1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



177 



ises, or near by, pine, basswood, poplar, or 

 other .suitaV)le timber for his supplies which he 

 wishes to cut ; has sawing and planing facili- 

 ties at his command, and is somewhat of a me- 

 chanical turn of mind, then it may possibly 

 pay to manufacture some of the easier-made 

 articles himself, especially if he has leisure 

 time that otherwise would be wasted. But if 

 he has to buy his lumber, pay for the raw 

 material nearly or quite as much as the supply 

 manufacturer asks for the manufacturedarticle, 

 has to draw it fur miles to a saw or planing 

 mill, and then manufacture a greatly inferior 

 article in the end, in my opinion it does not 

 pay him. 



As an illustration I will give you a little ex- 

 perience of former years. In the earlier days 

 of our bee-keeping we had lo do, outside of 

 our own work, quite a little custom work for 

 our neighbors. We had no planer of our own, 

 but depended on our neighboring planing- 

 mills for that part of the work. In the manu- 

 facture of hives it is of great importance, as all 

 bee-keepers probably know, that most of the 

 lumber V^e dressed to exactly the required 

 thickness. A variation of .,'.j or even ,.', inch 

 will not answer. It must be within a hair's 

 breadth. Being anxious to have our planing 

 done in this manner, we would inquire of the 

 foreman of the mill something like this : 



" Can you dress this load of lumber exactly 

 ^4 inch thick ? " 



" Of course we can, or any thickness you 

 wish," would l)e the reply. 



After running the first Ijoard, we would find 

 on examination that it was either too thick or 

 too thin — sometimes ,\. out of the way. Then 

 the foreman would change his planer once or 

 more times until he thought the right thick- 

 ness was obtained. But another examination 

 would reveal the fact th it the planer did not 

 dress the two edges alike, or the middle of the 

 board would be thicker than the edges. This, 

 of course, was a serious affair. It could be 

 remedied only by putting the planer in perfect 

 working c rder ; and this, as every one ac- 

 quainted with machinery knows, is, under the 

 circumstances, a long and particular job. We 

 met the same trouble at all the surrounding 

 mills — never had planing done to our satisfac- 

 tion ; but in working up the material we had 

 to make allowance for their imperfect work. 



Now for the comparison. Last spring, after 

 the bee season had fairb opened, I found my- 

 self short of some supplies. I needed, among 

 other articles, a lot of supers, which in former 

 years I had manufactured myself ; but as con- 

 ditions were not favorable for making them at 

 that time I ordered them, with the rest of my 

 supplies, of The A. I Root Co. I hardly need 

 say that every thing arrived in first-class order 

 at the proper time. What interested me the 

 most -was their way of dressing lumber. As 

 soon as the packages were opened I took one 

 super side-piece out of the lot, and, with pock- 

 et-Yule in hand, proceeded to give it a thor- 

 ough inspection. The result was, measure 

 where I would, on the sides or ends, it mea- 

 sured so nearly ^4 inch, the thickness ordered, 

 that the naked eye could not detect any varia- 

 tion. Not satisfied with that, I then took four 



pieces of the same kind, laid them on top of 

 one another, and measured again. The result 

 was the same. WHien squeezed together the 

 four would measure exactly 'A inches. In oth- 

 er directions the same precision was plainly to 

 be noticed — perfect workmanship in every re- 

 spect. The question, why this difference ? is 

 easily answered. All the supply-manufactur- 

 er's machinery is calculated for this work ; 

 every thing works to perfection. He gets the 

 right kind of material in large lots, cheaper 

 and better than the individual bee-keeper 

 could po.'-sibly secure ; he has a chance to se- 

 lect from these large quantities whatever he 

 needs for the various purposes to the best ad- 

 vantage ; he has practically no waste of mate- 

 rial ; every thing, even to a little strip |s inch 

 square, is worked up into some salable article. 

 Other advantages could be mentioned, but it is 

 not nece.s.sary. If we look the matter squarely 

 in the face, 1 think it pays about as well to de- 

 pend on the regular manufacturer for our sup- 

 plies as to undertake to supply ourselves. 

 Naples, N. Y. 



[No one can appreciate the absolute im- 

 portance of having lumber of uniform thick- 

 ness so much as manufacturers of bee-sup- 

 plies. They have to have special planers and 

 special planer-knife grinders. The great trou- 

 ble with the average planing-mills is that they 

 allow the knives to become a little hollowing 

 in the center. It makes no difference in their 

 business, because, if their boards are a little 

 thicker in the middle, the house-builder makes 

 no complaint. It is a rule, I think, that the 

 average planing - mill man can not plane 

 boards of an absolute thickress, for the sim- 

 ple reason he has no facilities for doing it ; 

 and while we do not claim for ourselves per- 

 fection in this particular (as we know the 

 knives do sometimes get a little out on us 

 once in a while), our wood- workers know that, 

 if they allow stuff to go out of our shop, of 

 uneven thickness, they will hear from us in 

 no uncertain sound. — Ed.] 



CAGING QUEENS A LA DOOLITTLE. 



Tlie Plan Not Successful, and Why ; Preventing In- 

 crease ; Queenless Colonies ; do they Lack 

 Vim ? 



BY THOS. W. ODI^E. 



I was much interested in what Bro. Doolit- 

 tle says about caging queens, page 16. I have 

 experimented on this line to some extent, and 

 it was any thing but satisfactory. I caged the 

 queens of oO colonies in cages like Doolittle's, 

 with the stoppers left out, and deposited the 

 cages between the end-bars and comb, on top 

 of bottom-bars, or between two combs of 

 brood. The result was, the bees swarmed out 

 in three or four days after the queen was 

 caged. I would lift the combs and remove 

 the queen-cells, and in a day or two they 

 would come out again, and they continued to 

 do so as long as they had brood from which 

 they could start cells. The result was that 

 they got into such a fever to swarm that work 



