OCTOBER 1, 1914 



lunch was served to G8 by Mrs. Spicer and 

 her able assistants. 



After lunch a paper by Harold Hornor 

 was read, giving his experience with and his 

 mastery over European foul brood. He 

 used the double shake in his work, and from 

 51 colonies, good and poor, all of which 

 were shaken, in a poor season he secured 

 over 4000 pounds of extracted honey and 

 315 pounds of wax. He emphasized the 

 imjoorlance of keeping leather-colored Ital- 



761 



ians and requeening every year. He has no 

 surplus at all this season, but expected to 

 requeen just the same. 



Perhaps the most interesting feature of a 

 meeting in an apiary are the groups which 

 gather about a hive under manipulation as 

 shown in Fig. 2. 



This was the largest and most enthusiastic 

 summer meeting ever held by the associa- 

 tion. Several new members were enrolled. 



New Egypt, N. J., July 16, 



TME 



EEN-EXCLUDIN€ HONEY= BOARD; ITS ORIGIN AND DEVEL- 



OPMENT 



BY ARTHUR C. MILLER 



Honey-boards are not quite as old as bee 

 culture, but they date back a gTeat many 

 years. Their origin was in the bars tirst 

 put across the tops of hives for bees to 

 build their combs to, a practice followed in 

 Greece several hundred years ago. Another 

 early form was one or more holes in the 

 flat top of hives to permit bees to enter tops 

 or upper chambers to deposit honey. From 

 these two we find French beekeepers in 

 the early part of the 18th century putting a 

 slotted top into hives and placing then- 

 surplus chambers thereon. About the mid- 

 dle of that century both French and English 

 beekeepers were putting a duplicate slotted 

 bottom into the upper chamber, the purpose 

 being the same as a honey-board to-day to 

 prevent fastening the combs of one chamber 

 to the other. 



Thus matters appear to have remained 

 until the so-called "old-fashioned box hive" 

 came into use with its upi3er chamber for 

 boxes, access to which was gained through 

 holes in the floor of that chamber and cor- 

 responding holes in the boxes. This was 

 only an easier way of securing the principle 

 of the slots. 



When Langstroth brought out his hive he 

 had a loose top, spaced a bee-space above 

 the frames, and this top was perforated 

 with holes, as was the box-hive chamber. 

 With such records as I have at hand I am 

 unable to say whether he was the originator 

 of such loose top or not. Langstroth refer- 

 red to it as a honey-board and Quinby also 

 speaks of them ; but so far as I have learned 

 the separate honey-board originated with 

 one or the other of them. 



Not long after, discussions arose as to the 

 desirability of giving bees freer access to 

 the surplus receptacles and that discussion 

 has not yet ceased. With it came debates 

 as to the wisdom of the bee-space above and 

 below it ; and the advocates of continuous 



passageways waged hot verbal warfare with 

 the advocates of bee-spaces. 



With the advent of sections the alterca- 

 tion only increased; and supers with open- 

 ings exactly matching the top-bars of the 

 hive and used flat thereon were strongly 

 championed, which it will be seen was little 

 different from practices of a hundred years 

 before. As against these were supers set 

 a bee-space above the frames, no "honey- 

 board" intervening. But the bottom of the 

 super was virtually the same. 



About 1875 James Heddon brought out 

 his honey-board made of slats with a bee 

 space on its upper surface, the slats being 

 opposite the spaces between the brood- 

 frames, the idea being twofold, to lessen the 

 building of bridge-combs on top of the 

 frames and to act as a deterrent to the 

 queen's passing into the supers. He called 

 it at first a "sink" honey-board because the 

 rim in which the slats were fixed was rab- 

 beted so the slats "sunk" into until one sur- 

 face was flush and the other bee-spaced. Mr. 

 Heddon and Mr. W. Z. Hutchinson were 

 two of the most ardent champions of this 

 type of honey-board which gradually came 

 to be called the "slatted-break-joint" honey- 

 board . 



Dr. G. L. Tinker, on the other hand, was 

 a most ardent advocate of continuous jiass- 

 ageways. Being a mechanic of very high 

 order, and making his own appliances, he 

 was very successful in the use of such 

 methods. But he seems to have been trou- 

 bled even more t!an the others with the 

 queen going into the supers. Mr. Hutchin- 

 son tried making the spaces between the 

 slats queen-excluding; then he tried similar 

 spaces cut crosswise of the grain of the 

 wood, but neither proved workable. 



Mr. Heddon writing in 1885 {American 

 Bee Journal, p. 262), said that during 1883 

 and 1884 he experimented with queen-ex- 



