1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



21o 



GOLDENS LATEST SECTION-CLEANER. 



Some Essentials of Construction; Sandpaper on a 



Solid Disli Not as Good as Sandpaper 



on ;i Yielding Belt. 



BY J. A. GOI^DEN. 



Referring to your footnote, I did not expect 

 my section -cleaner to be made like a sewing- 

 machine. I have made a rough machine to 

 show the bee-keepers about how they may be 

 constructed, and surely they can be made 

 quite cheaply at the factory. This one is 

 made all of wood excepting about l(i bolts; 

 wheel, mandrel, and all. The base-apron 

 which the back roller rests on is a Ij-^ inch 

 board 4 inches long, and as wide as the space 

 between the top boards. Two holes are bored, 

 one on each side, and uprights put in for 

 the back roller to revolve in; opening at top 

 is to admit roller-mandrel. Two strips are 

 tacked on side boards, inside, for this board 

 to slide on. A hole is bored through length- 

 wise, and a wooden screw, or iron, as you can 



see in the picture, to tighten or loosen the 

 belt, is used. This is a little different; but the 

 wheel set down on a slide would be the easi- 

 est. There could still be a more simple and 

 cheaper machine than even this constructed. 



I have received quite a number of letters 

 from bee-keepers and honej^-dealers, compli- 

 menting me in regard to the wheel device — 

 Doolittle, Dadant, and others. 



You seem to think you have soniething 

 that will outshine all others. Well, I will in- 

 sist on your trying the belt alongside of a 

 solid-surface disk or wheel. You can dab a 

 section on a belt, and not even jar the comb; 

 but on a solid surface you must be very care- 

 ful. 



Reinersville, O., Feb. 11. 



[I have no doubt, friend Golden, that the 

 belt will prove superior to the disk; but my 

 idea was to develop a cheap machine that 

 everybody can have. Where one has a large 

 number of sections to clean, say fifteen or 

 twenty thousand, it would pay him, no doubt, 

 to have a section-cleaner something like what 

 you have shown us in the photo, even if it 

 did cost ten or fifteen dollars. But, friend G., 

 you have not yet told us whether there is any 

 difficulty about propolis filling up the sand- 

 paper ; neither have you told us whether 

 it is better to clean the sections in cool weath-. 

 er than in warm. In your next, please en- 

 lighten us on these points, and then tell us 

 whether coarse, medium, or fine sandpaper 

 should be used. — Ed.] 



ONTARIO CO. BEE-KEEPERS' CONVENTION. 



Different Pollen Substitutes; Feeding Milk, etc. 

 BY F. GREINER. 



There were some interesting subjects dis- 

 cussed at the Ontario Co. bee-keepers' conven- 

 tion last month, and some points were brought 

 out that may be of value to many others ; so I 

 will make the attempt to present some of them 

 — perhaps enlarge upon them — as the spirit 

 may move. 



Mr. Perry, of Bristol, gave it as his observa- 

 tion that it is not always the colonies numeri- 

 cally the strongest that gather the most hon- 

 ey. He ventured an explanation of this pe-" 

 culiarity, saying that it might be possible for 

 a colony to rear too much brood, more than 

 the}' could feed, and that thus the individual 

 ])ees would not have the vitality, longevity, 

 and general business qualification — yes, not 

 even the size — that bees do from other colo- 

 nies that were fed more plentifully. The main 

 trouble might lie in the lack of enough pollen. 



The discussion on the subject drifted this 

 way and that. It was suggested that, if there 

 were an insufficiency of pollen, a proper meth- 

 od of feeding might obviate the trouble. Prof. 

 F. Benton made mention of the prevailing 

 custom of bee-keepers in Cxerinany, who save 

 up great quantities of honey and pollen for 

 feeding by the unique way of throwing the 

 honey and pollen-containing combs into a big 

 barrel or hogshead, pounding them down, fill- 

 ing in more, pounding down again, continu- 

 ing in this way till the receptacle is full. 

 Sometimes they keep such honey over for 

 years, and always have a lot on hand for an 

 emergency, regulating the quantit}- according 

 to the number of colonies they keep. This 

 feeding-honey is harvested every fall by " tak- 

 ing up " the colonies not having sufficient 

 winter stores. It is as salable and as valuable 

 as any other kind of honey. I think that, if 

 Mr. Perry had such honey to feed to his bees, 

 perhaps they would all have as vigorous con- 

 stitutions as he could desire. 



Mr. Chester Olmstead kept the bee-keepers 

 of the convention in suspense for a while by 

 his statement that he had fed pollen to his 

 bees, and found it to be an excellent stimu- 

 lant. Bees fed on it had outstripped the rest 



