1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



309 



the poorest location one year may be the best 

 next. 



I work mostly for big-comb honey in brood- 

 frames in upper stories. I use a queen-ex- 

 cluder, and put in two empty combs on one 

 side to get the bees started up, and the rest 

 are empty frames with good starters all around 

 except the bottom. I can raise more comb 

 honey in this way by far than I can in small 

 sections, and have two combs to every hive 

 for extracting, besides. My ! but this big- 

 comb honey does sell ! People come with big 

 jars and dish-pans and candy-buckets and tin 

 pails. Where I sell by mail orders I ship in 

 cindy-buckets and tin pails. Sometimes an 

 old farmer will come along and take a whole 

 upper story right in the frames. People say 

 this big comb honey is by far better matured 

 and better flavored than the small-section 

 honey. Think of a Simplicity frame weigh- 

 ing 9 lbs. Bite into one of them, and you go 

 in over your eyes. Think of an entire cluster 

 of bees all working together instead of being 

 divided up into 32 little squads ! 



I sell my big-comb honey at 10 cents per 

 pound — cheap enough for farmers to buy for 

 work-hands. The low price for something 

 extra makes it sell. All colonies that I think 

 will not swarm, and all new early swarms, I 

 work for small-section honey; but I can con- 

 trol swarming to some extent by working for 

 " big comb honey " as the people call it. 



Where bees were not well protected, the 

 loss this winter is heavy in our portion of the 

 country My loss is altogether from starva- 

 tion. I lose about ten per cent. I winter out 

 of doors in single-walled hives. I use the Hill 

 device, and pack well with carpet and lots of 

 rags. 



North Manchester, Ind., March 20. 



[Knowing all the circumstances, you are 

 doubtless able to give a reason why that oue 

 colony should do so well in comparison with 

 the others, that is a correct one; but fiom 

 this point of view I can only suggest that if, 

 as you say, those seven colonies were equal in 

 every respect so far as strength and quarters 

 were concerned, that the one that so far out- 

 stripped the others had better workers We 

 once had a colony in our apiary that would fill 

 its hive full of honey when the other bees 

 would be almost on the verge of starvation. 

 Work? We never had anything like them. 

 Rob? They would clean out any thing they 

 could fight down. The queen of this colony 

 we called the " honey queen," and her daugh- 

 ters were sold at advanced prices. Now, I 

 can only guess that possibly the queen of that 

 particular colony you refer to is the mother of 

 an active strain of bees; and if I am correct in 

 my surmises you have a queen whose stock 

 would be worth developing. 



With regard to chunk honey, there are some 

 localities where consumers take moie kindly 

 to honey in this form than in the latest sec- 

 tion honey-boxes. That more honey can be 

 produced in this way is doubtless true; for the 

 bees will not store so much honey in a lot of 

 small compartments shut off by themselves as 

 they will in one large compartment. That is 



one reason why I advocate and prefer plain 

 sections and fences — because they afford a 

 more open communication. — Ed.] 



HOW TO START BEES IN SECTIONS. 



Production of Comb and Extracted Honey ; a 

 uable Article. 



Val- 



BY MRS. A. J. BARBER. 



I have been, for several years, very much 

 interested in trying and comparing different 

 methods of handling bees for comb honey. I 

 have been in the business for eight years, and 

 have had fair success. For the first five years 

 I tried a different method each year. Three 

 years ago I tried an experiment that succeeded 

 so well I have followed it up, and have in a 

 measure overcome the two greatest difficulties 

 that I had to contend with — loafing and swarm- 

 ing. We use the eight-frame Dovetailed hives 

 with section - holders for A%s.A% sections. 

 Our bees would always begin to loaf or hang 

 out on the front of the hives when we put on 

 the sections, and most of them would do but 

 little in the sections until they had lost sever- 

 al days, and then would swarm, thus losing 

 several days of the first alfalfa bloom. 



I had sixty colonits of Italians in my out- 

 apiary, and in trying my experiment I tried to 

 be fair. I took 30 supers of half-depth ex- 

 tracting-frames full of comb from the home 

 apiary, and put them on 30 hives in the out- 

 apiary at the same time that I put sections on 

 the other 30 hives. In four or five days the 

 extracting-combs were full of new honey, and 

 the bees excited and busy at their work, while 

 most of those having sections were loafing, 

 and some had swarmed. 



I raised the combs by putting a super of 

 sections between them and the brot d-nest. At 

 the end of two weeks from putting c n the 

 combs those sections under the combs were 

 better filled than those on the hives that had 

 no combs. As soon as the combs were sealed 

 I put them away to extract, having that 

 amount of honey extra, and the bees started 

 nicely in their work. I had only about a third 

 as many swarms from those hives as from the 

 ones with sections and no combs 



I liked the plan so well that last year I had 

 enough of those little combs built to furnish a 

 super of them to every colony that was to be 

 run for section honey. 



I tried the plan again this year, and from 75 

 colonies at the out-apiary I had 8000 fine white 

 marketable sections, about 500 lbs. of unfin- 

 ished and imperfect sections, 1500 lbs. of ex- 

 tracted honey, and about 60 lbs of beeswax, 

 and two barrels of vinegar. We got short of 

 fixtures, and I had to cut out sr rne of my lit- 

 tle combs and have the bees build them again 

 to keep them at work. I forgot to mention 

 that we sell a lot of those combs to families 

 for home use, as we can sell them cheaper than 

 sections. When we cut them out we do so 

 after extracting, and then the washings make 

 good vinegar, and the wax goes into the solar 

 extractor, and is of the best quality. We 

 leave half an inch of comb at the top of the 

 frame, to save putting in foundation. I do 



