1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



297 



few hours old go through the motion of egg- 

 laying. Of course, no eggs remained in the 

 cells after slie withdrew her body. 1 do not 

 see any diiliculty in trying the above, unless 

 it is in inducing the bees to accept and rear 

 queen larvte that has been thus "tinkered" 

 with. If I understand friend L., all that is 

 necessary is to scoop out some of the milky 

 liquid food from drone larvje, and put it up- 

 on the larvre of the queen, and when she 

 hatches she will not require fertilization. As 

 a queen ordinarily does not lay until about 8 

 or lUdays on the average, we should be seve- 

 ral days ahead, even if she remained 2 days 

 longer in the cell. Will not some of our 

 Southern friends report in regard to this im- 

 mediately V You will observe, the matter 

 can be tested in say ten days or less during 

 the swarming season. 



FASTENING FOUNDATION IN FRAMES 

 AND SECTIONS. 



SOME NEW IMPLEMENTS FOR THE PURPOSE. 



a FTER making and selling quite a num- 

 ^h ber of the Easterday machines de- 



' scribed on p. 418, Vol. XI., we found 



quite a tendency for the tin points to bend 

 ovex". They sometimes also split out of the 

 wood. On this account we have thought 

 best to have them made entirely of metal, as 

 in the cut below, each point being braced 

 with a little bit of solder, so as to make 

 coming loose an impossibility. 



WIRE-IMBEDDER. 



The machine is made of one single sheet 

 of tin, made something like the handle of a 

 tea-kettle, only narrower. Where the hand 

 grasps it, a sort of " boss '' is put in to make 

 it easier to hold by. After the fdn. is laid 

 on the wires, as we have several times ex- 

 plained heretofore, by a rocking motion of the 

 tool the points are made to press the wire 

 down into the wax. Of course, the wax 

 must be warm enough so that the wire will 

 sink readily. Our friend Oliver Foster sent 

 us an implement some little time ago on the 

 same plan, only the strip holding the points 

 was on a straight line instead of a curve. 

 This does the work nicely, but it needs a 

 pretty powerful pressure to sink the points 

 all in at once ; while with the machine shown 

 above, a small girl can do it readily without 

 much fatigue. 



Our next implement is a machine devised 

 by Mr. Gray, and is an improvement on the 

 Clark fastener. It came about in this way : 

 One of the friends sent us a machine to be 

 worked with two treadles, which did the 

 work so nicely that I paid some ten or tifteen 

 dollars for the privilege of making them for 



sale. Before we got to making them, how- 

 ever, Mr. Gray said he thought one treadle 

 could be made to do the work, therefore we 

 have the machine shown below : 



GRA\' S MACniNE FOR FASTENING FDN. INTO SI C- 

 TIONS. 



To understand this you will need to re- 

 member that the block A slides in a groove, 

 and is drawn back by a coiled spring E. To 

 use it, lay on a section as shown in the cut ; 

 put your foot on the treadle until the hard- 

 wood block comes down on to the edge of 

 the fdn., mashing it firmly into the wood. 

 You will observe, that the treadle is made 

 of a hard piece of wood, cut out in such a 

 way as to form a forked treadle, as it were— 

 one piece holding the block that fastens in 

 the fdn., and the other piece being pivoted 

 so that, when the treadle is moved far 

 enough, it strikes the sliding block A. and 

 pushes the section and all clear out of the 

 machine ; in fact, the sections can be made 

 to drop into a basket so as to save the time 

 of the operator. This movement of pushing 

 the section out from under the hard-wood 

 block has the effect of bringing the fdn. 

 straight up, just as we want it ; and when 

 the machine is adjusted properly, the sec- 

 tions will drop into the basket with the strip 

 of fdn. hanging straight down, just as we 

 want it to get nice comb honey. 



JSlow, friends, you can have the first-men- 

 tioned machine made at any tin -shop by 

 showing them this picture ; and any tolera- 

 ble carpenter ought to be ab.e to make the 

 latter machine in the same way. If I should 

 stop right here, and not give prices at which 

 we can make them for you, I suppose some 

 of the brethren would think it a great deal 

 better; and then I should not be open to the 

 charge of using the ])ages of Glkanings as 

 an advertising medium for our own wares. 

 However, as a great many of you could not 

 get them made at the prices we can make 

 them for you, even if you did get them just 

 right, I think I will hazard giving prices, 

 even at the risk of having it thrown up to 

 me that this latter item is only another 

 " dodge." The price of the wire - imbedder 

 is 15 cts. each ; ^\.'2'i for 10; $12.00 per 100. 



The price of Gray's starter-machine is 75 



