278 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



May 4, 1899. 



In the fall, when the grand cong-lomerate sweepstakes 

 of surplus is carried into the honej'-room, the orthodox tem- 

 perature as above must be maintained. The finisht sections 

 are placed six in a compartment of the super where for- 

 merly had been seven, making^ 24 to the super. Commenc- 

 ing- well up from the floor, these are tiered with a piece of 

 lath between ever)' other one to give free circulation of air. 

 The utitinisht sections are assorted and piled up the same 

 way. Tho,se that are well filled and capt one-half and bet- 

 ter, to the point from which they go as finisht combs, are 

 packt in regular shipping-cases, to-wit : Three sections 

 long, six wide, two tiers high, 36 sections in all, and sold 

 cheap at 8 cents a pound close at home. Two cases pay our 

 road tax ; one is given gratis to this neighbor, one to the 

 other. The minister gets one free of charge, sure. All go 

 like hot-cakes. 



For two seasons I have used the Taylor handy (so- 

 called) comb-leveler. To use it the honey must be extracted 

 and the combs lickt clean by the bees. Light your lamp. 

 Put water in the trough around the melter. Wait half an 

 hour till all is hot enough to start in. Place your comb on 

 the leveler and wig-wag it. When melted down to the pre- 

 scribed limit, lift ofl:". With a case-knife scrape off propolis 

 and wax quickly lest it might ignite. With a tiny penknife 

 open the sealed air, as air can be readily artificially sealed 

 in this manner. I have purposely and repeatedly left such 

 sealed air-cells untoucht, and put on the hives the following 

 season when the bees left them the same ; and I might have 

 done a splendid business had air more weight. Beware lest 

 a despairing sigh escape you ; blow the moat dry, extinguish 

 your lamp, etc., only to start fresh again. 



All this is obsolete with me now. I do it no more. My 

 first step in fixing the remainder of the unfinisht comb is 

 by taking three unfinisht sections and the Bingham uncap- 

 ping knife to the near-by village barber who hones it (the 

 knife) to a razor edge. I now resolutely walk into the 

 honey-room with the devout determination of doing a good 

 chop. The aforesaid temperature is somewhat lowered to 

 be more comfortable. A frame made of lath, unplaned and 

 unpolisht (because it so holds the sections better) is laid on 

 the table. It holds six sections. The left hand picks up a 

 section, and with the aforesaid knife is made one great cut- 

 ting sweep to the left and one to the right and one side is 

 uncapt and the comb cut down low so that when the other 

 side has received a similar treatment it is about an inch 

 thick. Sections go into the frame, the frames into the ex- 

 tractor, the honey into my ripening and clarifying tank. 

 Here is where the 7-to-the-foot open-top section scores a big 

 point. You can cut the comb down easilj-. 



All the unfinisht sections, whether or not they contain 

 honey, are leveled. The tops of the cells that are propo- 

 lized, even when low enough already, are shaved off. Propo- 

 lized foundation is cut out entirely. The honey being all 

 extracted from the sections, they are set out for the bees to 

 lick clean and dry, so they can be stored away until the 

 next season sees them on the hives again, to be filled by the 

 bees and capt snow-white, to be shipt to market as fancy 

 white comb honey. John Trimberger. 



A lengthy discussion followed, especially upon evap- 

 orating honey not ripened as it comes from the unfinisht 

 sections, and at times in extracting. 



QUES. — Is all unsealed honey unripe honey ? 



Several replied no, especially that gathered in very dry 

 weather, and often the fall-gathered also ; that each bee- 

 keeper should know at sight any honey that is ripened, and 

 never take from the hive before such quality is secured. 



A recess was taken to pay the annual dues, which was 

 responded to by a large number, representing 14 counties in 

 Wisconsin in attendance, and delegates from two other 

 States. 



Next was a paper by H. Lathrop, on 



Producing Comb Honey Without Increase. 



If your bee-cellar is not sweet, sprinkle a good coat of 

 fresh lime on the floor. If the trouble is simply dampness, 

 six or eight inches of dry oats-straw scattered on the floor 

 will do much toward helping the matter. I have a bee-cellar 

 that has a very moist, porous bottom ; by using the straw as 

 described, it has wintered very successfully for a number of 

 years. 



A certain bee-keeper has a chance to rent 35 colonies of 

 bees from a farmer for next season. He wishes to run 

 them for comb honey and take no increase ; he will keep 

 them where thej' now are on the owner's premises and bar- 

 g-ain to leave the original number at the close of the season. 

 How can he manage ? There are several ways of procedure 



in such cases ; I will mention two, either of which will 

 work. I should visit the apiary in the spring often enough 

 to see that each colonj-, if possible, was gotten in shape for 

 the honey harvest, by feeding any that needed it, by equal- 

 izing and by seeing that each colony was provided with a 

 queen that could attend to her proper duties. 



Now when the honey harvest begins, provide all with 

 supers that are in shape to work in them. Very likelj' some 

 of the colonies will not swarm at all if given surplus room 

 at the proper time, but you will have some one on the 

 ground often enough to attend to the swarming question in 

 the way that I shall point out. When you find a colony pre- 

 paring to swarm by having queen-cells well underway, take 

 a sharp knife and cut out and remove about two-thirds of 

 the brood, including all that has queen-cells started on it. 

 The bees will go to work and build down the combs again, 

 and swarming will be .stopt, very likely, for the season, 

 especially if they are well at work in the. sections. The 

 brood thus removed can be placed over weak colonies, if 

 there are any, in almost any kind of box, and allowed to 

 hatch and build up the colony, or you can take it home and 

 feed it to the chickens, and put what they leave into the 

 wax-kettle, so that nothing will be wasted. In this way 

 you may take a good crop of honey and have no increase of 

 colonies. 



This may look like a rough and wasteful way, but it 

 answers the question, and it will work. At the close of the 

 season the bees are all right, and have their combs rebuilt, 

 so what harm has been done by cutting out the brood ? Of 

 course such work is not recommended for novices — it re- 

 quires one who has a practical knowledge of bee-keeping ; 

 but even if practiced by a novice it \yould often result in far 

 better returns for the labor expended than what is gained 

 by the old method of letting the bees swarm and swarm, 

 furnishing hives to put the new swarms in, the result — a 

 lot of weak colonies to die during the winter or coming 

 spring, and no surplus honey, unless the season happens to 

 be an extraordinarily good one. 



The other plan, which I will briefly outline, requires 

 more fixtures, but as I said of the first, it will work if prop- 

 erly carried out. Make some cheap shallow cases of com- 

 mon fencing, same width and length as the hive, put sticks 

 in the top to correspond with the top-bars of the brood- 

 frames. When a colony swarms remove the hive to one 

 side with the entrance turned in the opposite direction ; hive 

 the swarm in the shallow case on the old stand : reduce the 

 old hive as much as possible, by getting all field-bees into 

 the temporary brood-chamber. 



After a few days when they have gotten well started in 

 building combs, you can give them the supers that were on 

 the present hive, or you can do so at once by using a queen- 

 excluding honey-board. 



After the first day turn the old hive around and allow 

 it to remain beside the other with the entrance the same 

 way. On or before the seventh day you can weaken the old 

 colony to prevent further swarming, by .shaking oft' the 

 young hatching bees from the combs and letting them run 

 into the other, which is to be made the working colony. The 

 temporary brood-chamber being small, the queen will oc- 

 cupy nearly the whole space with brood so that you will get 

 nearly all the surplus honey in the sections. After the 

 honey season has closed, all supers have been removed, and 

 you wish to leave the original colonies as you found them, 

 iplace the old hive back on the original stand, and on top of 

 it place the temporary brood-chamber ; leave it there until 

 brood-rearing ceases," and all brood is hatcht. then place a 

 bee-escape under it, and when clear of bees take it away. It 

 will be seen that when these two colonies are placed the 

 one on top of the other, that there is a queen in each ; one 

 can be removed by the bee-keeper if he desires, otherwise 

 the bees will do it. Almost any bee-keeper will know what 

 to do with these shallow cases containing strips of comb 

 and a very little honey. They can be saved entirely for the 

 same purpose another year, or the honey and wax can be 

 gotten out of them by the agency of heat. 



Now, if any of my bee-keeping readers think they can 

 furnish a better answer to the original question than the 

 foregoing, I would be glad to have them do so, as I am here 

 to learn as well as to furnish what information I can rela- 

 tive to the subject of bee-keeping. H. L.^THrop. 



As Aug. Weiss was present, and making over 14,000 

 pounds per year of his comb foundation, and having sam- 

 ples of foundation and long rolls of sheeted wax with him, 

 many questions on comb foundation were answered bj' him. 

 [Continued ne.xt week.] 



