1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



161 



WOTtS or TRAVEI^ 



't^;ggi) r^f 57 j-g?5r*-_: 



OUR OWN APrARY IN SUNNY CUBA. 



It is now the 29th of January, and honey is 

 coming' in ag^ain. The sound of the extract- 

 or is music to me while I sit here, without 

 coat or vest, and write. The bees are too 

 busj' to rob, and Mr. Wardell and Stephen 

 are happy. The door to the extracting- 

 room is wide open, and every now and then 

 a great pan of cappings is put in the sun 

 wax-extractor; but tlie bees, for a wonder, 

 don't seem to care much even for cappings. 

 Yesterday I went out on my wheel to see 

 where the honey came from. Tlie country 

 roads here are little more than cow-paths, 

 or a sort of road made by drawing water 

 with an ox-team on a sort of rude sled, or, 

 rather, stoneboat, made of a forked log. 

 Sometimes the water is drawn in a barrel, 

 but ofteoer in a natural barrel made by 

 sawing- off the bulged part of the trunk of 

 the roj^al palm. This beautiful palm-tree 

 has its trunk bulged part way up to the 

 top, exactly as a seed-onion stalk is bulged, 

 and fur the same reason — to give it strengtli 

 to stand the blast, with the smallest possible 

 amount of material. This bulge is hollow, 

 or filled with only a sort of loose pith. I 

 followed one of these paths in its devious 

 way past the Cuban cottages, down to the 

 river. Whenever j-ou can strike a trail 

 where the}- have been hauling water you 

 have a Jirie wheel-path. Wheels are so 

 unusual here that people stop their work 

 and often rush out of the houses to see one 

 pass. The river (as it is called) has a 

 swift current over a beautiful pebbly bot- 

 tom; and as the water comes from a sulphur 

 spring back in the mountains it has tlie rep- 

 utation of possessing" medicinal qualities. 

 Be that as it may, it certainly makes me 

 feel like a new man whenever I take a bath 

 in it. Well, when I was takini^ my accus- 

 tomed bath I thought I heard bees overhead, 

 and investigation a little later showed a 

 great quantity of them humming- about the 

 top of a ro3'al palm, close to the water's 

 edge. This palm bears great bunches of 

 nuts, perhaps all or more than j'ou could 

 wheel on a wheelbarrow, and they are us- 

 ed here onU' for feeding swine. In fact, 

 they are almost the onl}^ feed they have for 

 pig's. As the lean pork is about the best I 

 ever tasted anywhere, it maj' be owing to 

 this "nut diet." I wonder if our good 

 friends at Battle Creek, Mich., couldn't see 

 their wa^' to "let up" a little on flesh for 

 food if it were produced by exclusive nut diet. 

 How do they get these bunches of green nuts 

 from the tops of these great trees? Why, men 

 trained to the business, with a peculiar rig 

 of stout rope, climb the trees and cut oif 

 the clusters for five cents a tree, and I am 

 told some men will climb over 100 trees in 

 a da}'. Do you say I am writing about 

 pigs, etc., instead of our apiary? Not so. 



Listen. After the bunch of nuts is cut off, 

 this wonderful tropical tree proceeds at 

 once "to grow more nuts to feed more pigs," 

 etc. ; and one man said a thrifty tree would 

 give a crop of green nuts every month in 

 the year. Another man said, not so many 

 as that, but that it 7C'ou/d send out a great 

 ([uantity of blossoms in a very short time 

 after the nuts were g-athered, and I found 

 the bees just roaring on these great loads 

 of blossoms. I had for some time suspected 

 the honey, at least a larg-e part of it, came 

 from this source, because the bees were go- 

 ing- in great num^bers in the direction of 

 the palm forests. 

 cappings; how shalt. wr kendkr them 



INTO wax? 



With the taking of 14,000 lbs. of honey 

 there is, of course, quite a lot of cappings, 

 especially as zae allow the combs to stay 

 in the hives until most of them are sealed 

 over. I have heard some say we could get 

 just as much for our honey, whether sealed 

 over or not; but we do not believe in that 

 sort of doctrine, even in Cuba. Good thick 

 well-refined honey is worth more for any 

 purpose than thin raw honey that may fer- 

 ment, and burst the barrels. What shall 

 we do with all these cappings? First, we 

 are to drain all the honey out possible; then 

 (according to j/iy notion) we are to save 

 hoik wax and honey, and we want both in 

 the very best shape possible. The solar 

 wax-extractor is the only thing- to do this, 

 so far as I know. All steam and boiling-- 

 water arrangements would spoil the honev. 

 Some Cuban bee-keepers say the honey 

 sticking to the cappings is not worth the 

 trouble; but I can not as yet agree with 

 them. A plan for rendering- all wax, in 

 use here, is to make a stout tight box of 

 plank, with a bottoin of galvanized iron. Set 

 this on bricks, and build jvist a small fire 

 under the iron bottom, so as not to scorch 

 or burn the wood sides. Put in a little 

 water, then your wax. When melted, dip 

 the clear wax from the surface and pour it 

 into tubs made by sawing a barrel in two. 

 To get the wax out of the tubs, loosen the 

 top hoop or hoops. I saw one huge cake of 

 wax taken out of such a tub; but in doing 

 it a gallon or two of thick dark honey spread 

 about on the ground. With honey at 35 to 

 40 cts. a gallon, the loss was not much; 

 but if this honey had been taken out with 

 the solar extractor it would have been the 

 very best, for all honey obtained from cap- 

 pings is thicker and 7-iper, and better for 

 table use (to my notion any way), than any 

 that comes direct from the honey-extractor. 

 Of course, the solar wax-extractor is slow, 

 but a little attention of a minute or two once 

 in a couple of hours is all it needs, and I 

 think a large size will keep up with any 

 apiary if it is kept going whenever the suu 

 shines. 



We have found trouble so far in getting 

 the bees to rear brood in the winter time. 

 The weather is certainly warm enough, and 

 pollen is coming in great plenty; but the 

 brood-nest is apparently so filled with hon- 



