JANUARY 1, 1914 



31 



Heads of Grain from Different Fields 



Power Extractor vs. Hand Extractor 



I began to work -Hath bees twelve years ago. I 

 did not know how to use a smoker nor how to get 

 the bees out of the honey-supers. I have gained 

 much valuable information since then from reading 

 about how to care for bees, and from experience. 



At first I ran for comb honey ; then I ran part of 

 the bees for extracted honey, and used a four-frame 

 honey-extractor; but I found that it was nonsense 

 to use a Iiand power extractor if there is much ex- 

 tracting to do. I made a mistake when I bought the 

 hand power. I traded it and bought an eight-frame 

 automatic extractor and a 1% -horse-power gasoline 

 engine to run the extractor and to pump water. I 

 back the wagon up to the pump at an out-yard and 

 let the engine pump a tankful of water to water the 

 bees. This is a great saving of labor, and it will 

 pay for itself in two or three years if one has much 

 extracting to do. The honey gets thick, and candies 

 fast as the weather gets cold in the fall; and it is 

 hard work to turn the hand-power extractor when 

 the honey is thick. 



I use a push cart and haul from four to six ex- 

 tracting-supers, and eight or ten section supers at a 

 trip. 



A motor wagon would be handy to haul honey and 

 1 ees where the roads 'are good. I have hauled hun- 

 dreds of colonies of bees with horses and wagon, but 

 it is necessary to be careful to shut the bees up well, 

 and not have the horses near the bees when the hives 

 are opened. 



A small honey-house is handy at an outyard to 

 store bee supplies and to extract and store honey ; 

 but the honey-house needs two doors — one at each 

 end, on account of robber bees. One door needs to 

 be double, as the eight-frame extractor and honey- 

 tanks will not go through a narrow door. When the 

 bees are thick at one door where they smell the 

 honey, there will be no bees at the other door where 

 they can not smell it. 



I made a mistake by not working for a beekeeper 

 two months or one summer to learn how to work 

 with the bees and how to take the honey, as it is 

 slow work for a beginner. 



A honey-house may be in the middle of a bee-yard 

 if one uses a motor truck ; but I use horses, and I 

 want it at one side of the yard, so I can load or 

 unload supplies or honey at any time in the day. 

 I have hauled some honey home from outyards to 

 extract it, but I prefer to have a small house at each 

 yard. 



I need one small table in the honey-house, high 

 enough to scrape and case the comb honey, and a 

 low table at the end of it. The two take up the 

 length of the room. I want it high enough to put a 

 50-lb. lard-can under the gate to the extractor when 

 it is on this table. Sometimes I pile more than 200 

 section-supers on one table at one time, all full of 

 honey. I make the frame of a table out of two-inch 

 lumber and slant the table legs a little at the bottom, 

 at the ends, and at the sides. I have six legs to a 

 table if it is a long one. Where ants are bad, tables 

 are necessary. It is well then to put small tin lids 

 under the table legs, and to put a little pine tar in 

 them. 



Chamberino, N. M., Apr. 4. The Bee Man. 



A Queen whose Eggs do not Hatch 



I have been a beekeeper for the last twenty years, 

 and thought that I had seen about all the turns in 

 the bee business; but I have run across something 

 new to me, for we have a queen that has been laying 

 prolifically for the last two weeks, and there is not 

 one single egg hatched that we can find. She is a 

 queen about four weeks old. I don't know her ex- 



act age, as we bought her mother this spring from 

 a Texas firm and introduced her; and the queen 

 that we got from Texas was laying nicely, so we quit 

 watching her till we noticed that they were not build 

 ing up as we thought they should, then we found 

 that she had been superseded, and a young queen 

 was in the hive ; and now the young queen's eggs do 

 not hatch. Can you tell any reason for their not 

 hatching? 



San Jose, 111., June 21. Fred Tyler. 



[Once in a great while we run across a queen 

 whose eggs do not hatch. No reason can be given 

 for this ; but it is evident that you had such a queen. 

 — Ed.1 



Do King-birds Eat Bees and Queens? 



Question No. 4, page 557, October Farm Journal, 

 is, " The king-birds here eat my father's bees, and 

 sometimes catch the queens. Should they be pro- 

 tected? " The answer is, " Yes. The king-bird feeds 

 on beetles, canker-worms, and winged insects. He 

 does occasionally eat bees; but ornithologists declare 

 that he selects only drones, and does not do enough 

 damage to hurt the hive seriously." 



I want to know if the answer is correct. I have 

 watched them eating bees a considerable time after 

 the workers had destroyed or ejected the drones. As the 

 Farm Journal editor says, the king-bird does not 

 hurt the hive, but he certainly hurts the colony if he 

 gets only one worker, as every little (one) helps, 

 you know. 



Abilene, Texas, Nov. 4. M. E. Pruitt. 



[Ornithologists generally agree that king-birds do 

 not eat worker bees ; but we have had reports show- 

 ing that the crops of these birds had been opened, 

 and that scores of worker bees had been found there- 

 in. It has generally been claimed, however, by or- 

 nithologists that they eat only drone and queen bees. 

 — Ed.] 



Experiment in Fitting Comb Honey in Sections 

 Successful 



I was greatly interested in the article by Dr. 

 Humpert, Oct. 1, p. 674. I have only five colonies 

 of Italian bees in eight-frame hives. In the summer 

 of 1912 I worked with shallow extracting-frames on 

 each side of the super, filled up with 4 ^4 x 4 1^ plain 

 sections and fence separators. I had a customer 

 who offered to take all the honey produced by my 

 bees ; and as I was getting fifty cents for section 

 honey I naturally wished that the extracting-frames 

 were all sections. After thinking it over, I decided 

 to cut out the honey and fit it in sections and give 

 it to the bees to fix, which they did in fine shape. 

 This was during a light flow from balsam. I left 

 the sections on for five days, and received fifty cents 

 each. I found that the best way to cut the honey 

 was with a small fret saw. 



Tuxedo Park, N. Y. E. Wilson. 



To Hive Swarms Clustered on Fence Posts 



On page 790, Nov. 15, in speaking of places where 

 swarms settle, you say that in many cases they seem 

 to take particular delight in settling on one of the 

 posts of the wire fence where it is a slow and 

 tedious operation to get them. In cases like this, if 

 you will set the empty hive on the ground near the 

 post, and strike the post a heavy blow with an ax 

 or heavy stick, the jar will dislodge the bees and 

 they will fall at entrance of hive as nicely as though 

 they were shaken from a small limb or basket ; then 

 a little smoke puflfed on the post will stop them from 

 crawling up again. I would rather have swarms 

 alight on posts than on trees. 



Filion, Mich., Nov. 24. David Running. 



