April 11, 1907 



American Hee Journal 



313 



gctlier, and I don't live on goods alto- 

 gether.' I put my honey up in 5 and 

 10 quart vessels, and a great many peo- 

 ple will buy a quart or a pint when they 

 use it. But taking it all in all I find it 

 to be the most satisfactory and the 

 easiest manner of managing an apiary. 

 I am not in love vifitli pulling sections 

 together. 



]\Ir. Kimmey — The gentleman has 

 stated that the greatest difliculty he has 

 found is in preserving the combs for 

 future use. For myself, I would like 

 to know how he overcomes it? 



Dr. Bohrer — I have a house that is 

 closed with ordinary doors, and hang 

 the frames away there. I take the 

 empty hive-bodies and put the frames 

 in them and store them away, and 

 then put them away as near dry as 

 possible, and I don't have a great many 

 millers, yet I have some ; they will get 

 in there occasionally. 



Mr. Kimmey — Do you cover those 

 hives at the bottom or top? 



Dr. Bohrer — I set the hives down on 

 a plain board, and I don't see how any- 

 thing can get under them, and the hives 

 weight each other down ; then put a 

 cover on and put a weight on them. 

 This is as near as I know how to get 

 at it. 



Mr. Stone — I would like to have the 

 author of that paper here, so that I 

 could quiz him. I don't see how he 

 keeps the bee-bread out of the upper 

 stories. 



M. E. Darby — I will answer this gen- 

 tleman's question. I just extract my 

 honey and then put the frames right 

 back into the supers, and when the sea- 

 son comes the frames are all dry, all 

 the honey cleaned up, then I take the 

 supers off. I have a honey-house and 

 I have never yet had a moth to get into 

 any of my frames. I live near Spring- 

 field, Mo. 



Mr. Cook — I first store the hives and 

 empty frames, one on top of the other, 

 but first making it so tight below that 

 nothing could get in there at all. Then 

 I put bi-sulphide in that. 



Mr. Hyde — Some are discussing the 

 moth-worms and combs ; it seems to me 

 that the subject was the production of 

 extracted honey. 



Pres. Dadant — It is the profitable pro- 

 duction of extracted honey. 



Dr. Bohrer — Mr. Townsend is all 

 right. Now, in our locality that is all 

 right, but he is not all right on the way 

 we do up in this country. My plan is to 

 put the empty frames next to the brood- 

 nest. They will work those empty 

 combs much quicker than above. I also 

 agree with Mr. Townsend as to the 

 queen-excluder, but I said it does not 

 make any difference if we run for ex- 

 tracted honey; we are not going to eat 

 it, and it does not matter about the 

 pollen that goes up there. After I get 

 disgusted with them I call them "honey- 

 excluders," for they certainly will ex- 

 clude the honey, and exclude the queen, 

 so she cannot lay. Now, that gentle- 

 man over there, I agree with him about 

 the size of the hive, a lo-frame hive. I 

 have said why I did not like the ex- 

 cluder, and, as I stated before, I don't 

 care anything about the pollen, because 

 it is not in the way; and if the queen 

 lays up there, she will lay up there an- 



nually and go down. And by the time 

 you go to extracting again all the brood 

 will be hatched out, and I don't care if I 

 leave two or three combs in the second- 

 slory when I extract the first time. 



Mr. Holekamp — I would like to speak 

 about the moths eating the comb. 

 Whenever I have comb without any 

 pollen I have no moths; when I have 

 pollen in the combs I have the moth. 

 Then the second thing, I can taste the 

 honey that comes from the pollen. 1 

 don't know how pollen tastes in your 

 country, but it tastes very unpleasant in 

 my country; it has a peculiar taste that 

 I don't want. 



Mr. Hilton — May I say a word in re- 

 gard to the writer of this paper? I did 

 not hear the paper read, but I live less 

 than 50 miles from him, and there are 

 a great many things that I know about 

 Mr. Townsend and his methods, and 

 there are a great many things that I 

 don't know about him and his methods. 

 This I do know, that he is one of the 

 most successful bee-keepers in the State 

 of Michigan ; that he can produce the 

 most honey with the least expense, and 

 can run the most yards with the least 

 men. He is a man that would not fol- 

 low the occupation unless it was suc- 

 cessful, and he is successful as to the 

 manner and the matter of the queen- 

 boards. I am not in a position to 

 say why he does Some of these things, 

 but I am able to say that he does the 

 things that are successful to him and 

 his efforts. Consequently, he is right, 

 no matter whether it would work in 

 Texas, or Arizona, or any other State 

 in the Union; but in Michigan it is a 

 success. 



Dr. Treon — I want to say something 

 in reference to the method of keeping 

 empty combs ; that is one of the serious 

 objections to Southwest Texas in pro- 

 ducing extracted honey, in my observa- 

 tion. I take a bottom-board first and 

 put it down; then put two sheets of pa- 

 per on that, then I set the body with 

 combs on it, and between each body 

 put two newspapers. When I take my 

 supers out in the out-yards, put founda- 

 tion in them, stack them up and set 

 them on a cover, there are no moths 

 there, and they fit pretty well, and I 

 have a number of times found those 

 frames full of webs, that are made by 

 small worms ; they got in there and 

 laid their eggs. The only way that I 

 know to keep the .combs is to fumigate 

 them with sulphur, or bi-sulphide of 

 carbon. And if there is the least bit 

 of pollen in them, there will be no bees 

 to protect the comb, and the web-worms 

 will be in there in 48 hours. We can- 

 not produce extracted honey as well 

 as you people that are farther north, be- 

 cause we cannot carry over the combs. 

 We cannot use the extractors as you 

 do, for the reason that our bees swarm 

 awfully, and it makes no difference 

 if you shake them or draw brood from 

 them, they will swarm anyhow, and 

 some have swarmed in a day or two af- 

 ter I had drawn two or three frames 

 of brood. 



Mr. Parsons — While we are not pro- 

 ducing extracted honey at present, I 

 think I will tell you what we did in 

 Florida. At each out-yard we have a 

 bee-house. When the combs were taken 



off they were carried off into the wood* 

 where the bees took all the lioney out 

 of them, and then were carried back to 

 the house. The room was built 8 or 

 10 feet wide and across the side we put 

 small sticks, say one or two, that ex- 

 tended from one side of the house to 

 the other, enough to take our frames, 

 and they were far enough below so the 

 combs could hang in there. We put in 

 other sticks until we got all the comb 

 in the house. Then every few weeks 

 we opened those sticks and burned suffi- 

 cient sulphur to kill the larvx that were 

 there, and the fumes of the sulphur be- 

 ing so strong in there the moths were 

 not very anxious to get in. In that way 

 we never lost any combs. We have some 

 trouble now in taking out the hives that 

 are necessary to keep. We have houses 

 built the same way, and there is no 

 danger. 



Mr. Hatch — I lost combs the past 

 summer by the moths, and I was talk- 

 ing to a neighbor bee-keeper who said. 

 "I see you are a fool, and you are as I 

 used to be. If you will take these moth- 

 balls and put among your hives, they 

 will keep them out all summer long." 

 I said, "Have you tried it?" and he re- 

 plied, "Yes, I have tried it for 6 years." 



Mr. Aten— In answer to Mr. Treon, 

 in trying to cut off the moth, I have 

 had considerable experience. I wdl say 

 that it is impossible, I have taken combs 

 and sealed them up in air-tight jars, and 

 the moth would eat them up. The moth- 

 eggs were laid in the colony of bees, 

 and if you don't fumigate them they 

 will eat the combs up. Fumigation by 

 sulphur is a success with me. 



T. P. Robinson — I am a honey-pro- 

 ducer exclusively, that is, I produce 

 something like 16,000 pounds of comb- 

 honey, and there were only six or seven 

 cases of extracted honey. In the pro- 

 duction of extracted honey I tried to 

 keep my colonies built up very strong. 

 If the combs are too heavy to extract 

 I move them to the super where the 

 bees will hatch out, and the bees will 

 fill them up, and I extract again. This 

 year I extracted from the brood-cham- 

 bers, and did not leave any honey at 

 all. The bees did all right; in a few 

 days they had filled the combs again. 

 For the last ten years I have had no 

 damage. But as far as the moths eat- 

 ing the combs, Mr. Aten is correct. 



E. J. Atchley— I have had some ex- 

 perience in producing extracted and 

 comb honey, and I think the locality has 

 something to do with it. If I lived in 

 Mr. Townsend's neighborhood, I would 

 hardly take time to eat and sleep, or 

 drink, until I found out from him his 

 management for the production of ex- 

 tracted honey, and I believe that if Mr. 

 Townsend were in my locality he would 

 have to change his plans to be as suc- 

 cessful in Southwest Texas as in Michi- 

 gan. Therefore we should run our bees 

 to the best advantage according to our 

 own judgment, and a little brood in the 

 upper stories, or anywhere else in a 

 hive should not bother us. It seems 

 that the pollen packed in the combs can 

 be taken out almost any time. And an- 

 other thing in the production of ex- 

 tracted honey, my plan would be what 

 is known as the "Dadant Plan." And 

 as to keeping combs from moths, I 



