GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Ki: 



THK NICW SKCTION WITH ITS KEN'CE ; NOV- 

 KLTIKS I-OR 1898. 

 The favorable reports that have come in 

 from those who have been using the no-bee- 

 way section and fence (cleate 1 separator) for 

 the last four or five years, tos^ether with words 

 of indorsement from some of the greatest api- 

 cultural lights in the United States, have de- 

 cided us to make the new devices regular for 

 the coming season rather than to supply them 

 on option as we at first proposed. Ordinarily 

 it would be good business policy to feel our 

 way by letting the new things push themselves 



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FENCE FOR .SEP.A.RATING SECTIONS. 



into isivor s^radually rather than to get behind 

 them and push them. Some of tlie reasons 

 (to recapitulate) that have influenced us to 

 make the fence and the no-bee-way section 

 regular — that is, a part of the regular hive- 

 equipments — are the following : 



NO-BEE-WAY SECTION SUPER WITH FENCE. 



1. The fences are made entirely of scrap, 

 and, consequently, will cost but little more 

 than the old-style separator, which, after be- 

 ing used a year, had to be discarded for a new 

 one. .As they will be glued together at the 

 factory by automatic machinery, the bee-keep- 

 er will not be bothered to put tliem together. 

 Those who have used this fence say it is good 

 for years. They are, therefore, cheaper when 

 viewed in this light than the old separators. 



2. Prettier and better filled comb honey can 

 be secured with a fence, for the reason that 

 the bees can crawl all through the slats, afford- 

 ing them easy and direct passageways from 

 one honey-box to another. One ^reat objec- 

 tion to the old-style super with its separators 

 was that it shut off each section box into a 

 comparttnent or rootn t)y itself ; and, as every 

 one knows, it was much harder to get bees to 



enter comb-honey su])ers than suj)ers of the 

 extracting sort. While we * do not g(j so far 

 as to .say that the fence will offer as much in- 

 ducement for the bees to enter the comb-honey 

 supers as those for extracted, we do believe 

 they afford most substantial encouragement ; 

 and for that rea.son we beliei'e the bees will 

 enter the supers a day or two earlier than they 

 otherwise would. 



STAPLED SPACED FRAMES. 



3. The peculiar construction of the fence 

 will, we believe, largely do away with the 

 passage-holes in the corners of the ordinary 

 section honey-boxes. I said, "We believe," 

 for we are not positive ; but after looking over 

 lots of honey prorluced with the fence, and 

 lots with the common separator, we notice the 

 corner holes are much more prominent in the 

 case of old-style .sections that have been di- 

 vided off with the ordinary separator. 



4. The fact that the fence is made up of 

 several different slats, bound by transverse 

 strips on each side, and grooved cleats on each 

 end, has a tendency to very materialh^ stiffen 

 and strengthen the section-holder. In case of 

 the old-style super, the bottom-bar of the sec- 

 tion-holder would sometimes sag ; but the 

 new fence is so much stiffer than the separator 

 that we believe it will do away largely with 

 the sagging of the bottom-bars. 



5. The new section, when filled with honey, 

 will bring a higher price, because they appear 

 to be and in fact are better filled out, and the 

 surfaces of the comljs themselves are more 

 even — at least this seems to be the experience 

 of those who have used such sections with a 

 cleated separator or fence ; for instance, see 

 what L. A. Aspinwall thinks in regard to this 

 — ^a bee-keeper who has u.sed them for years — 

 in the extract from the Bee-keepers' Review, 

 in the editorial department. 



(5. I'acility in scraping these sections with 

 their plain straight edges is quite an impor- 

 tant feature. It is not an easy matter to clean 

 out the insets of the ordinary old-style sec- 



* When I use the .singular first person, I mean my 

 opinion. When I use " we " I mean the opinion of 

 our company. 



