help out in almost every instance. If 

 you will keep the temperature from 

 getting down t.oo low, or getting damp, 

 it will do away with a good deal of the 

 granulation. 



Dr. Treon — I want to ask a little in- 

 formation and at the same time make 

 some statements. The way I put up 

 honey in this part of Te.xas, to prevent 

 granulation of our catclaw honey, which 

 is our first crop, I heat my extractor. 

 We produce chunk honey; we fill the 

 can partially full of comb honey; then 

 pour in the extracted honey, then fill 

 the can clear full. We cannot fill it 

 full of chunk honey. With reference 

 to granulation, I have had catclaw 

 honey that will granulate in the spring 

 and stay that way all the fall. What 

 I wanted to ask was this: About 3 

 years ago we had a good honey-flow 

 in this country — the majority of it was 

 horsemint honey; we had lots of rain. 

 This honey was sealed up and under- 

 went a fermenting process, and the 

 seals bunst. I would like some one 

 to explain this. In two or three weeks 

 the honey would sour in the can. 



Mr. Hyde— I didn't make myself 

 quite plain when talking awhile ago. I 

 never designated the different kinds of 

 honey. Our chunk honey will granulate 

 just as quickly as pure extracted honey, 

 but our one-pound section honey will 

 not granulate during the first wmter. 



Pres. Dadant — Now, we will come to 

 the question of fermenting and the 

 bursting of the caps. I have seen that 

 quite often, which usually occurs with 

 unripe honey; that is, honey that is not 

 matured when capped, and it will fer- 

 ment and burst the cappings ; this is 

 the case with basswood honey, but with 

 no other kind. 



Will Atchlej^ — I have had some ex- 

 perience with the honey, and it has 

 mostly been horsemint. I tried some 

 experiments with it an-d was successful. 

 Before it was sealed up, I carried it 

 almost to a boiling point. The comb 

 honey, I simply stacked it on. You 

 take thin honey that is fermenting and 

 it will improve from heating. 



W. H. Laws — The case with this 

 horsemint honey, if left with weak 

 colonies, in my case, when it was placed 

 over weak colonies for sealing and cur- 

 ing them, it failed to do it. I have 

 seen this honey almost boiling out of 

 the cells. 



J. A. Stone — I have had honey that 

 w^as fermented until it was not eatable, 

 not marketable at all, and by heating it 

 I could cure it entirely, and I do not 

 heat it to the point of boiling. 



Mr. Teel — I have had a good deal 

 of experience where it was newly 

 sealed, but I believe that it was caused 



from combs that had got a little mois- 

 ture in them, a little wetting in the fall 

 before, and the sour, vinegar-like sub- 

 stance would settle in the spring, which 

 caused the fermentation. The best 

 thing, is to do away with the combs 

 when they get in that shape. 



Mr. Jones — I have had some trouble 

 along that line. Maybe it would be in 

 a low place and a wet season, so I at- 

 tribute it to the moisture that rose 

 from the ground; that the combs ab- 

 sorbed this, and caused them to break. 

 I have seen it in one-story hives often, 

 and where the ground was damp all the 

 caps would swell ; but I have never 

 noticed it where I had bottom-boards. 



SWEET CLOVER SEED. 



"Where can I get sweet clover seed 

 that will grow?" 



Mr. Stone — I think Mr. Holekamp 

 can tell us. 



A Member — I just want to say that 

 I bought some sweet clover seed from 

 an Ohio firm, I think about three years 

 ago, and tried it for two years and 

 never got it up at all. The last year 

 I soaked the seed 24 hours, and planted 

 it and it is up, and the clover is grow- 

 ing nicely now. 



Mr. Holekamp — Two years ago I 

 bought 100 pounds of sweet clover seed, 

 I do not know who sowed it, but I 

 understand that wherever these men 

 have taken their Sunday afternoon 

 walks that the clover grew all around 

 there, and it must grow there else they 

 would not say that. I don't say that 

 they scattered it ! 



Mr. Kimmey — It is impossible for me 

 to understand sweet clover not growing. 

 I can not conceive how anybody can not 

 make it grow, except people who don't 

 want it; it grows like a weed. It has 

 just occurred to me that sweet clover 

 ought to be sowed in the fall. 



Dr. Bohrer — The question with us is 

 how to keep it from growing. I came 

 very near taking up 100 plants and giv- 

 ing to the bee-keepers ; it will grow, and 

 can be transplanted the same as cab- 

 bage plants ; then take the plants up, 

 set them out where you want them to 

 grow and you will never have any 

 trouble. If you allow the seed to get 

 musty then it won't grow ; and I want 

 to say that if any bee-keeper will send 

 me one cent a plant, I will put up a 

 plant and send to him this fall or next 

 spring. 



Mr. Stone — In Illinois, one of the 

 professors at the University has dis- 

 covered that there is a bacterium that 

 is always on the root of the sweet 

 clover. If they can get these bacteria, 

 they say it will grow anywhere. They 

 are advised by the professor to scrape 

 up the dirt where sweet clover has 

 grown, and sow it with the seed. 



Dr. Treon — Most of these gentlemen 

 who have been talking about sweet 

 clover happen to live some place where 

 it is raised. We people in this country 

 have such long drouths that it has been 

 impossible to plant it without irrigation, 

 and even the alfalfa does not grow 

 where it is irrigated. It may be due to 

 the lack of bacteria. Now, I have what 

 looks just like a tobacco leaf, and we 

 are calling it clover. _ That is the only 

 form of clover in this country, and it 



grows wild. I have seen sweet, red and 

 white clover, but I never saw anything 

 like that, and the bees gather lots of 

 honey from it. There is very little of 

 it in this country. If we can make sweet 

 clover grow here, this will be an ideal 

 bee country. 



The Secretary then read the following 

 paper by Mr. E. D. Townsend, of 

 Remus, Michigan: 



THE PROFITABLE PRODUCTION 

 OF EXTRACTED HONEY 



In assigning me this topic, I do not 

 suppose our Secretary had in mind that 

 I would say very much new or startlitjg 

 on this old, worn subject, but we all 

 know that there are probably no two ex- 

 tracted-honey producers who follow the 

 same, identical procedure clear through 

 the season in producing a crop of honey. 

 Admitting this to be a fact, it is evi- 

 dent that we are not all producing ex- 

 tracted honey to the very best advan- 

 tage, which means at a less profit. Of 

 course, the location, the environment 

 of the bee-keeper, the number of bees 

 one expects to handle — all have a bear- 

 ing when discussing this subject. 



Just a word about hives, then I will 

 be ready to take up the main subject. 

 We have had extensive experience with 

 10 and 13 frame Gallup, 8 and 10 frame 

 Quinbys, and 8, 10 and 12 frame Lang- 

 stroth hives. During the whole 30 years 

 we have kept bees, many times tiie dif- 

 ferent sizes and styles were in the same 

 yards, so comparison of the different 

 styles and sizes were easily kept track 

 of. The results are the two extremes; 

 that is, the small lo-frame Gallup and 

 the large lo-frame Quinby almost al- 

 ways showed up poorest at extracting 

 time, and, on the other hand, those in 

 the 13-frame Gallup and lo-frame Lang- 

 stroth usually showed up best, with the 

 8 and 12 frame Langstroth and 8-frame 

 Quinby a close second. 



After this long comparison, covering 

 several years each, many of the campari- 

 sons being with large numbers of 

 colonies, I do not hesitate to say that 

 for this location and my management, 

 there is no size of hive that will produce 

 more extracted honey, one year with 

 another, than the lo-frame Langstroth. 



Then, our preference is for a lo-frame 

 body, using 8 of the regular Langstroth 

 frames for our extracting upper-stories. 

 This size and style of hive, and upper- 

 story, suit us best, for our system of 

 management, which I am about to des- 

 cribe. 



The system we practice and recom- 

 mend for this location (northern Michi- 

 gan) for the profitable production of 

 extracted honey is as follows: 



At the close of the season (during 

 August in Kalkaska Co., and Septem- 

 ber here at Remus), our colonies are 

 all "hefted," and any we think have less 

 than 25 pounds of stores for winter are 

 fed up. to 30 pounds. This gives us 

 from 25 to 30 pounds of winter stores 

 per colony — ample to last until the sur- 

 plus season opens in June. 



Our chaff-hive colonies are packed 

 for winter about Oct. 1 ; those in clamps 

 the last of November. The latter are 

 set on the summer stands as soon in 

 spring as the frost is out of the ground, 

 usuallv the last wfeek of March. These 



