18'. "7 



CLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



325 



nesses of combs do not Impair the quality of 

 the honoy, which, though ill formed, has-ibeen 

 made under the same practical oouditions]'as 

 that which has been stored according to' the 

 higher art of modern bee-keeping. 



The word " fancy " means, as used in grading 

 comb honey, vastly more than shown. It 

 means the best honey stored when thatcpartic- 

 ular crop or llower product was approximating 

 its climax, and not its decline. The combs are 

 white, madeof 7ie«' uia-r— not of old gnawings 

 brought up before new wax was secreted. The 

 corners were filled out because the honey flow 

 was strong; cai)ped up because the honey was 

 ripe and ready to cap. 



Honey made under such conditions should 

 bring more money than honey put up in drawn 

 combs, half of which has been brought up from 

 the previous years' gathering, to make room 

 for brood, and capped with scraps of propolis, 

 or left uncapped along the edges. When ex- 

 posed to cold and damp, it has undergone such 

 changes that it is made faulty in other re- 

 spects than in appearance. 



Were it possible for the bee-keepers to raise 

 the fancy or best honey, and market it directly 

 to the consumers, only a very short time would 

 be required to establish a market almost with- 

 out limit for fancy honey. The consumer 

 would soon find that fancy meant more in the 

 selection than the word '■ honey " implies. It 

 is from the general meaning of the word honey 

 that consumers losei-atheir appetites Jfor fit. 

 "Fancy" honey stimulates the appetite and 

 increases the demand. 



Farwell, Mich. 



[Mr. Byron Walker, and some others, take 

 the ground that the " Fancy " in the Washing- 

 ton grading is drawn down too fine. In fact, 

 Mr. Walker once advertised that he would pay 

 a dollar a pound for all honey that would be 

 sent him conforming exnctly to the require- 

 ments laid down in the Fancy. He says he 

 was perfectly safe in making the offer, for he 

 never got a pound. Mr. Bingham's point, how- 

 ever, is good, a fancy article of honey should 

 be /ajicjy. Perhaps the trouble is our descrip- 

 tion for that term is not comprehensive enough. 

 — Ed.1 



WHAT ABOUT THE SELF-HIVER ■? 



HOW FAK WAS IT A SUfCKSS? 



B)/ C. H. Dihhern. 



SJSomehow a strange silence seems to have set- 

 tled on the self-hiverof late, and I suspect none 

 of the various inventions have proved very suc- 

 cessful, r Judging from my own ^experience, 

 extending over a number of years. I should say 

 that the perfect self-hiver is an impossibility; 

 and yet the impossible of to-day may be the 

 accomplished fact of to-morrow. 

 DNo doubt many*a bee-keeper, having an out- 

 apiary or two on his hands, is anxiously look- 

 ing for something of the kind— something, ^you 



know, that will hive the swarms when they 

 issue during his absence, change over the 

 honey-cases, remove old colony to a new place, 

 etc. One man wrote me that he wanted a hiver 

 that he could put on his hives in the spring, 

 and place the empty hives, provided with hon- 

 ey-sections, on them; and when he called 

 around in the fall, to find the swarms all safely 

 hived, honey-cases all filled, and every thing 

 lovely. That would be very nice, and almost 

 any one could go into bee-keeping, and make it 

 a success. 



Now, the trouble with all self-hivers is that 

 where bees issue out from the hive they will 

 also return again when they miss their queen. 

 If the queen is trapped in a new hive, or in a 

 queen -trap, only a handful or so of bees will 

 remain with her; and if more bees are not giv- 

 en her within a few days, she will either die or 

 get lost in some other way. 



My latest device, as described in Gleanings, 

 has proved reasonably successful in my own 

 experience. If I am present when the bees 

 swarm out, I have only to close up the direct 

 entrance; and the swarm, upon their return, 

 finding their queen in front of new hive, and 

 no way to get back into their old hive, have no 

 choice but to go into the new hive. In this 

 way I get good-sized honey-gathering swarms, 

 and I usually change over the surplus arrange- 

 ment at once, but it will not do to leave the old 

 hive more than a day or two without giving 

 them a direct entrance of their own. At first 

 I thought it would be a nice thing to allow the 

 bees from the old hive to reinforce the new 

 swarm for a week or two; but I soon found 

 that perhaps, for want of water, the bees in the 

 old hive would destroy the unsealed brood, and 

 in about two weeks the hive would contain 

 nothing but comb and a very few bees. The 

 new colony would prosper greatly, however, 

 and possibly this may be a point for those bee- 

 keepers who want no increase. 



The main advantage I claim for my device 

 over the queen-trap is that, when a swarm is- 

 sues during my absence, almost any member of 

 the family can take a smoker and close the en- 

 trance to old hive; and when I return in the 

 evening I find the full swarm nicely hived, and 

 can then fix them in a moment to suit me. With 

 ihe drone-trap I should have to divide the bees, 

 as but a small handful would be found with 

 the queen in the trap. 



Some of the drawbacks I have discovered 

 are that the bees dislike traveling the whole 

 length of the new hive before they can fly. 

 They are also liable to become sulky, and try 

 to gnaw holes where the bridge covers the 

 space between old and new hive. Still I be- 

 lieve I can overcome these objections by a 

 more perfect arrangement, and allow more 

 space through the zinc — four rows of perfora- 

 tions instead of two; but further experiment- 



