748 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



December, 1921 



absolutely no possibility of winter loss. 

 There are, I believe, not a few who would 

 winter only a part of their bees if they 

 could be sure of getting delivery from the 

 South of all the bees they need by the 15th 

 of April or May 1. 



The beekeepers of the Southland, seeing 

 their opportunity to supply their northern 

 colaborers with liees and queens, arc rapidly 

 increasing their facilities for raising them. 

 They are by no means anxious to have other 

 people come in and flood a territory well 

 nigh overstocked with bees; moreover, any 

 northern man who would go down into this 

 country would have to spend a year or two 

 before he could become fully acquainted 

 with the territory. There is just as good 

 bee-raising territory elsewhere in the Black 

 Belt as in the section near Montgomery, 

 now overcrowded. There is, likewise, good 

 territory in Louisiana where there are few 

 bees and beekeepers. Of this I shall write 

 later. 



Bitterweed a Blessing in Disguise. 



There is one honey plant much despised 

 in some quarters, but which is a very impor- 

 tant factor in the production of bees and 

 queens in the South. It is known as the 

 bitterweed, and, as might be expected, the 

 honey is very bitter, and, of course, entire- 

 ly unfitted for table use — so poor that even 



the manufacturers do not want it. The nat- 

 ural consequence is that this honey, entirely 

 suited for breeding bees, stays in the hives. 

 It is this poor honey that makes such strong 

 colonies in the spring. 



Besides the bitterweed there are other 

 honey plants such as boneset, goldenrod, 

 and willow that yield inferior honeys that 

 help to keep up a rotation of a continuous 

 flow for almost the entire year. 



But the beekeepers of this Southland, be- 

 sides their dark and inferior honeys, secure 

 a very fair surplus of a splendid honey 

 known as melilotus, or sweet clover, some 

 of it being the annual, or Hubam. This 

 lasts several weeks, and, best of all, it 

 comes on at a time after the main shipping 

 of the bees in package form. While the 

 yield is fair, the average per colony is only 

 about a half of the average production in 

 the North. The quality is equal to that of 

 any sweet-clover honey in the North. 



In a future issue I hope to tell you about 

 another land that is the equal if not the 

 superior of the famous Black Belt of A.]a- 

 bama and Mississippi. There are compara- 

 tively few bees and beekeepers there yet; 

 and when they do get into this land of prom- 

 ise it may rival any other territory in the 

 United States for raising bees and queens. 



RAPID FOUNDATION FASTENER 



Fifteen Hundred Sheets of Founda- 

 tion per Hour Fastened in Sections 

 by One Person 



By Geo. S. Demuth 



DURING • the 

 past 15 years 

 the invent- 

 ive genius o f 

 American b e e- 

 keepers has been 

 busy with im- 

 provements i n 

 methods and ap- 

 paratus for pro- 

 ducing extracted honey, leaving those of us 

 who have continued to produce comb honey 

 to get along with the comb-honey appliances 

 that had been developed up to that time. 

 The recent improvements in honey-extract- 

 ors, uncapping-knives, and methods for han- 

 dling the honey from the time it is taken 

 from the hives until it is in the cans ready 

 for shipment have given to the producer of 

 extracted honey a great advantage over the 

 producer of comb honey in handling large 

 quantities of honey. While machinery is 

 helping out in the production of extracted 

 honey, comb-honey production is still done 

 to a large extent by hand. 



Among the time-consuming processes in 

 comb-honey production are the preparation 

 of the supers before being given to the bees 

 and the scraping, grading, and packing of 

 the finished honey, nearly all of this work 

 being done by hand. 



Fortunately before so many potential in- 

 ventors deserted the ranks of comb-honey 



producers to 

 take up the pro- 

 duction of ex- 

 tracted honey 

 some excellent 

 machines were 

 devised for fold- 

 ing sections and 

 fastening foun- 

 dation in them 

 accurately and rapidly, the Eauchfuss com- 

 bined section press and foundation-fastener 

 and the Eoot section-press and steam foun- 

 dation-fastener being among the "last 

 words" in machines for this purpose. With 

 either of these machines the work of fold- 

 ing sections and fastening foundation can 

 be done neatly and rapidly, apparently leav- 

 ing but little to be desired in apparatus for 

 this kind of work, but when hundreds of 

 supers must be prepared the time required, 

 even with the most rapid combined press, 

 is no small item. 



Described in 1893 but Dropped Out of Sight. 

 Back in 1893, long before the hot-plate 

 machines were really perfected as we now 

 know them, R. L. Taylor described in the 

 Beekeepers ' Review a simple device which 

 he was using for fastening foundation in 

 sections. It had been described editorially 

 in that magazine five years previously, 

 and it is mentioned but not described in 

 Cook's Manual of the Apiary. No one ex- 



