936 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 15 



should be a little thin honey in the barrel 

 this will also rise to the top and have a ten- 

 dency to ferment. Here is one of the rea- 

 sons why we have always used large storage- 

 tanks. With them, whatever rises to the 

 top can easily be skimmed off; and in draw- 

 ing off from the bottom of our tanks we get 

 only the thick pure honey of the finest qual- 

 ity. We are sure that, in giving this part 

 of the business special attention, as we do, 

 it has much bearing on the ready s >le we 

 find for all we can produce If you expect 

 to make bee-keeping a success, you must 

 look close to all these things. Don't be 

 afraid to give a dollar's worth of good honey 

 for every dollar you receive from a custom- 

 er; for if you are, your customers will soon 

 find it out. 



BEE- KEEPING AND OTHER SIDE LINES NOT 

 ADVISED, 



In regard to running some other business 

 with bee-keeping I must say I don't think 

 much of it. If you want a larger income, 

 just add on one or two hundred more colo- 

 nies. I don't know of any thing so nice to 

 go with bee-keeping as plenty of bees. Some 

 are so slack that a large per cent of their col- 

 onies give them little or no surplus. This is 

 all wrong, and shows that their owner is not 

 caring for them as he should. The idea of 

 having 100 colonies, and getting surplus from 

 only 75, is on a par with box-hive apiaries. 

 It is now high time that we get away from 

 that slipshod way of caring for our bees. 

 Don't let one single colony sulk away its 

 time. If they will not work without it, take 

 away from them all the honey they have, 

 and then let them work or starve. Some- 

 times we have swarms that have to be treat- 

 ed in this way. We don't keep bees for the 

 fun of lugging them out and in the cellar 

 spring and fall, and what stings we can get 

 through the summer. We care for them 

 simply for the dollars we can get for their 

 surplus honey; and if we don't get some 

 from every colony we know it is our fault. 

 My advice is, just as soon as you find a col- 

 ony that is not doing well, attend to it at 

 once. That is your business Either put it 

 in a shape so that in a few days it will be all 

 right, or unite it with another. If you don't 

 want to do this, put it with your nuclei, and 

 consider it one of them. I frequently find 

 bee-keepers who allow far too much drone 

 comb in their hives. It is certainly much 

 better to restrict the rearing of drones to 

 two or three colonies than to allow many 

 thousand drones to be reared in the place of 

 worker bees. This one thing of itself often 

 makes the difference of several pounds of 

 surplus in many of our colonies. It will pay 

 you well to bear this in mind. 



My friends, in the above you will find a 

 few of the many necessary things spoken of 

 that make bee-keeping a success. Please 

 weigh each one separately, and in doing so 

 make all the improvements you can; for it is 

 my hope that you will some day enjoy suc- 

 cess in bee keeping. 



Delanson, N. Y. 



[When I visited Mr. Alexander it was ev- 

 ident that he practices exactly what he 

 preaches in the foregoing. His colonies are 

 all uniform — so much alike in working ca- 

 pacity that there is scarcely any difference 

 in the flight at the entrances that could be 

 detected. Besides being uniform in strength 

 and working capacity they were all very 

 strong, with the exception of a very few 

 where he was rearing queens or making 

 some experiments. 



This article may serve further to show 

 why it is and how it is Mr. Alexander is able 

 to extract without using the uncapping- 

 knife. When it is remembered that he 

 waits until the bees begin to cap the honey 

 over; that buckwheat honey is very thick 

 in his State; that he allows it to ripen fur- 

 ther in shallow tanks, removing any scum 

 or impurities that may have risen to the 

 surface meantime, and when it is remem- 

 bered, too, that he draws the honey from 

 the bottom., drawing off only the thick honey, 

 it will be seen why he can practice extract- 

 ing without using the uncapping-knife, 

 wherein in the majority of cases, and in the 

 majority of locaUties, it would be advisable 

 to wait until the honey is fully capped. In 

 this connection I wish to say I believe that 

 the great mass of bee-keepers, unless they 

 have 'proved that they can do it safely, had 

 better not extract any honey that has not 

 been covered with capping— especially so if 

 no evaporating tanks are used, as do Mr. 

 Alexander and others who extract the honey 

 before it is fully capped. —Ed.] 



THE IMPROVED UNCAPPING-KNIFE. 



How to Hold and How to Use ; the Value of a 

 Longer Knife. 



BY E. D. TOWNSEND. 



Some time ago I received a sample of 

 Bingham's uncapping-knife fr <m The A. I. 

 Root Co. to test. The blade is the same as 

 usual, only an inch or thereabout longer 

 than the regular. The handle is the Cogg- 

 shall idea, being flat on the top and bottom, 

 as the knife lies on the table, and is also 

 planed off on the edge next the shank, so 

 there is a flat edge where the thumb comes 

 when taking hold of the knife when using. 



And now, Mr. Editor, I will say a few 

 words about uncapping and uncapping- 

 knives. We have felt the want of a longer 

 uncapping-knife for several years, but have 

 been loath to ask for it for fear this extra 

 length would make the knife unwieldy, or, 

 in other words, every little we add to the 

 blade in length we lose in leverage. I wish 

 I could have used this knife with the blade 

 an inch longer than the regular, OHe season 

 before passing an opinion on it. Our extract- 

 ing-f rames are all the Langstroth size, most- 

 ly with i deep top-bars; but a part are only 

 § inch deep. This, after figuring out the 

 bottom- bar, leaves from 8 to 8i inches of 

 comb surface. Eight of these combs are 



