1904 THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



3 I emphatically aud unhesitatingly 

 say you cannot get a'.oii.ij with loul 



47 



brood by having a lot of black and 

 hybrid bees. At least, not in my 

 locality. 



I rear my own queens, and then I 

 know what I have. I have little 

 faith in paying one dollar each for a 

 lot of cull queens. I much prefer to 

 rear them myself, then I know just 

 what to look for — a pretty good lot of 

 queens, I am sure. As regards hives, 

 each ha.s its friends and enemies. I 

 may some time in future send you a 

 photo of my queen rearing outfit with 

 article concerning it. 



Gallupville, N. Y., Dec. 21, 1903. 



CHUNK HONEY. 



Four- Piece Sections versus One-Piece. T-Supers 



versus Wide-Frame Supers. 



By F. Greiner. 



MR. EDITOR: The production of 

 chunk honey has become quite 

 a hobby, or perhaps business, 

 with the bee-keepers in Texas, I siip- 

 pose. 



If we and all other bee-keepers 

 would go to producing that kind of 

 honey, the section problem would be 

 solved, causing perhaps half the siip- 

 ply manufacturers to shut down. For 

 the consuming public possibly this 

 might be a good thing, providing we 

 coidd educate the people to accept 

 chunk-honey in place of section honey. 



From private customers in' my 

 vicinity I have more call for chunk- 

 honey (without the extracted article be- 

 ing poured over it) than for any other 

 kind. Furthermore I can with advan- 

 tage produce it. With the regular stock 

 of chunk-honey as produced in Texas 

 there is a great drawback <'on'!ectcd, 

 which is much more serious than it is 

 with the extracted kind, viz: the comb 

 honey, with the extracted poured on it, 

 becomes one .solid mass as soon as the 

 season advances, and cannot well be 

 liquefied again. It is not probable that 

 this difficulty will be overcome in the 

 near future and for this rmson. if no 

 other, section honey will be in demand 

 for a long while. 



The consumers will care nothing 

 whether the honey he eats was pro- 

 duced in four-piece or in folding sec- 

 tions; that will be a matter of conven- 



ience for the producer. We have used 

 the four-piece sections before the one- 

 piece sections came into fashion, and 

 have not had any reason to be sorry 

 for adopting the folding kind. It 

 i.s very true, sometimes a batch 

 of sections does not fold true. When 

 the grooves are not cut right, sections 

 cannot fold true and cannot be made 

 to stay .square without being held in 

 shape until filled. Why a four-piece 

 section should not come true I fail to 

 see, as it will easily conform to any 

 shape, diamond or square. In fact 

 the four-piece sections will solve the 

 problem of .sections coming square 

 every time. Even with the T-super 

 the four-piece section would work 

 nicely as far as keeping its shape, 

 while the one-piece section, (if it does 

 not hold square) can make us lots of 

 trouble. When it comes to taking the 

 filled sections from T-supers the dif- 

 ficulty we have experienced was al- 

 ways with the dovetailed corner of our 

 one-piece sections. The bottom of 

 section is generally so glued down 

 to the T, and in the attempt to sep- 

 arate the two the bottom would 

 pull oft' at the dovetailed corner 

 and break the bottom row of 

 cells. If such is the case with a sec- 

 tion that has but one dovetailed cor- 

 ?^er. will not our trouble be multiplied 

 with a section having four such cor- 

 ners? By way of explanation would 

 say, that it has been our practice to so 

 place sections in the supers that the 

 dovetailed corner is down. We do not 

 wish to have it show when the honey 

 is crated. We followed the same rule 

 when filling our T-supers, of which, 

 fortunately, we have only 40 in use, 

 and these Ave do not use except on a 

 pinch, when all others are used up. 

 We have experienced another difficulty 

 with the T-super. and in this also the 

 dovetailed corners, because of their be- 

 ing sharper or coming to a sharper 

 corner than the others, increased this 

 viz: When sliding the sections into 

 their places between the T-rests the 

 corners of sections would catch on 

 them. A section pulled out of the cen- 

 ter of a filled T-super can be replaced 

 only with diificulty on this account. 

 While speaking of the undesiral)le fea- 

 tures of the T-super I want to mention 

 this other. We have to be very careful 

 how we handle them when ready for 

 the bees. When one accidentallv or 



