510 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 15. 



now. Yon men up there in the North do not 

 seem to have mnch confidence in yonr fellow- 

 man. I am inclined to believe every thing I 

 hear. I will make one more statement and try 

 to prove ray former ones; and if I do not get 

 some evidence on my side, then I am done. 



Friend Root, do you know that our common 

 house-martins that make their appearance 

 every spring, when they leave in the fall and 

 go to their winter quarters settle on a kind of 

 rush (just like a swarm of bees on a-limb), un- 

 til the rush bends down and lets them sink into 

 the water and there they stay all winter in a 

 dormant condition ? Of course, you do not be- 

 lieve it. as you did not readily believe the story 

 of the little snakes running into their mother's 

 mouth. You seem to think nothing can live 

 any length of time in and out of the water. 

 Now as to the evidence: 1. I will refer you 

 with this bird tale to A.J.Cook: 3. If there 

 are any snapping-turtles in your little creek at 

 Medina, take one out and keep it 24 hours, and 

 then tickle it on the nose with your finger, and 

 report results. 



A. B. Baii'd's bees can puncture grapes and 

 hull wheat. Take one dozen bundles of good 

 ripe and sound Concord grapes, and mash up 

 half the bunches, and set them all together be- 

 fore your bees, and watch the result. Let the 

 truth come, Bro. Root. 



Y^es, A. B. Baird's bees can bite. I bought 

 me a tJray's covered feeder of A. I. Root, and the 

 saw had left a stringy substance in the entrance 

 uncut, which the bees bit out in a short time. 

 They also bit one of my hives in the entrance 

 until it was larger. E. France will say " mice " 

 again. Well, friend F., if bees will suck chilled 

 brood as dry as chips, why can they not suck 

 a chicken as dry as a chip also? 



J. D. Whittenburg. 



Marshfield, Mo., May 9. 



[We will not attempt to dispute your state- 

 ments, because — because you are abetter joker 

 than the rest of us. Say, do those martins stay 

 in the water dormant for ever?] E. R. 



[I am well aware that bees can bite sufficient- 

 ly to enlarge the entrance to their hives, as 

 they do sometimes where they are made care- 

 lessly too small. I have also seen robbers work 

 at a crack until they cut away wood enough so 

 they could manage to squeeze through it; and 

 I have been for years pretty well satisfied that 

 bees do, at least occasionally, manage to get 

 into certain kinds of grapes. Perhaps they 

 push in between the skin and stem, and thus 

 get an opening. I believe, however, this does 

 not often happen; and it is usually confined to 

 the sweetest varieties of grapes, such as are 

 grown in California, together with the Dela- 

 wares and some other varieties grown here.] 



A. I. R. 



EXTKACTING-CASES. 



SHALLOW EXTRACTING -FRAMES VS. THE FULL- 



DEPTH L. frame; THE BEE-ESCAPE NOT 



A SUCCESS. 



I am free to say that I can't understand why 

 so many large producers of extracted honey 

 still use full-sized Langstroth supers. When I 

 remember what time it has taken to lift out 

 frame by frame, shake them and brush off the 

 bees, etc., what difficulty I had when the honey- 

 flow suddenly ceased, and robbers were trouble- 

 some, I can hardly think now of getting along 

 Avith my increased number of colonies without 

 shallow supers. 



The main advantage of shallow supers is, 



that I take oft' the whole super at once, and do 

 this nearly as quick as anybody can take out a 

 single frame. For two men it takes hardly an 

 hour in the morning to wheel all the supers 

 into the honey-house. We can extract during 

 the day. and in half an hour they are set back 

 on the hive in the evening. With the full- 

 story supers one man had to work all day in the 

 apiary, and had not much time to take a rest if 

 the other fellow at the extractor were to be 

 kept busy. We now do all the outside work in 

 the cool morning and evening. Surely he who 

 still uses a full-story super has never tried a 

 shallow one. 



It seems that the idea is prevailing, that, 

 with shallow supers, the honey must remain on 

 the hive till the honey-flow is over. I do not 

 do so, but extract the most of the honey during 

 the honey-flow. I storify the supers in so far 

 that the extracted combs are set just ov(n' the 

 honey-board (mostly queen-excluding), and the 

 super on top is taken off only for extracting. 

 If we use three supers for every strong colony, 

 we take off capped honey from top, and all the 

 uncapped honey remains in the hive till we 

 come along again to the same hive. All the 

 time the bees have plenty of empty combs, and 

 we can extract as quickly as the "bees bring in 

 the honey. All this is inipossible with a two- 

 story Langstroth hive. Here you must extract 

 capped and uncapped, thick and thin honey, 

 because both kinds are in the same frame, and 

 nevertheless the bees have sometimes not emp- 

 ty cells enough. By the shallow-super system 

 we have no danger from swarms, and do not 

 have to fuss with taking out queens, etc., a la 

 France. 



In getting the bees out of the supers we use 

 Heddon's plan, smoking them down. If the 

 honey is capped we have no difficulty in doing 

 it, and I can easily take off' as many supers as 

 the assistant can wheel into the honey-house, 

 but if the case contains uncapped honey, or, 

 still worse, some brood, the bees will not readily 

 leave the super; and that is one of the reasons 

 I want a queen-excluding honey-board. The 

 few bees remaining in the supers will escape 

 from the honey-house. I tried the shaking-out 

 plan, but it made little difference in the number 

 of bees remaining in the super. 



Bee-escapes did not work with me. Some- 

 times the bees are very slow in leaving a super; 

 but even if the escapes would work all right all 

 the time, I would not use them; it is too much 

 work for me to handle the supers so often. 

 When I lift off a super to slip the escape under 

 it, I can just as well set it on a wheelbarrow 

 and save a second lifting. 



You will say in your foot-note to this article, 

 " That's old." I know it is; but what I wish to 

 know is, why do you in yonr price list recom- 

 mend a two-story hive for extracting ? Why 

 do yon not add 5^^-inch-high frames and cor- 

 responding cases to your Dovetailed hive? In 

 1889, page 190, you say. "Our dovetailed supers 

 can be used for the half-depth bodies if desir- 

 ed." But you never offered frames for this 

 purpose. By the way, I think these supers 

 would be too shallow. I use frames 5% inches 

 high, because this size is just right for my 11- 

 inch extractor, and the supers can be made of 

 six-inch lumber, without waste. It is not too 

 deep to smoke out the bees, and a shallow frame 

 would cost more for the same comb surface. I 

 have used these cases for five years with com- 

 mon hanging frames; but I think now they can 

 be improved by using closed-end frames. 



Here let me add a few words in regard to 

 closed-end frames. The hives I got from you 

 this winter contain swarms now. and some of 

 my old frames I have changed to closed-end 

 frames. As yet, I am very well pleased with 



