1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



437 



fc : e.R Root, 



OUR apiarist, Mr. Wardell, is now raising 

 queens successfully a la Doolittle, in the 

 brood-nest, with a la) ing queen attending to 

 her duties in the hive. Cell raising has been 

 going on right along during this spell of cool 

 weather we have been having for the last eight 

 or ten days, apparently, without let or hin- 

 drance. 



Before the next issue is out the honey sea- 

 son in most localities will have begun. The 

 locusts are just going out, and white clover is 

 just beginning to show its beautiful heads 

 here and there. This would have been an 

 ideal spring except for the fact that it has 

 generally feen cool for the last ten days — ■ 

 that is, irom the 17th to the 27th. While win- 

 ter losses have been heavy, most bee-keepers 

 are hopeful because the conditions have been 

 fairly favorable. 



Strangely enough, the queen-breeders of 

 the South have this spring had almost no ad- 

 vantage over those of the North. During 

 March and the fore part of April the weather 

 was about as unfavorable for queen-rearing in 

 the southern portions of our country as in the 

 northern; and when the weather did open up 

 warm and balmy, the queen-breeders in the 

 North could begin just as soon. These 

 thoughts came to me when we tried to get 

 queens from the South this spring. The al- 

 most universal complaint seemed to be that 

 the weather had bet n too unfavorable in the 

 vSouth. 



T. F. Bingham, of Farwell, Mich., the 

 smoker man, lost 80 colonies of bees on the 

 11th by a spark from the railroad, which, pre- 

 sumably, was close at hand. A hive of bees 

 with its dry lumber, with its combs that burn 

 almost like tar, makes good material for a 

 fire ; and if the grass caught fire near one hive 

 it might be the means of spreading it to every 

 other colony in the apiary. When I visited 

 W. L. Coggshall we stopped at one yard where 

 two colonies were literally burned clean, leav- 

 ing nothing but the tin roofs, the nails, and 

 the ashes, and it was a wonder it did not take 

 the whole apiary. This fire caught from a 

 smoker. 



THE HONEY OF APIS DORSATA. 



Attention is called to the fact in the arti- 

 cle elsewhere on Apis dorsal a, that the honey 

 that is stored in combs built by these bees in 

 open air is apt to sour. It is well known that, 

 in an ordinary hive, bees get up an artificial 

 current that carries on the process of evapora- 

 tion very rapidly. But such artificial currents 

 can scarcely be secured in case of a unicomb 

 hanging in the open air on the limb of a tree. . 

 While India has a very hot climate, W. P., at 

 my elbow, says it is very moist for the greater 

 part of the year at least. This, no doubt, 

 would account in part for the thinness of the 

 honey and for its tendency to ferment. 



SECTION-CLEANING machines. 



We have here one of the latest Aspinwall 

 section-cleaners. Il is a foot-power machine 

 having a mandrel at the top, and in conven- 

 ient reach of the operator. On the end of 

 this mandrel is secured a metal cylinder about 

 2 inches in diameter and 8 inches long. At 

 equal intervals are slots cut lengthwise of this 

 cylinder, and in these slots are fitted scrap- 

 ing knives that project out about like the 

 bit of a plane through the face of the block. 



Unlike the ordinary sandpaper machine this 

 does not clog with propolis. It does the work 

 rapidly, but does not, to my notion, do as nice 

 a job as an ordinary scraping-knife or sand- 

 paper; but as it works so successfully with Mr. 

 Aspinwall, I am free to acknowledge that I 

 have not yet learned the knack of scraping 

 with a machine of this kind. C. Davenport, 

 in an article in the Amer. Bee Journal, tells 

 of a series of interesting experiments with 

 machine section -cleaners. Sandpaper, com- 

 position sand -wheels, emery wheels, and the 

 like, he finds, fill up with propolis. He then 

 adopted a "wooden roller about 2 inches in 

 diameter," with " steel knives in these about 

 l /e inch apart," projecting "about 1 inch above 

 the wood," the knives being let into saw- 

 kerfs. This cleaner, he said, "will remove 

 propolis from sections very rapidly. It never 

 clogs up, even if the glue is so soft that it is dif- 

 ficult to clean the sections by hand ; though 

 when the edges of the sections are held against 

 it, care has to be taken or the knives will 

 catch on the corners, and instantly tear the 

 whole section to pieces." 



I have just received word from Mr. J. A. 

 Golden, of Reinersville, O., whose machine 

 section-cleaner we illustrated on page 215 of 

 this journal for last year. This makes use of 

 a sand-belt; and, unlike the ordinary sandpa- 

 per, he says it does not clog up with propolis, 

 but does the work rapidly and nicely. Mr. 

 Golden writes that he now has the machine so 

 perfected that any child can run it. The belt 

 he uses is made of sand-cloth, about 4 inches 

 wide, and runs on two pulleys that are geared 

 up to give a good speed. The operation of 

 cleaning is to lay the section on the belt, and 

 the yielding surface, he saj^s, does not mar or 

 damage the edges of the section. I have ask- 

 ed him to send us the perfected machine for 

 us to try, after which I will report in regard 

 to it. 



There is no question but the machine sec- 

 tion-cleaner is bound to come, and those of 

 our readers who are of a mechanical turn of 

 mind, and have good tools, would do well to 

 give this matter some attention. To save use- 

 less experiments I will say I believe the solid- 

 disk sand-wheel is not a success, owing to the 

 fact that it fills up with propolis; and why the 

 sanded belt of Mr. Golden does not meet with 

 the same difficulty I can not understand. 



Both Mr. Aspinwall and Mr. Davenport have 

 the right idea, but so far as I have experiment- 

 ed the knives do not make smooth work. The 

 Aspinwall might be improved by putting in 

 more knives — that is, make them only */(, inch 

 apart, as recommended by Mr. Davenport. 

 Such a mandrel could be very easily made. 



