656 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 15 



It requires no refining, pressing, bleaching, 

 or other manipulation to cleanse it. It only 

 needs melting in boiling water — nothing 

 more. Therefore we get wax with a mini- 

 mum of effort. 



Where wax is being striven for, it is well 

 to allow the combs to be completely sealed 

 over, also not to allow the bees to build 

 thick combs. The honey ripens faster, and 

 there is proportionately more wax in thin 

 combs. If the combs are cut out and put in 

 muslin bags to drain out the honey, one man 

 may manage a great many hives (say 500). 

 There is not the mussy, tiresome job of un- 

 capping, and the still more tiresome task of 

 turning the handle of an extractor. Some 

 may say, "But what about the diminished 

 yield?" How do they know that the yield 

 is less. As a matter of actual experience it 

 does not appear to alter the yield of honey. 

 But if it did we could still afford to follow 

 this plan for the reason we can attend to a 

 far larger number of bees this way. By 

 getting clear of these heavy tasks we are 

 the better able to devote our attention to 

 the bees themselves; but there still remains 

 the task of taking off the honey from the 

 hives and replacing the empty chambers 

 with starters. This is not easy work as it 

 is usually done, but the bee-escape paves 

 the way for easier labors. Usually tropical 

 apiarists get along with a few escape-boards. 

 Where one has 400 colonies, 50 escapes will 

 be none too many. A good wheelbarrow or 

 cart also reduces the labor; and if the hives 

 are all under shed (as they always should 

 be), and the hives arranged at a convenient 

 height, labor is conserved. The bee-shed is 

 a labor-saver of the first rank. 



Personally I never use a brush, finding 

 the bee-escape infinitely less trouble and an- 

 noyance; besides, a brush irritates bees too 

 much to be satisfactory. Here the Heddon 

 dictum comes in, to handle hives, not frames, 

 therefore "don't handle the frames till they 

 are inside the honey-house " is a good prin- 

 ciple to follow. Three or four good honey- 

 tanks are absolutely necessary for rapid easy 

 work, but these need not be large, as. by 

 this system, there is no need to "settle" or 

 skim the honey; here we can not follow the 

 customs of Northern and Western apiarists, 

 for, to keep honey in an open tank in the 

 West Indies, spells ruin. Put it into the 60- 

 Ib. tins the same day it is made, and seal 

 tight, and remember a few rusty spots will 

 discolor 60 lbs. of honey. 



THE HOFFMAN FRAME. 



It has Come to Stay. 



BY HARRY LATHROP. 



try to stem the tide in its favor; and be it 

 known that bee-keepers use and prefer it for 

 its own sake, and not because it has been 

 favored by manufacturers. The use of the 

 old-fashioned loose hanging frame, as com- 

 pared with the Hoffman, reminds me of 

 what the colored porter on the sleeping-car 

 said about being wrecked. Some one asked 

 him which he would prefer, if he had to suf- 

 fer either, to be wrecked on the ocean or on 

 the train. He said he would prefer a train- 

 wreck by all means, "for," said he, "if de 

 ship goes down, den whar is yo? But if de 

 train wreck and leave de track, dar yo is." 

 If you place loose hanging frames in a hive, 

 " whar are yo?" No one knows what con- 

 dition will be found on opening a hive. On 

 the other hand, if Hoffman frames are put 

 in a hive, "there you are." You are sure 

 of straight combs that can be interchanged 

 if necessary. 



I started an apiary here at Bridgeport 

 with sixty colonies of bees in Langstroth 

 hives with hanging frames. Now I am mak- 

 ing ready regular Dovetailed hives with 

 Hoffman frames, and will discard the whole 

 outfit as fast as I can make the change. I 

 have ordered a German wax-press, and will 

 melt up those combs and use the wax for 

 full sheets of foundation in the new 

 frames. 



I used loose hanging frames long before 

 the Hoffman frame was brought out by the 

 editor of Gleanings, and thought they were 

 all right at the time. Of late years I have 

 been using the Hoffman frame in my home 

 apiary, and now find that I can not tolerate 

 the other. They are all right for the ex- 

 tracting-super, and so is the Hoffman if 

 seven are used in an eight-frame hive-body. 

 When the combs are filled out plump the 

 end-bars will not interfere with the knife to 

 amount to any thing. 



Bridgeport, Wis. 



FIRST PRIZE, SWARM OF BEES. 

 Some Queer Freaks of Swarming. 



BY E. R. ROOT. 



Mr. L. Stachelhausen, in the Rural Bee- 

 keeper for May, comes out in quite a long 

 article against the Hoffman frame. It is 

 too late to try to disparage this frame or to 



A little boy who wrote a composition on 

 bees, said that they ' ' swarm mostly on Sun- 

 days when the folks are away to church, and 

 generally on the tops of tall trees where 

 you will have to climb for 'em." Doubtless 

 the boy had had some "experience" when 

 he came from Sunday-school, of a kind that 

 gave him a forcible reminder, in the shape 

 of torn trowsers and scratched hands after 

 the encounter in midair in helping to bring 

 the bees back to mother Earth. 



In the picture of the first-prize swarm 

 shown herewith, it appears that the bees 

 were much more accommodating. Whether 

 they came out on Sunday or not, Mr. Errett 

 does not say; at all events, we have absolute 

 proof that they clustered low on a little 

 tree, and so great was the weight of them 



