1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



911 



Symposium on Fences and 

 Plain Sections. 



Do They Produce Better-filled Boxes? 



Is there any Ridging of the Comb 



Honey? Various Constructions 



of Fences; Some Criticisms 



and Suggestions. 



BY E. R. ROOT. 



A year ago last August I made my first ac- 

 quaintance with the fence, and what may be 

 called a modification of the present plain sec- 

 tion, at Mr. Morton's. I was immediately im- 

 pressed with some of their salient features, and 

 came home with the determination of bring- 

 ing them before the bee keeping world. I said 

 I became acquainted with the fence a year ago 

 last August. I knew that Mr. Danzenbaker 

 had something similar the year previous, and 

 that B. Taylor and Oliver Foster preceded 

 him ; but, as Samantha Allen wou'd say, I did 

 not "sense" their value till the time above 

 stated. 



Along about this time it appears that W. Z. 

 Hutchinson was studying on the same prob- 

 lem. He too had noticed how well plain sec- 

 tions were filled, and showed some of them in 

 the Revieiv about the time I began to talk 

 about them in GLEANINGS. 



From that time to this a great deal has been 

 said, both pro and con ; but, in spite of all 

 that has been written, there seems to be much 

 that is not understood. There has been a 

 strange mixture of fact and fancy, honest en- 

 thusiasm and prejudice ; and through it all it 

 has been difficult at times for the average 

 reader to tell just where the truth lay. But 

 during all this time I felt sure that the expe- 

 rience of Miles Morton, Francis Danzenbaker, 

 L. A. Aspinwall, the late B. Taylor, Oliver 

 Foster, and others who had tried this kind of 

 section, might be, to a very great extent, re- 

 lied on ; and, nothing daunted, I banked my 

 expectations — yes, my very statements — on 

 the experience of these men. But still there 

 were some doubting Thomases who threw out 

 this or that objection, so much so that at times 

 I myself began to wonder whether we had not 

 made a mistake in pushing what I had felt all 

 along was a great improvement, the other fel- 

 lows to the contrary. But as months rolled 

 by, and as reports began to come in from 

 every quarter, my doubts as well as the doubts 

 of some honest doubters were dispelled ; and, 

 to make assurance doubly certain, I traveled 

 this sunmier and fall several thousand miles to 

 see the honey in plain sections, and to talk with 

 the men who produced it. Of course, I did not 

 go all this distance simply and solely to learn 

 about the new sections ; but everywhere I 

 went I took particular pains to inquire about 

 them ; and now I propose to place before our 

 readers the results drawn from a large corres- 



pondence and from much traveling and obser- 

 vation ; and in doing so I shall endeavor to 

 state the facts exactly as I have found them. 



At the outset I will state that there have 

 been a few adverse reports ; but when I came 

 to simmer them down I found that, in nearly 

 every case, and I do not know but in all, the 

 unfavorable result was owing to the faulty 

 construction of super or fences. For example, 

 the S fences we sent out last season were not 

 properly constructed ; but as they represented 

 a very small percentage of the total number of 

 other fences differently constructed, very little 

 harm, comparatively, was done. The S fence 

 was designed to fit the old-style supers, but in 

 actual practice it did not do so ; and, as a con- 

 sequence, bee-spaces between the sections and 

 the fences were irregular, resulting, in a few 

 instances, in the combs bulging beyond the 

 face of the sections ; but in every case, so far 

 as I can remember, where the regular supers 

 and fences were used (the last named consti- 

 tuted perhaps nine-tenths of all the fences we 

 sold last season) the results were generally 

 favorable — so much so that we shall make lit- 

 tle or no change in fences for 1899. But there 

 were one or two minor defects, and these will 

 be remedied. These changes are so slight, 

 indeed, that the fences of 1898 and '99 can be 

 used interchangeably in the same super. 



As there may be some of our readers who 

 are not acquainted with these new goods, I 

 will explain that the new section is simply 

 a baud of wood, without insets or openings. 

 Unlike the ordinary sections having bee-ways 

 or insets, the top and bottom are of equal 

 width with the sides. It is evident that the 

 bee-way must be either in the separator or in 

 the section. If not in the latter, then it must 

 be an the separator. Cleats (to form the bee- 

 ways) anywhere from ^ to % inch wide, and 

 from ^s to -j'-o inch thick, are placed transverse- 

 ly across the separator, and at intervals equal 

 to the width of the section. Tin might be 

 used cleated on both sides, or strips of thin 

 veneering wood in lieu of the tin. 



The late B. Taylor, Oliver Foster, and Miles 

 Morton conceived the idea of using slats bee- 

 spaced apart as shown in the accompanying 

 diagrams. It was this form of separator that 



SEPARATOR 



-u 



struck me as being an improvement on any 

 other, for the reason that it afforded a contin- 

 uous communication back and forth through 

 the sections, and, as I thought, would secure 

 better filling. The results of the past season 

 seem to justify in part the assumption. 



As this cleated separator looked very much. 



