610 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 15. 



our rule to figure square cans at 2}4 lbs., the 

 same as the other dealers named. If we have 

 ever taken 3 lbs. it must have been some years 

 ago. 



You will have the thanks of the coast bee- 

 keepers at lea=t for this crusade against this 

 careless or unfair way of doing business, no 

 matter who it is or has been concerned in it ; 

 and it is evident that your first article in 

 Gleanings had the effect of stirring the 

 matter up. Keep the ball a rolling. — Ed.] 



THE BEST HIVE FOR EXTRACTING. 



The Convenience of those " Draper Barns." Why 

 they are Better for Extracting Purposes. 



BY A. N. DRAPER. 



On page 496 I find an article from my friend 

 " Joe Sweetness " (as he is known by his inti- 

 mate friends in Illinois), at which I am con- 

 siderably surprised. As I stated in a former 

 article, I discarded some four or five hundred 

 of the eight-frame Simplicity for the large Da- 

 dant hive, after using them side by side for 

 several years. Do you suppose for a moment 

 I would discard $400 or $500 worth of fixtures 

 did I not meet with some serious difficulty ? I 

 had somewhere from 3500 to 4000 Simplicity 

 frames filled with comb all built on wired 

 foundation, and they were nice while new. I 

 had the same idea in my head, of having all 

 the combs the same size in the brood and sur- 

 plus apartments, for the sake of convenience ; 

 and I allowed her royal majesty to occupy one, 

 two, or three chambers with brood as she saw 

 fit. The first year all went nicely enough, as 

 I wanted bees and increase ; but when I came 

 to extract honey, my trials, troubles, and trib- 

 ulations began. 



In the first place I had to go over the entire 

 apiary and sort out the combs that I wished to 

 extract, and get them into the super or upper 

 stories ; for if I left any brood up there the 

 be;-escape would be useless, as the bees would 

 not leave the brood. After getting the honey 

 into the house I usually do the uncapping 

 while a helper does the extracting. I have a 

 Stanley automatic that I have had some four- 

 teen or fifteen years. We usually select combs 

 as nearly the same weight as possible to place 

 opposite each other. Some of the very heavi- 

 est combs would prove to be heavy with pol- 

 len, causing the extractor to run badly. Now, 

 with combs that have been used for breeding 

 purposes it is absolutely necessary to get them 

 back on to the hives as soon as possible after 

 they are extracted, as it is impossible to keep 

 the moth worms off them in any other way. 

 More or less of them are immediately appro- 

 priated by the queen for breeding purposes, 

 and you have your brood scattered from the 

 top to the bottom of your hive during the 

 summer. The honey-yielding plants fail to 

 secrete much nectar during the hot weather, so 

 that the whole force of the colony is turned to 

 bringing in pollen ; and as the brood is scat- 

 tered through the hive, so is the empty room 

 for pollen ; and it is not long till every avail- 



able cell is filled with it. Sooner or later this 

 condition is sure to occur, if managed in this 

 way, and your combs are absolutely worthless. 

 Even if you cut the combs out and try to ex- 

 tract the wax, the pollen is a nuisance, as you 

 can not get all the wax out. If it should be a 

 dry fall, and the fall crop of honey should be 

 light, another sorting is necessary to get hon- 

 ey enough together for the bees to winter on. 

 Then you are liable to get combs that are over 

 half filled with bee-bread covered with a small 

 amount of honey, and capped over. After 

 consuming the honey the bees will starve with 

 fifteen or twenty pounds of worthless pollen 

 left in their combs. 



Time goes on and the years slip by. More 

 and more pollen accumulates, and combs get 

 thick and black. Does our friend Hambaugh 

 or the worthy editor of Gleanings pretend to 

 say that they can ever get a first grade of hon- 

 ey from such combs? I have tried putting 

 these pollen-laden combs in water, and soak- 

 ing them and then using the extractor, and a 

 nice muss it is, and it does not improve the 

 combs very much. I have put these combs in 

 the center of the brood-nest, and there they 

 stayed, as the bees would not clean out old 

 dry pollen. Let me state it right here as an 

 established fact, and as emphatically as possi- 

 ble, that under no circumstances do we want 

 the queen in the supers, whether running for 

 extracted honey or sections. 



Since getting the large hives I have never 

 extracted a large comb from the brood-nest. 

 The frames are so large that they will not go 

 into the extractor. It is a very rare thing for 

 a queen to leave a large brood-nest and go up 

 into surplus cases. If I could not keep her 

 out any other way I would use excluders. As 

 the honey is never extracted from any of the 

 combs in the brood-chamber, it is a very rare 

 thing to have an excess of pollen, and then it 

 is when a queen gets old and worthless, or the 

 colony is queenless. One Simplicity ten- 

 frame body is too small a brood-chamber for 

 extracted honey. On the other hand, two 

 ten-frame bodies are too large for a brood- 

 chamber, and are more expensive than one 

 large one. In case it is desirable to move an 

 apiary in the summer to get an extra flow of 

 honey, we want to move extra strong colonies. 

 The barn is much easier to move than two ten- 

 frame Simplicities. With the Danzy bottom- 

 board and roof, and the Hoffman frame, the 

 Diaper barn is without an equal for moving 

 strong colonies during hot wetther, for secur- 

 ing extra flows of honey. All it needs to 

 complete it is an arrangement for fastening 

 the roof and floor secure, and Mr. Hambaugh's 

 ventilator. An empty super would make an 

 excellent one by cutting the hand holes clear 

 through, and on both sides and ends, and in- 

 stead of being in the center close to the lower 

 edge, and they should be somewhat larger 

 than the ordinary hand-holes, with wire cloth 

 nailed over the aperture on the inside of the 

 ventilator, as I would now call it. As soon as 

 the colony is loaded on a wagon, and is jolted, 

 as it would be in hauling, the bees cluster up 

 in the roof, and this ventilator allows a cur- 

 rent of air to pass under the cluster up in the 



