450 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 21, 



front of black silk not. Round the top an elastic band should 

 be run in a hem, so that it may te fastened around the hat, 

 while the bottom of the veil is tucked inside the coat. 



The intimidant. or frightener, may be smoke or carbolic 

 acid ; if smoke, it will be produ<;ed by burning coarse brown 

 paper, fustian or rotten wood in the tube of a specially made 

 •' smoker." In preparing the smoker, the lighted end of the 

 substance used should be put into the tube first : then upon 

 the tube is fixt a funnel. At the bottom of the tube there is a 

 hole : therefore, while the tube is in an upright position 

 smoldering of the contents continues. To produce smoke in 

 volumes, a small pair of bellows is fixt to the tube, the air 

 being forced through the hole at the bottom. If the smoker 

 is no longer required, the fire will go out by laying it in a hori- 

 zontal position. 



The fumes of carbolic acid are used either by saturating a 

 sponge and placing it in the barrel of a smoker, or by dipping 

 a cloth in a solution, and after wringing it dry, laying it up 

 on the frames as the quilt is removed. The solution is pre- 

 pared by putting 1 K ounces of Calvert's No. 5 carbolic acid 

 and 1}^ ounces of glycerine into an ordinary wine or spirit 

 bottle, and sbakiiv them until they unite. If then the bottle 

 is filled with water a proper solution is obtained. If the 

 glycerine is om'tted, the contents must be well shaken before 

 being used. 



Having made all nece.»\ary preparations, first frighten 

 the bees at the entrance, then remove the roof and lift and 

 turn back the qnilts from the outside frames. As they are 

 being removed drive down the bees with a gentle puff of smoke 

 along the tops of the frames. If the carbolic cloth is used it 

 should be laid upon the frames as the quilts are removed. 

 Almost at once the frames may be moved gently, and without 

 jarring, so that the bees are not disturbed. If the hive is a 

 tiering hive accommodating ten standard frames, the outside 

 comb next to the operator should lirst be taken out of the 

 hive so that the others may be removed with less inconven- 

 ience, and witli less fear of crushing the bees. All examina- 

 tions of the brood-chamber should be conducted with particu- 

 lar care, and as seldom as possible. By practice a thorough 

 knowledge of the condition of each colony will be known : 

 then from the time that supers are put on until the close of 

 the season, it is seldom that further interference will be cither 

 necessary or desirable. 



RE-HIVING .SWARMS. 



The method of hiving swarms into tlie straw-skep will be 

 fully explained in a future article, but inasmuch as the skep 

 should only be a temporary home, that Is, until the evening of 

 the day the swarm issued, how to get bees to change hives 

 remains to be explained. 



In the first place, the hive should be well painted and 

 thoroughly dry. To get a swarm to take possession of a 

 movable-comb hive is by no means a difficult matter, but the 

 operation must be carefully conducted, otherwise among 

 crusht bees may be the queen upon whose presence inside the 

 hive success in hiving and afterwards depends. 



First prepare the hive with frames, each containing a full 

 sheet of foundation. But if the combs are to be evenly built 

 in the center of the frames, the foundation must be wired into 

 the frames, or only a few loose sheets be given when first 

 hiving the swarm. 



vStarting with unwired frames, as the great majority of 

 bee-keepers do, each sheet must be fixt in the saw-cut which 

 runs through the middle and nearly from end to end of the 

 top-bar. The foundation is quickly inserted by placing a 

 small screw-driver in the middle of the saw-cut, and turning 

 it around at right angles. While the sides of the bar are thus 

 held apart the top of the sheet is placed between them and 

 raised until it is level with the top of the bar. Being thus 

 held, the screw-driver is removed, and the sides of the bar re- 

 turn towards their former position, thus holding the top of 

 the sheet of foundation securely. The sheet thus hangs down 

 from the top bar. If then the hive is set perfectly level, the 

 sheets of foundation will hang in the center of each frame. 



Now in order to get these loose sheets of foundation prop- 

 erly and evenly built into combs in the center of the frames, 

 the following rule must be observed: Place in the hive one 

 more frame than the number of pounds the swarm weighs. 

 For instance, if the swarm weighs four pounds give five 

 frames. See that they are kept the proper distance apart by 

 metal ends or other devices ; then place at the side a plain 

 board or dummy, so that the bees when in the hive will be kept 

 compactly in the part occupied by the five frames. The bees 

 ^hould be confined to this number so that they will be com- 

 pelled to spread out evenly on both sides of each sheet of 

 foundation. Then being evenly balanced by the weight of 

 bees on both side, the sheets hang in the center of the frames. 



and remain there until the bees have attacht them to the end- 

 bars of the frames. . 



The following evening a slight examination of the frames 

 may be made, but only by gently drawing them apart : then it 

 must be only to see if any of the sheets have broken down. In 

 a couple of days another sheet of foundation may be inserted 

 between the outer frame and the nest, and so on every three 

 or four days, more or less according to the weather and the 

 quantity of bees. ]5y no means give more frames than they 

 can well cover, but rather keep a moderate sized brood-nest, • 

 particularly if the swarm issues about the middle of the honey- 

 flow. If the swarm be confined to six or seven frames, a small 

 super may be given. Then, when the honey-flow is over, the 

 super may be removed and the brood-nest enlarged by addi- 

 tional frames, but if breeding is to be continued, feeding will 

 bo necessary. Date swarms thus treated often give a nice 

 super of honey, and are afterwards built up into magnificent 

 colonies by Oct. 1, when all colonies should be closed up for 

 the winter. 



tContlnued next week.j 



Rendering Beeswax with the Solar Extractor. 



BY O. O. POPPLETON. 



On page 3.38 Mr. C. P. Dadant writes quite an article un- 

 der the above caption, at the close of which he suggests that 

 it mieht be well to give the subject a thorough examination. 



My experience with purifying beeswax in the sun ex- 

 tractor has been exactly opposite to what Mr. Dadant's seems 

 to have been. When I first read his article I was almost lost 

 in amazement to understand how it was possible for two such 

 experienced men as we are, to have had such directly different 

 experience. A careful rereading of what he wrote explains 

 it, I think, and if I have misunderstood him he can set me 

 right 



The details of our extractors, as well as our methods of 

 using them, must be quite different, he only getting from his 

 the one result of melting the comb, while I get both melting 

 and the best results in purifying the wax of any method I have 

 ever tried. It seems that Mr. Dadant allows the wax, as it 

 drips from the comb-pan in his extractor, to cool and harden 

 as it drips. This works exactly as he explains in his second 

 paragraph, and more or less dregs and dirt comes off and is 

 mixt all through the wax, and remelting in the extractor Is 

 only doing over again the same process with the same results. 



Mr. Dadant has fully explained in the next paragraph the 

 method and principle of purifying wax by allowing it to re- 

 main for several hours at a temperature between its melting 

 and the boiling points, giving a chance for all impurities to 

 settle to the bottom. This is exactly what can be done in the 

 sun extractor just as easy as not to do it, and I had no idea 

 that any one was using an extractor any other way. All one 

 has to do to secure this in an extractor is to have it made 

 enough larger to allow the dish which receives the melted 

 wax from the comb-pan to be in the sun under glass, which 

 keeps it in a melted condition for hours. 



The extractors I use are of a size to take glasses 30x40 

 Inches in size. The comb-pans are made from 20x28 inch 

 sheets of tin, thus allowing ample room Inside of the extractor 

 for both comb and melted wax pans to remain in the sun. 



When the melted wax is iu the right condition, that is, 

 just before the sun sinks low enough so the wax commences to 

 cool, I dip off the wax into molds, using oblong square-cor- 

 nered bread-pans for molds, and a small flat-sided dipper. 

 Empty square cans, such as those used for cocoa or corned 

 beef, one-pound size, are good. With care, nearly all the wax 

 can be dipt off in an absolutely pure condition, leaving all the 

 dirt and a thin layer of wax. These last thin cakes of wax, 

 with such dirt as adheres to them, are allowed to accumulate 

 until there is enough to make a charge for the extractor, 

 when they are re-melted and treated the same as were the 

 original combs. 



Of course, if one doesn't wish to take the trouble of dip- 

 ping off the wax into molds, he can, after it has hardened, 

 scrape off the adhering dirt, as suggested by Mr. Dadant, but 

 I greatly prefer the dipping process. 



In either rendering wax, otherwise than caps that con- 

 tain more or less honey, or puiifylng any that has already 

 been rendered, I use water in the wax dish, substantially as 

 suggested by Alder Bros., except that it is unnecessary to 

 heat either extractor or water before placing combs in it, as 

 the same heat that melts the wax will heat the other things. 

 I use about an inch of water in the wax dish for two purposes 

 — to keep wax from sticking to the dish, and having water in 

 the dish makes it much easier to dip off the melted wax. 



In one of the numbers of Gleanings (Aug, 15, I think) in 



