Vol. XII. 



MAR. 1, 1884. 



No. 5. 



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NOTES FROM THE BANNEK APIAKV. I 



NO. 53. 



BLASTED HOPES. 



SHAVE just " counted up," and there are twcnt j- 

 three persons living within two miles of my 

 — ' place who have invested in bees since I 

 started in the business, the majority of them being 

 induced to embark in the speculation from witness- 

 ing my own success. All except two were farmers, 

 and many of them went into the business quite ex- 

 tensively, bought bees, and transferred them to 

 movable-comb hives, Italianized them, bought an 

 extractor, smoker, honey-knife, fdu , sections, etc., 

 and of all .these twenty-three neighbors who thus 

 thought to either make money, or to "raise honey 

 enough for their own use," only two now own bees- 

 one has four colonies, the other one— and the only 

 one ^ho ever made any clear profit at the business 

 has now dropped both bee-keeping and farming, and 

 gone to the city as a book-keeper, while the majority 

 CLxpended enough money, to say nothing of the time, 

 to have bought from two to ten times as much honey 

 as they ever obtained. In speaking of being obliged 

 to go "hawking" our honey about in order to sell 

 it, I did not exactly mean that we were obliged to go 

 upon the streets, or to peddle from house to house, 

 but rather from store to store, or from dealer to 

 dealer, and this isn't the worst of it; wc cannot al- 

 tvays effect a sale, even at the wholesale market price. 

 With almost every other "raw" imperishable pro- 

 duct, we can load up and drive to town and "sell 

 out" at the market price. 



QUEEN-EXCLUDING HONEY-BOARDS. 



When I adopted the Langstroth hives, and turned 

 my attention to the production of comb honey, I us- 

 ed the Heddon skeleton or slat honey-board between 

 the brood-nest and the surplus department. This 

 honey-board deters the bees from extending small 

 pieces of comb upward from the brood-combs, and 

 connecting them with the lower bars of the section 

 boxes; it also discourages, but does not always pre- 

 vent, the queen from leaving the brood department 

 of the hives. In old colonies having a full comple- 

 ment of brood-combs, only in one or two instances 

 did the queen enter the surplus department, and 

 then only slight damage was done; but when prime 

 swarms were given access to the surplus depart- 

 ment at the time of hiving, the queen almost invari- 

 ably caused much trouble by going at once to the 

 honey-boxes and filling them with eggs, while the 

 frames below would bo tilled with honey. To remedy 

 the difficulty, I tacked narrow strips of tin to the 

 b Jttoms of the slats composing the skeleton honey- 

 boards, allowing them to project over sufliciently to 

 reduce the spaces to the merest trifle less than 5-J3 

 of an inch. To keep the slats exactly in position, 

 three strips of tin were tacked crosswise of them. 

 Upon trial, the queens could not pass through these 

 honey-boards (I caught a queen and forced her into 

 one of the spaces, and she could not extricate her- 

 self), while quite as much honey was placed in the 

 sections as before. Afterward, in making honey- 

 boards, the slats were made "a wide, and placed the 

 proper distance apart; and, when finished, the boards 

 were painted. To give it a trial, I ordered enough 

 zinc to make honey-boards for ten hives. The most 



