1898 



GIvEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



341 



SECTION-CLEANING MACHINES. 



A Discussion of the Various Principles Involved. 



BY J. E. CRANE. 



Editor Gleanings : — I thought 1 ought to 

 sit down this morning and have a plain talk 

 with you about the forthcoming section-clean- 

 ing machine. Four or five illustrations have 

 appeared in our bee-journals, and 1 fear none 

 are of much practical value except for the 

 new plain sections. But as perhaps ninety- 

 nine out of every one hundred sections made 

 are of the old style, with wide sides and nar- 

 row top and bottom, the cleaning-machines so 

 far illustrated do not promise much help ex- 

 cept in polishing the outsides, unless it be 

 Mr. Golden's band or belted cleaner ; and 

 even this, it seems to me, has some serious 

 objections. 



To begin with, the use of sandpaper to clean 

 propolis seems objectionable in that it is likely 

 to gum up quickly. Although this has been 

 suggested two or three times in our journals, I 

 have so far seen nothing in print from those 

 who have used these machines, pro or con. 



As it is propolis we want to get rid of first 

 of all, it would seem a most important question 

 whether sandpaper will answer for this pur- 

 pose or not ; so I wrote to Mr. Aspinwall some 

 time last month. In his reply he says, " Sand- 

 paper is of no use. It will gum in cleaning 20 

 or 30 fections, and must be glued, otherwise 

 any breakage will injure the comb honey. 

 Emery cloth needs no gluing, but will gum 

 the same." I will not quote more, as he has 

 prepared a paper on this subject for the March 

 Rcviezv, and I do not wish to steal his thunder. 



For cleaning or polishing the sections after 

 the propolis is largely removed, or for sections 

 quite free from this sticky product of the bees, 

 especially the outsides of sections, nothing 

 would seem to be better than a sandpaper 

 disk. Sandpaper is used very extensively in 

 wood factories in this way ; but for cleaning 

 the edges of sections it will be seen at once 

 that the disk will not come within an eighth 

 of an inch of the edge of top and bottom of 

 the old-style sections ; and you may remem- 

 ber that, with the sections with sides wider 

 than top and bottom, we usually get the most 

 propolis on the edges of top and bottom pieces, 

 and on the inside edges of the sides. I fear 

 it will not save much time if we have to 

 go over and clean these edges with a knife 

 after we have used a machine. Mr. Aspin- 

 wall's roll, as illustrated, does not look as 

 though it could be made to do quite a clean 

 job on the old-style sections 



There seems to me another objection to the 

 sandpaper disk for cleaning the edges of the 

 plain sections, even if we were sure it would 

 not gum up. I find the space in old-style sec- 

 tions between the comb (when filled and cap- 

 ped) and separator is just j\ of an inch. In 

 the new cleated separator the cleats are j-j of 

 an inch thick ; and if we take f^ from i\ of 

 an inch it will leave just 4V of an inch as the 

 space between the face of the comb and the 

 edges of the sections ; or, to put it more sim- 

 ply, the sandpaper disk comes within ^ of an 



inch of the face of the comb. Now, suppose 

 the disk tears off a piece of propolis j^g inch 

 thick (I frequently find pieces }g thick), what 

 will become of it ? Why, it will be driven by 

 the disk into the honey, or rolled over its sur- 

 face and mar it. Or suppose it grinds the 

 propolis to powder, it vdll then, with the pow- 

 dered wood, stick to the disk, or else much of 

 it be lodged against the face of the comb ; and 

 if the weather is warm it will be likely to stick 

 there. The same difficulty would come from 

 the use of a broad belt. If we must have the 

 propolis I should much prefer to have it on 

 the edges of the section to the face of the 

 comb. 



But perhaps my fears are imaginary. At 

 most I claim them only as theoretical. It will, 

 however, be noticed that a revolving cylinder 

 will, by its motion, throw all propolis and 

 dust, that do not stick to it, away from the 

 comb, which is one point in its favor. 



To have a cleaning-machine that would be 

 entirely satisfactory we should like one that we 

 could pile the sections into by the clampful, 

 like golden sheaves of grain into a thrashing- 

 machine, and have our sections come out at 

 the other end all free from propolis, and pol- 

 ished to a turn ; yes, and graded into three 

 piles — Fancy, No. 1, and Seconds. But this is 

 not likely to be. 



But what are we to save in time by a sec- 

 tion-cleaner, any way ? How many sections 

 will or should a good machine clean an hour, 

 or day of ten hours ? Another question conies 

 in right here : How many sections, as they 

 run, will a man or woman clean in a day? 

 Mr. Aspinwall says in Review that he could 

 clean twice as fast with his machine as by 

 hand. How fast does he clean by hand ? I 

 found last season I could average just about 

 1000 in ten hours, and clean my clamps ; and 

 yet my right-hand man, who had no previous 

 experience, could not clean more than 500, al- 

 though much stronger than I am, and a very 

 active man, and he called it the hardest work 

 of the season. An aching shoulder for some 

 weeks after I got through cleaning led me to 

 think I had worked harder than was wdse. 



If a cleaning-machine will not clean any 

 faster, it seems as though one might do it 

 much easier and better, which would be a 

 great gain. 



I have certainly been much interested in 

 this subject, and have given it considerable 

 thought, and carefully studied every thing I 

 could find on this subject. The greatest dif- 

 ficulty seems to be that any thing now pro- 

 posed that will do the work well will gum up 

 or vnll not reach all the propolis. If a solid 

 cylinder of emery, such as Mr. Aspinwall illus- 

 trated in the Reviezv ( it looks like solid em- 

 ery), will not clog up too quickly with propo- 

 lis, or if it can be cleaned quickly, it would, if 

 of the right shape, do the work, it seems to 

 me, very effectively. I send you illustration 

 of such a roll or cylinder of such shape as to 

 clean the edges of old-style sections. 



That we might have something that would 

 scrape off the gum, and not clog, I have 

 thought of a cylindrical spring wire brush. 

 The motion of the wires would likely clean 



