272 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 



without touching one another. We 

 make them 6 inches wide. The outer 

 border strips against which the others 

 butt are 2 inches in width. The reader 

 will notice that on the dividing three- 

 eighths by 6 inch strips there are 

 shown white marks, which indicate 

 the position of the %x3V2 inch en- 

 trances from the colony hive to the 

 supers containing the combs to be 

 cleaned. 



Here is where we have varied the 

 construction, and like it much better 

 than the super cleaner as originally 

 made. By the individual entrance 

 from the colony to each row of su- 

 pers, separately, the bees are obliged 

 to cari-y the honey from the supers 

 straight into their hive, and will place 

 it all in the super above the colony. 

 Where the spaces under ^ihe rows of 

 supers are left entirely opeii and free 

 access given, the bees will, under cer- 

 tain conditions, place a portion of the 

 robbed-out honey in the combs of a 

 neighboring super instead of placing 

 it in the super above the colony, 

 where we want it. This is the more 

 apt to happen if the ^uper abova the 

 bees is more tb m two-th'rds filled. 

 In choosing a colony to do th.? cloan- 

 ing, we select one that is not strong 

 enough in field bees to brinp- honey 

 from the fields, and yet has lots of 

 ■"oung bees ;;nii plenty of hatching.'' 

 I'rood. If kept well supplie.l with 

 supers to be cleaned, few bees will 

 go to the fields, as they ha /e plenty 

 of better stuff to salvage right at 

 home. About nil the bees tfia. do go 

 to the fields will gather pollen, and 

 the queen will be pretty busy laying 

 eggs. We like to have this iiive sup- 

 plied with a ycung queen. The en- 

 trance to i'u- colony, which niiiy be 

 seen in the center front of tho j hoto. 

 should not be more thai %xZ% 

 inches. We place the combs on the 

 platfoi-nis just at evening; everything 

 is quiet by morning, and we have 

 never had a "cleaner-up" colony 

 robbed; they are always among our 

 best colonies in the spring, and we 

 have never had one used for this 

 purpose die in winter. 



One thing has always puzzled us. 

 We have several times had European 



foulbrood develop in the apiary, and 

 although super combs were given to 

 these bees, the disease has never ap- 

 peared in any of the "clean-ups," as 

 we call them. We certainly would 

 not risk it if we had American foul- 

 brood. 



The photo shows 25 supers on the 

 platform. We frequently place more 

 than twice as many at one time. 



The colony (center front) shows a 

 comb-honey super above the brood- 

 chamber. When we use a comb- 

 honey super over the brood-chamber 

 we have no queen excluder under it, 

 but when the honey taken from the 

 (shallow) extracting frames is to be 

 stored in extracting combs we put a 

 queen excluder under the super. Care 

 must be taken when sections are over 

 the brood-chamber that the queen is 

 not crowded by a congested brood- 

 chamber. 



We have farmer beekeepers about 

 us who raise some comb honey but 

 seldom have the "dishes right side up 

 to catch it." We furnish them supers 

 filled with sections and foundation ; 

 the supers have the weight marked on 

 them. Just before the close of the 

 clover flow, which is our extracting 

 time, we run the light truck out to 

 gather them up and pay them the 

 price agreed upon net weight of 

 honey. We get a fair pei-centage of 

 sections filled plump to the corners, 

 and a good many unfinished ones. 



Here is where our super cleaner 

 "scores big." The unfinished sec- 

 tions are carefully graded and placed 

 in the supers to be filled from the 

 wet combs, and the bees certainly 

 make a good job of it, for we have 

 very few unsaleable sections at the 

 close of the season. We frequently 

 have three or more supers over the 

 colony at once, and as the honey 

 stored in them is thoroughly ripened 

 they are ready to be capped about as 

 soon as they are filled. 



We find it a good plan, with the 

 best filled or nearest perfect sections, 

 to take them away from the colony 

 as soon as they are filled and ready to 

 cap, and give them to a strong colony 

 that is storing and cappfng honey. 



placing a fresh super on the 

 "cleaner" about the same time. 



If the super is placed on a colony 

 that is not storing honey they would 

 be very apt to rob it out and carry it 

 below. 



It will be noticed that the hive do- 

 ing the cleaning has the regular hive 

 cover over the super. We use the 

 same on each tier. The ones shown 

 are the galvanized covers, without 

 the rim. We were short of finished 

 covers at the time. 



Ontario. 



The Dcadman super cleaner. A colony of bees is placed in the middle of front row. Supers of 

 wet combs are piled over the other positions with entrances opening into the hive to permit 

 the bees to clean them readily without exposing them to robbers. 



FIFTY-FIVE NORTH 



By F. Dundas Todd 



The northern limit of beekeeping in 

 Europe, with the exception of Scot- 

 land and the Scandinavian peminsula, 

 is the parallel of 55 degrees. British 

 Columbia's most northerly important 

 valley with railway transportation 

 lies pretty well, along this parallel 

 once bearing about 20 seconds north 

 of it. As I have told my readers be- 

 fore, I have long felt interested in 

 this region for its beekeeping possi- 

 bilities, but never oould find time 

 to investigate. At the opening of 

 the past seasion I decided to have a 

 look at it, especially as there were 

 not less than half a dozen beekeep- 

 ers scattered at intervals whose ex- 

 perience would be worth hearing. One 

 was a beginner at Telkwa, who re- 

 ceived a hive at the beginning of 

 June, 1919, and reported he had taken 

 from it 186 pounds of extracted honey 

 in August, and had left plenty of 

 stores for winter, plenty being about 

 80 pounds of honey. And he enthused 

 greatly iover the superb flavor 



At the end of May I shipped two 

 nuclei to a town called Terrace, which 

 is located where the eastern and 

 western climates meet. It has much 

 less rainfall than the western slope of 

 the Cascades, yet produces the enor- 

 mous cedars and fir trees of that 

 region, but has a shorter and less se- 

 vere winter than that farther east. I 

 planned to go straight to Telkwa, 

 thence to Terrace and back to Vic- 

 toria. 



I boarded the big, fine steamboat 

 of the Grand Trunk Pacific Co. at 

 Vancouver on the night of the 9th of 

 August on my way to Prince Rupert. 

 When morning broke I found we 

 were rapidly nuoving over a per- 

 fectly calm sea between Vancouver 

 Island and the mainland. I will not 

 attempt to describe the voyage north. 

 It is a most delightful experience, 

 among hundreds of small islands, 

 each covered to the very top with 

 evergreen firs and cedars, while the 

 background is a range of snow-cov- 

 crcd mountains. Wednesday noon 

 saw me on the train for Telkwa, 

 which I hoped to reach at midnight, 

 but the fates interposed a small imi- 

 tation of the nether regions in the 

 way. At Hazelton the railway skirts 

 a magnificent canyon for quite a dis- 

 tance, and at one point crosses a 

 small arm by a bridge. Shortly be- 

 fore wo reached Hazelton two cars 



