1S!)7 



(CLEANINGS IN Bi';i-; Cl'l/rrRK. 



fd sejKualor, such as I have just described, 

 would involve the use of a great many ])ieces, 

 and a j^ood deal of work to jnit them toj^ether. 

 I'or the ordinary 4 '4 section there would be, 

 in fact, 11 jiieces. I must acknowled.y;e that I 

 myself fell that the nailinj^-up of such a sepa- 

 rator would be simply awful — that one would 

 get tired of puttering with so many little 

 l>ieces and so many nails to gel one separator. 

 l-"or several years back we have been making 

 cleated separators ; and till lately I felt sorry 

 for any one who thought it necessary to use 

 such a clap-trap. After being at JNliles Mt)r- 

 ton's I not only saw the great value of such a 

 separator, but found that the labor of putting 

 it together could be very greatly reduced by 

 using cabinet-makers' glue. Mr. Morton uses 

 a form which spaces the long strips and the 

 short ones just so far apart. The separate 

 pieces are dropped into the form, and those 

 surfaces that are to come in contact are smear- 

 ed with cabinet-makers' glue, when the strips 

 are laid in their proper positions. As the 

 form is made to take a deep pile, the stuff is 

 piled up, as it were, like cortlwood, and very 

 rapidly, too, by any kind of cheap help. Aft- 

 er the pile has been made, the tier of separat- 

 ors is lifted out of the form very carefully, set 

 to one side, and a weight placed on top. Of 

 course, in a few hours these separators are 

 ready for use. You may think that the glue 

 would not hold ; but Mr. Morton assured me 

 that he never had any of his separators break 

 at the glued joints. In my hands is part of a 

 separator that has been glued together. I 

 have tried to pull the stuff apart with m}- fin- 

 gers, and actually have had to give it up. (A 

 later attempt separated the parts, but the wood 

 itself gave way and not the glue. ) There is 

 every tiling in having good glue. The ordi- 

 nary prepared article will not be suitable for 

 such a purpose ; and, besides, it would be too 

 expensive. 



THK PRETTY EFFECT OF THE NO-BEE-WAY 

 SECTIONS FILLED WITH HONEY. 



You can get somewhat the effect of the non- 

 bee-way sections filled with honey, but not 

 entirely, if you take a series of your sections 

 that are filled out about equally, and, with a 

 conmion smoothing-plane, plane the edges of 

 the wood of the section until the bee-space, or 

 scoring-out, almost disappears. Now^ stand 

 four of such right by the side of those that 

 have not been planed off ; then note how much 

 prettier the former look. J. E. Crane, of Ver- 

 mont, showed me this trick seven years ago. 



I was not surprised when Mr. Morton's 

 brother-in-law, Mr. S. A. Niver, told me he 

 could get a higher price every time for Mr. 

 Morton's hone}- because it looked so plump 

 and nice — much more so than he could ever 

 get for sections having a full bee-space. 



Coming home, I found our friend Mr. Fran- 

 cis Danzenbaker, w4io uses a section, it will 

 be remembered, that has a bee-space on one 

 side, and none on the other. On the table he 

 placed four sections filled with comb honey, 

 with the bee-space side lowani us ; and from 

 the same lot he placed four other sections, 

 exactly like them, also filled with comb honey 



with the no-bee-s])ace side facing us. Any 

 one who could not see that the last four look- 

 ed several cents better per pound than the 

 first four mentioned nuist be blind indeed. I 

 said to Mr. Danzenbaker, that "the side of 

 the section having no bee-space on it looked 

 .so nuich nicer, why not go one step further 

 aiul take the bee-.space off the other side as 

 well, and use a double cleated separator?" 

 He was afraid that no-bee-s])ace sections 

 would not crate well in the shipping-case; and 

 he thought, moreover, that such a section 

 looked too lean when looked at from the side. 

 vSo far as the crating part of it is concerned, 

 Mr. Morton crates his honey right along with- 

 out any difficulty, but he always uses a piece 

 of thin veneering between each row of sec- 

 tions. So far as the leanness was concern- 

 ed, I must say that I could not see that it 

 made any practical difference. 



THE ADVANTAGE OF A NO-BEE-WAY SECTION 

 FOR SCRAPING. 

 Ever since I have been home from the East 

 I have been thinking of the great advantages 

 that would accrue from .sections having no 

 bee-space — sections perfectly flat on both 

 sides. They would be cheaper and easier to 

 make, far handsomer when filled with comb 

 honey; and when it comes time to scrape their 

 edges, how much easier to go over them with 

 a scraping-knife ! Just picture, for instance, 

 in your mind's eye, a section having a perfect- 

 ly flat side so far as the wood is concerned, 

 without any bee-space. Now, in your mind's 

 eye also take a common case-knife and clean 

 the propolis off from that whole side of the 

 section, with one stceep ; no jutting corners 

 nor curved openings to dodge into and out 

 again — absolutely no danger of gouging into 

 the honey. If you can't see that in your 

 mind's eye, take a smoothing-plane, cut off 

 enough wood from a section to obliterate the 

 openings or bee-ways on both sides, top and 

 bottom; then take a case-knife and lay it near 

 one corner and notice how easil}^ 3-ou can 

 scrape the whole four sides at one swing of 

 the knife. 



THE SAVING IN SHIPPING-CASES. 

 This is not all. With the no-bee-space sec- 

 tion we effect a great saving in shipping-cases. 

 Suppose, for instance, you take a i% section, 

 and leave off the bee-ways, and you will find 

 it to be 1 yi inches full instead of 1 % . If we use 

 double cleated separators, it will hold just as 

 much honey as the \% w'itli openings. Well, 

 then we can put in a shipping-case that ordi- 

 narily holds 24 one-pound I's sections, 32 

 sections of the same kind without the bee- 

 spaces or bee-ways. The gain to the honey- 

 producer in shipping-cases is just exactl}- 

 one-third. Or, to put it another way, the 

 honey -producer would save one-fourth the 

 cost of the shipping-cases by the adoption of 

 sections wdth no bee-ways. Besides this great 

 saving, he w'ill have honey that will run at 

 least one grade higher in the market. 



HOW THICK TO MAKE THE CLEATS TO CLEAT- 

 ED SEPARATORS. 



But, you may ask why Mr. Miles Morton 



