THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



357 



venient and profitable to winter in- 

 doors, it is in such case most conven- 

 ient to set the liives on top of each 

 other, thus building up a wall of hives 

 around the room, and at the same 

 time it is often desirable to have the 

 hive so constructed that we could 

 handle any one, in providing for them 

 without disturbing others imme- 

 diately connected with the one being 

 handled. 



What shall we do ¥ Shall we have 

 a hive that embodies all desirable 

 points, or will we plod along losing in 

 winter what we can save in summer 'i 

 Do not say that it cannot be done, but 

 let each one strive to develop at least 

 one good point. It seems that if other 

 creatures can have a home that is 

 adequate to all their wants, why not 

 the honey bee ? 



A perfect hive must embody many 

 good points, and we cannot expect to 

 accomplish all in one day, or year 

 perhaps, but we may proximate, and 

 in doing so let us ever bear in mind 

 that the following points must not be 

 over-looked : 



1. The brood-chamber must be 

 easily adjusted to the size of the col- 

 ony and wants of the queen at all 

 seasons of the year. 



2. It must be so that winter stores 

 will be mostly in the upper portion of 

 the hive, and above the cluster. 



3. There must be ample top surface 

 in summer for supers. 



4. It should be adapted to out-door 

 wintering if possible. 



r 5. It should be constructed so that 

 the bees can be handled at any time 

 of the year. 



6. Let the hive be not too compli- 

 cated or expensive, but cheap, simple 

 and compact. 



Let each give their best thoughts 

 through the American Bee Jour- 

 nal, and let the only strife be for the 

 perfection of the coming hive, and 

 ultimate success of bee-culture. 



Orion, Wis. 



For the American Bee JouroaL 



The Standard Frame. 



W. H. HARMER. 



I am much obliged to Mr. Hutchin- 

 son for his article on page 308 ; I am 

 glad to hear of anybody adopting the 

 Langstroth hive, and also to Mr. 

 Heddon for his, on the next page. 

 The want of a standard frame I am 

 sure is' felt by every busy honey- 

 producer. I used to think the same 

 as Mr. Hutchinson in rega\-d to the 

 necessity of the frame holding eight 

 4J:Cx4ia sections, but I have got over 

 that. 1 believe the Langstroth frame to 

 be long enough, and that broad frames 

 for sections will soon be a thing of the 

 past. I think Mr. Hutchinson would 

 say so too, if he ever used the Heddon 

 section rack. It seems to me there is 

 unnecessary wood and work about 

 the broad frame system, and it is not 

 nearly so easy to manipulate, as the 

 rack above mentioned. We must 

 come down to a point where there is 

 only the necessary handling, if we 

 want to turn those silver-lined clouds 

 to a golden hue. 



I have used a deeper and shorter 

 frame before I took to the Langs- 

 troth ; and to take a deeper one now 

 would make me feel as if I was going 

 backwards. I will here quote two 

 lines out of " Langstrotli on the 

 Honey-bee," page 330 : " The deeper 

 the frame the more difficult it is to 

 make them hang true on the rabbets, 

 and the greater the difficulty of hand- 

 ling them without crushing the bees 

 or breaking the combs." 



Let every beginner make a note of 

 this, for it is one of the points on 

 which successful bee-culture rest, and 

 one that troubled me ever since 1 saw 

 the first movable frame, until the joy- 

 ous news came of the wiring process ; 

 whoever the inventor is, he will al- 

 ways have my heart-felt thanks. 



It stands to reason that we ought 

 not to play leap-frog with our frames 

 of bees and brood, if we have not got 

 perfectly straight combs. I can tol- 

 erate no others in my apiary, and to 

 get them so, they must be wired. 

 But to return to the subject, I think 

 there is room in the Langstroth liive 

 for a frame two-eighths of an inch 

 longer if any one wished to produce 

 comb honey in that way. I should 

 like to say a good deal more on the 

 subject, but I am a very slow writer, 

 besides I do not wish to take up too 

 much valuable space. I think Mr. 

 Hurst will find a very good answer, 

 in the above, to his question in the 

 last number of the Bee Journal. 



Manistee, Mich., July 6, 1883. 



For tbe Americui Bee Journal. 



Do Queens Not Mate More than Once? 



S. HINMAN. 



Is it regarded as an established fact 

 that queen bees mate with the drones 

 only once'y Prof. A. J. Cook says, on 

 page 310 of the Bee Journal, that 

 Mr. Alley is surely right in saying that 

 queens mate only once. My experience 

 with queens leads me to think that 

 there are exceptions to the rule. 



In 1880, 1 commenced to Italianize 

 my apiary by purchasing an Italian 

 queen from D. A. Jones. I introduced 

 her successfully to a queenless colony 

 of black bees on July 7 ; on Aug. 27, I 

 succeeded in introducing a young 

 queen, reared from the brood of the 

 Jones queen in another colony of 

 black bees. This hive I looked into 

 very often, in order to see how the 

 daughter of the Jones queen was 

 coming on. In due time, the eggs, 

 larvae and sealed brood made their 

 appearance in the hive. On Sept. 24, 

 as 1 looked into the hive, I saw most 

 unmistakable signs on the queen of 

 having mated with a drone that very 

 day. At the same time there were 

 eggs and brood in all stages, and 

 sealed brood on the same frame with 

 the queen. I think there can be no 

 doubt about its being the same queen 

 that I introduced on Aug. 27, as there 

 was no unfertilized Italian queen in 

 my yard, that could have usurped her 

 place in the hive, and outside of my 

 yard there was not an Italian colony 

 within five miles of my place. 



Dundonald, Ont. 



Prairie Farmer. 



Extracting Honey from tne Combs. 



MRS. L. HARRISON. 



Many more pounds of honey can be 

 secured by the free use of an extractor 

 than if comb honey is the object. 

 Especially is this true when there is 

 only now and then a good day. An 

 extractor is a desideratum in every 

 apiary, although we prefer to produce 

 comb honey. Many colonies that 

 would not produce a pound of comb 

 honey would yield considerable ex- 

 tracted. 



There has been considerable dis- 

 cussion among bee-keepers as to the 

 proper time when honey should be 

 " swung." Some claim that it should 

 be sealed, and well ripened, while 

 others aver that it saves time and 

 honev to extract before sealing, and 

 that the honey is just as good, pro- 

 vided it is kept in a hot, dry atmos- 

 phere until it has evaporated to the 

 proper consistency. A prominent 

 apiarist of this State, who runs his 

 bees for extracted honey only, tiers up 

 his hives until the season closes before 

 extracting. 



This extracting business is not al- 

 ways smooth sailing. A lady once 

 told the writer that a neighboring bee- 

 keeper brought his machine to their 

 house and extracted their honey. 

 When he was through, everything m 

 the house was sticky ; the kitchen 

 floor was covered with wax and pro- 

 polis, and the bees cross as hornets ; 

 when the honey was brought in, they 

 "came also." The key-holes in the 

 doors had to be stopped, and when 

 the bees found they could not enter, 

 they hung in a big cluster from the 

 door-knobs. She emphatically de- 

 clared that she had enough of it to last 

 her her lifetime. "Why, if I picked 

 up the dish rag there were bees on it, 

 and I got stung, or if I touched the 

 handle of the dipper or the broom, it 

 was the same thing. Whew ! But 

 the funniest part of it was when my 

 old man drew on his books in the 

 morning the day after extracting. He 

 is always complaining of the rheuma- 

 tism, and being so stiff that he can 

 hardly move ; but when his foot went 

 down into that boot, he jumped clear 

 over a chair with a yell like an 'Injun.' 

 You see the bees had clustered inside, 

 near the top, and, as he pulled it on, 

 he brushed them down into it^ and, as 

 they got pinched, they stung lively." 



The extracting should be done in a 

 building by itself, or in a tent inacces- 

 sible to the bees. The building should 

 have a revolving window, so that the 

 bees inside could be turned outside. 

 The tools necessary are uncapping 

 knives, an extractor, and an uncap- 

 ping can. This can has a wire strainer 

 part way down, and is a great con- 

 venience, for the honey drains through 

 into the can below, which is drawn 

 off through a gate. Some bee-keepers 

 have a box with folding covers, which 

 has two handles or shafts, before and 

 behind, so that it can be borne by two 

 persons in carrying in the honey to be 

 extracted. This box is filled with 

 empty comb and carried to a hive, 

 when the bees are driven from the 



