1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



183 



are so liable to granulate again. But even 

 for such a trade, two or thi'ee meltings would 

 suffice. The honey being put into several 

 receptacles, leaving spaces for the hot air to 

 circulate around or between, greatly hastens 

 the operation above what can be accomplish- 

 ed in a single large tank. About every ten 

 minutes the honey should be stirred so as to 

 mix the melted and unmelted, and this dou- 

 bles the rapidity of the job; and it can be 

 melted this way without heating it above 100 

 degrees. The less honey is heated, the bet- 

 ter. 



Often I melt a batch and put it into cans 

 during the evening. Rainy or cold days can 

 be nicely utilized this way; and the women 

 folks are usually glad to have their lire kept 

 in good order — that is, where wood is used. 

 The housewife can bake without interference 

 with my honey-dishes; and if I leave one 

 dish out she can put on a kettle of meat or 

 vegetables to boil; and ironing clothes can 

 be carried on by using one or two spaces and 

 raising the hood when putting in or taking 

 out the irons; and during it all I get consid- 

 erable time to read a bee journal besides dig- 

 ging out the candied honey, attending to it 

 while on the stove, and pouring it into jars. 

 I put it into jars while warm. It is made 

 somewhat thicker by this heating, and when 

 it becomes cold it is very thick. The air- 

 bubbles rise then more I'eadily, leaving the 

 jars very bright and sparkling. So you see 

 there is quite a round of economy connected 

 with this outfit. The oiittit shown is such a 

 one as 1 have. If the stove were smaller I 

 would use fewer dishes of honey on it, and 

 make the hood to correspond, i have used 

 a single can for melting beeswax, making a 

 hood for that. 



Chatsworth, Cal. 



[The scheme here shown of utilizing sec- 

 ond-hand square cans that almost every bee- 

 keeper has around home is most excellent. 

 In fact, there is a great variety of useful ar- 

 ticles that can be made out of such cans. 

 For instance, by attaching a wire bail to the 

 opposite sides of one of these cans from 

 which the top has been cut off we get a hrst- 

 class pail. By cutting a can horizontally or 

 vertically through the middle we get two 

 pans. One set will be oblong and the other 

 square. One of the former, when placed on 

 an oil-stove, would make an excellent heat- 

 ing-pan for honey-knives during extracting. 

 Such pans also would come handy for wash- 

 basins at out-yards, and if they should be 

 stolen there would be no great loss. They 

 could be used for cooking and baking at out- 

 yards, up in the mountains, or out on the 

 plains, by bee-keepers who are " baching 

 it," and there are many such. 



The melting-tank idea here shown is only 

 one of the many uses to which these honey- 

 containers can be put. Very often bee-keep- 

 ers pay a good price for special apparatus 

 (and any thing special always costs), when 

 the common article around home, by a little 

 ingenuity, can be used almost as well, and 

 at very little cost. A dollar saved is a dol- 

 lar earned — Ed.] 



A PLEA FOR CHUNK HONEY. 



Sell More Honey by Giving Your Custom- 

 ers What they Want. 



BY W. T. DAVISON. 



There are three ways of getting honey 

 from bees: First, by using shallow extracting- 

 frames and running for chunk hcmey; sec- 

 ond, by running for section honey; third, by 

 running for extracted honey. 



My aim i§ to use all three of these methods 

 of producing honey, for by doing so i shall 

 be able to sell more honey than ever before. 

 I have customers who don't want chunk hon- 

 ey, because it granulates, and is hard to 

 melt. They want section honey because it 

 doesn't granulate as a rule, and looks much 

 nicer to them. Others want the chunk hon- 

 ey because they generally get more honey 

 for the same money, and they get a good 

 friction-top brick that can be used by any 

 family, and can be carried or hauled any 

 way; and if it turns over, the honey is not 

 hurt. Then a good many people don't want 

 comb honey of any kind. They want ex- 

 tracted. I am setting the example of using 

 extracted honey instead of molasses, and 

 some of my customers seem inclined to fol- 

 low the same example. My extracted-hon- 

 ey trade is as good as or better than the 

 chunk or section trade. 



There are all kinds of people who want 

 all kinds of honey. 



Any man can get more chunk honey than 

 he can section honey, and it sells here at ex- 

 actly the same price; but to please all I must 

 have section honey along. I can get more 

 honey in sections by using those exiracting- 

 frames to coax the bees into the supers. I 

 sometimes have a few colonies that are a little 

 weak, and they will not work in the supers 

 at all, but will till the brood-chamber full of 

 honey and crowd the queen almost clear out 

 by having an extractor to use on these colo- 

 nies. I get some honey anyhow; and' when 

 I empty the combs the bees will go to work. 

 Sometimes some of my shallowest frames 

 have dark or damaged combs. I just extract 

 those combs and put nothing in the chunk 

 honey but tirst-class honey with nice combs: 

 then when you put your chunk honey in 

 friction-top buckets in nice shape, pour in 

 extracted until the combs are covered. 



Velpen, Ind. 



[It is probably true that many of our hon- 

 ey-producers, especially those who dispose 

 of their product iu their own locality, do not 

 cater enough to a certain trade that would 

 take very kindly to chunk honey or "bulk 

 honey," as it is called in Texas. Where a 

 bee-keeper is well known he would have no 

 difficulty in disposing of his proiluct in that 

 form. It is more suggestive of the honey of 

 the old days on the farm; and if the mind of 

 the consumer can be disal)used of the notion 

 that such honey is a mixture of glucose, with 

 pieces of dry combs swimming in it, he will 

 probably take it in preference to honey in 

 any other form. One difficulty with comb 



