1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



317 



cient for all occasions with very proliiic 

 queens. 



Again, in order to ascertain whether sep- 

 arate compartments have any influence upon 

 the laying of the queen, it is not absolutely 

 necessary to use divisible brood-chambers. 

 A simple bar through a frame will often show 

 how bewildered a queen is by getting to a 

 wood strip while laying regularly. Do not 

 understand me as saying that all queens will 

 be stopped by a cross-bar, but that often 

 queens are stopped to such an extent that 

 you will find brood on only one side of this 

 bar. This was evidenced to me best in the 

 use of divisible frames, such as we formerly 

 used in queen-breeding, to make nuclei. 

 Such frames have been recommended by Mr. 

 Benton for the making of diminutive hives, 

 and they are very efficient for the queen- 

 rearing business, because they may be taken 

 out of strong colonies in the beginning of 

 the season, and returned to them afterward. 

 In the use of these frames I have very often 

 found brood in only one of the sections and 

 honey in the other. The queen had found 

 the cross-bar, and had stopped there and re- 

 traced her steps. So I think it is difficult to 

 deny the fact that a sectional frame inter- 

 rupts the breeding (or, rather, the laying) of 

 the queen in many instances. 



CALCIUM CHLORIDE IN CELLARS. 



Changing the subject, I read in Stray 

 Straws a quotation by Dr. Miller of the pro- 

 posed use of calcium chloride to dry out bee- 

 cellars. This thought occurred to my father 

 in the early seventies, and we tried a hun- 

 dred pounds of this substance in our winter- 

 ing-cellar. The stuff came in large lumps, 

 and my father went to the trouble of devis- 

 ing a pan with dripping-holes, placed over 

 another vessel. The chloride was put on the 

 upper vessel and was expected to dissolve. 

 Well, when moisture came it bagan to gather 

 water, and drip, but it was so slow in doing 

 it that most of the calcium was still in lumps 

 when the bees were taken out. It remained 

 in lumps, though the lumps were getting 

 smaller, for six or eight months. It was not 

 till the opening of the next winter that the 

 calcium was found to be all liquefied, and 

 we were so disgusted with its slow change 

 that we threw it away. It is probable that, 

 if we had had it crushed and spread all over 

 the cellar it might have been more efficient; 

 but I venture the assertion that this means 

 of absorbing the moisture of a cellar will 

 never be practical. 



NEW SPELLING. 



And now about the spelling reform. Stray 

 Straws, again. You say, Mr. Editor, that 

 Gleanings is not big enough to blaze the 

 way for the reform, because large publica- 

 tions do not adopt it. The Literary Digest 

 is using it, and has even gone so far as to 

 quote some of the opponents of it in the very 

 spelling that these men oppose. If we are 

 to follow the mossbacks who ridicule the new 

 way, we might as well go back to Shake- 

 speare's time and spell "fish" "fysshe." 

 The greatest argument used against the new 



spelling is that it will make every man's 

 orthography look "untaught." I hold it 

 will do just the reverse, for it is quite a nice 

 thing to remember the 300 words and use 

 them properly. I for one can not expect to 

 do it successfully. But I am quite willing 

 and anxious to see this new reform accepted, 

 to blaze the way for the younger generations 

 who will not, I hope, be as foolish as their 

 fathers. The fact is, the reform is now 

 made in spite of all that the conservative 

 public may say, for custom alone is sufficient 

 to coin new words and reform old ones; and 

 not twenty years will pass before everybody 

 gets into the custom, I dare say. 

 Hamilton, 111. 



[We are glad to get your views on the 

 shorter spelling as suggested by our worthy 

 President; and it is gratifying that so influ- 

 ential a journal as the Literary Digest is one 

 of the pioneers in this movement. The pub- 

 lishers, Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, have prob- 

 ably done as much as or more than any oth- 

 er publishers in the United States to further 

 this reform. But Gleanings would hardly 

 feel that it would be wise to adopt it until 

 some more "influential" papers will help to 

 blaze the way. 



With regard to the divisible-brood-chamber 

 hive, there will be some further discussion 

 in which our correspondent is invited to join. 

 As already pointed out, there will be a series 

 of articles from J. E Hand, of Birmingham, 

 Ohio.— Ed.] 



%»» 



EXTRACTING HONEY. 



How to Avoid Running the Cans Over and 

 Wasting Honey; a Device for Shutting 

 the Gate when a Can is Full, and Ringing 

 a Bell for an Alarm; a Simple and Satis- 

 factory Honey-strainer. 



BY K. T. RHEES. 



About twenty years ago, in the early days 

 of my bee-keeping, I lost much time, honey, 

 and temper in pouring my extracted honey 

 into cans. I have always practiced thorough- 

 ly ripening my honey on the hives before ex- 

 tracting. This thick honey would run into 

 cans very slowly; therefore I used to set the 

 honey to running into the can, and then go 

 on with my extracting, trying to keep watch 

 of my can and run my extractor at the same 

 time. This consumed considerable time, and 

 sometimes, in spite of my supposed close at- 

 tention, the can would run over and waste 

 honey, and make a muss which had to be 

 cleaned up. This, of course, was very try- 

 ing on my temper when I was already over- 

 run with work. 



To do away with this trouble I invented a 

 machine to look after the filling of the cans. 

 With this machine all the operator had to 

 do was to set the empty can on the platform, 

 raise the honey-gate, and then take the can 

 off when full, and put another empty can in 

 its place, and so on. The machine would 

 look after the filling; and when the can was 

 full it would shut the honey-gate and ring a 



