294 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apk 15 



Moral.— T)o not trust unknown firnas, even if 

 they do furnish good references. Write to the 

 references first; and while you are about it 

 write to us too, for we are on the track of near- 

 ly all the honey firms. Second, do not ship 

 your honey or any thing else without first re- 

 ceiving orders from the commission house. 



FOUNDATION WITHOUT SIDE WALLS. 



Allusion was made in our last issue to the 

 fact that a number of bee-keepers had clubbed 

 together to purchase a foundation mill that 

 would turn out an article without side walls. 

 Mr. Bingham, in a recent article in the Review, 

 in writing of this, says: "While not strictly an 

 invention, it is practically such." 



I do not know whether he meant to say that 

 such foundation was new or not; but, if I am 

 correct, the first foundation that was ever made 

 had no side walls. Cheshire, in his "Bees and 

 Bee-keeping," second volume (1887), has a good 

 deal to say about what he calls " artificial mid- 

 rib;" and in Fig. 48 he shows a wax-press for 

 making the product. One of the earliest pat- 

 ents on foundation, I believe, showed the foun- 

 dation without the walls. Something like 

 twelve or fifteen years ago we made a mill for 

 W. W. Bliss, then of Duarte, Cal., that turned 

 out a foundation without side walls, running 

 about fifteen feet to the pound— in fact, an al- 

 most exact duplicate of that which is turned 

 out on the mill made for the members of the 

 Michigan State Bee-keepers' Convention, the 

 product from which has been so greatly ad- 

 mired by Mr. Bingham and others. The first 

 foundation that was ever made by A. I. Root 

 was from small plates that were an exact 

 counterpart of the midrib without wall. One 

 of these old die-plates was used in the office, as 

 a memento of old days gone by, but serving in 

 the exalted position of a paper-weight. Sin- 

 gularly enough, up till recently it was wont to 

 hold down the piles of orders for the new Weed 

 process foundation. 



Artificial midrib, if we adopt the word of Mr. 

 Cheshire, is not a new article; but the mere 

 fact that it has been tried in the past, and 

 seemed to have been forgotten for some reason 

 or other for the regular foundation, is some- 

 what significant. But many another good 

 thing has been abandoned, which later on has 

 proved to be of value. Possibly this may be 

 true of the article over which a few of the 

 members of the Michigan State Convention 

 were so enthusiastic. 



But if it is a light foundation that is wanted, 

 we can make, and, in fact, have made, an extra 

 thin, having side wall, running 15 feet to the 

 pound : and I am not sure but we could make it 

 as light as 18; but the very light grades do not 

 seem to meet with a very favorable reception 

 by the bees nor by their owners. 



Mr. Bingham seems to feel that the septum, 

 or midrib, without side walls, would be less lia- 

 ble to sag than that with. To me it would 

 seem as if it were the other way. The grounds 

 for Mr. Bingham's convictions are that a side 

 wall is unnatural, and that, in the effort of the 

 bees to improve it, they fall into all sorts of ca- 

 lamities. These are points that this season's 

 experimenting will very easily settle. 



THE ORTON TEN COLONY TENEMENT HIVE. 



Some little time ago we received two fine 

 photos of a tenement double-walled hive, and 

 along with them came a short description. 

 This last seems to have been mislaid during 

 the interim in which the engravings were being 

 made. I have been waiting for it to " turn up," 

 but as the subject-matter will soon be out of 

 season I decided to submit it to our readers, 

 without a description, and let the pictures do 

 their own talking. 



As will be noticed, it is a double-walled hive 

 made to take ten colonies. The cover easily 

 tilts back on hinges, to permit of the manipula- 

 tion of the colonies, though I imagine it would 

 be a little cramped in working under the cover. 

 The whole material for making up the hive, in- 

 cluding the drop siding, if I remember correct- 

 ly, was less than $5.00; and from the pictures 

 almost any one could construct one like it. Of 

 course, he would have to figure out his own di- 

 mensions. 



One objection to the ordinary tenement hives 

 is that they are unwieldy. As usually con- 

 structed they are made to take four colonies. 

 When sufficient space is allowed for packing, it 

 makes the space so large that it will not go in- 

 to an ordinary wagon. By taking off the 

 wagon-box, and extending the reach, this hive 

 of Mr. Orton's could be skidded up on to the 

 wagon; but as a general rule, after it is once set 

 down it should stay in that location. Such a 

 hive would be convenient at out-apiaries; and 

 if located in sight of a house, and the cover se- 

 cured down by means of a padlock, it ought to 

 be reasonably free from the depredations of 

 thieves and heavy winds. 



It will be noticed that the upper stories of 

 each brood-section are packed with sawdust or 

 other loose material. By looking very closely 

 you will notice on the back side of the open 

 hive that there is a space for packing-material 

 around the ends of the hives. If there is only 

 thin wood between each brood-nest the two 

 contiguous colonies would be apt to cluster up 

 next to this on account of the warmth. When 

 we kept our tenement hives running, the win- 

 ter clusters in the four hives were huddled to- 

 gether as closely as possible, and I have no 

 doubt that Mr. Orton finds his colonies have a 

 tendency to cluster in pairs— one on each side of 

 the thin board separating the two colonies. 



