JlLY, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



399 



luwoi- part of the liivo, and by tho tiino tho 

 last honey conies off we liave the brood- 

 nost nicely concentrated in the lower brood- 

 chamber. Strong colonies, of course, we 

 leave two stories high for some little time 

 at the end of the season; l)ut we have found 

 very little, of any, advantage in wintering 

 two-story hives, so that we get everything 

 down to one single eight-or ten-frame hive 

 by tilt' time winter comes on. 



The Use of the Automobile in Extracted- 

 honey Production. 



As we use (juite a number of cars in our 

 beekeeping operations and they are all 

 Fords, we have a garage of our own, with 

 a man in charge who looks after the work- 

 ing of all the cars. He has direct charge 

 of this work, and while he is employed also 

 at other operations this is his major duty. 

 Tn this way we find we have cut down the 

 expense of our cars at least 25 per cent. 

 We think the Ford touring car or roadster 

 is excellent for the beekeeper to use in going 

 from yard to yard where light loads are 

 hauled, but for heavy loads we have found 

 the Ford ton-truck to be economical and 

 practicable. We doubt whether it is ad- 

 visable to go into the higher-priced cars as 

 the depreciation is greater, and the bee- 

 keepers should operate bees as economically 

 as possible and have most of their invest- 

 ment in bees instead of equipment. 



We have clung to the cheaper form of 

 automobiles. Possibly, we may a little later 

 invest in several higher-priced cars; but, 

 for the present, we think the cheaper cars 

 are the most economical in the long run. 



The Uncapping Box. 



Tlie uiii-a)>ping liox has coarse screen at 

 the bottom, on which the cappings fall so 

 that they may thoroly drain. Honey is 

 drawn off every little while into a can and 

 is einj)tied into the extractor. By handling 

 tho cappings in this way no discolored honey 

 is obtained at all, and we are not bothered 

 with the mixture of honey and half-melted 

 wax wliicli accuniulates from the Peterson 

 (apping melter. We think it pays us so to 

 arrange the work that the extracting crews 

 have very little to do with handling the 

 wax; so, as they bring in this wax that has 

 been well drained, we liave a man at the 

 home plant who takes the cappings every 

 few days and presses them out, and then 

 they are ready to put away for rendering 

 in the fall or winter. Our objection to a 

 tapjiing inciter is that is overheats the ex- 

 1 1 acting room, which we try to keep as cool 

 as |iossiblp. 



With the quality of honey we get in this 

 tirritory, we find it unnecessary to wait for 

 the sealing of the honey more than half the 

 way down the frames, as we have never had 

 any experience yet with soured honey, and 

 the flavor seems to be all that could be de- 

 sired for honey of the quality we produce. 

 We have read from time to time of the big 

 records made by various men in extracting 

 honey, but will say that two or three men 



in a crew would, in our apiaries as we work 

 lliem, extract from 25 to 60 cans per day. 

 W^c have never had over 60 cans extracted 

 in one working day, and we figure that 35 

 is a good day's work for three men. How- 

 ever, we keep the men at it and have the 

 honey coming in almost every day for some 

 30 to 60 days, and this continuous bring- 

 ing in of honey counts in the long run rath- 

 er than the heavy extractings that are oc- 

 casionally pulled off. 



Our Trailer Extracting-house. 



We operated last season with the port- 

 able extracting-house and the outfit that 

 we took from yard to yard where we had 

 houses. We find that the portable extract- 

 ing-houses require too much time to take 

 down and set up, as the men lose half a 

 day in this operation; so this year we have 

 a four - wheel trailer with an extracting- 

 house and extractor, engine, honey-pump, 

 etc., which we haul from yard to yard 

 while extracting. We think it will be a big 

 help to us in the handling of our crop, as 

 with the trailer extracting outfit we shall 

 be able to handle all of the yards that can- 

 not be handled with the outfit that must be 

 moved from house to house. We use the 8- 

 frame friction-drive extractor with honey- 

 pump and engine. We would prefer elec- 

 tric power, but of course this is not avail- 

 able in the out-yards. If we were going 

 to extract at home we would use an electric 

 motor for this purpose. There is one point 

 that we have not yet decided upon and 

 which we are considering, that is, having a 

 tank trailer built for an automobile. If we 

 use this trailer we shall have to have a tank 

 to put the extracted honey in to haul to the 

 large tank at the home plant where it will 

 be run thru our bottling plant, then emptied 

 into the honey containers of w^hatever size 

 may be filled from the tank in our home 

 plant. The 60-iiound cans receive more hard 

 use, in our opinion, in hauling from the bee- 

 yard to our home place than in any otlier 

 way, and if we could avoid this handling 

 of the 60-iJOund cans by the use of a tank 

 trailer we think it would be advisable. We 

 shall have more information on this matter 

 after we have tried it out for one season. 



In our apiary work we use wheelbarrows 

 to wheel the honey from the hives to the 

 extractor, and we place our hives in rows 

 far enough apart so that the auto may be 

 driven right dovFii between the rows, and 

 colonies may be moved out by carrying the 

 hives only a few feet to the truck. We 

 think that all arrangements in the yard 

 should be made so that the least possible 

 manual labor will be necessary to perform 

 the operation. There is enough hard work 

 in bee-yards without the needless carrying 

 back and forth. 



We have a number of men working in our 

 yards so that we have adopted the use of 

 an apiary record book, which is ruled so 

 that we can number each hive and have a 

 corresponding number in the book. In this 



