1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



639 



very little gnawing of the wood, as a rule, 

 and no ribbing on the face of the honey, or 

 at least it is inappreciable. We omitted to 

 state that, if the slats are placed too close to- 

 gether, the bees will begin to gnaw them; 

 and when they once start the job they will 

 make the space between the slats as much 

 as I inch wide. Of course they are ruined, 

 as the honey will be badly ribbed. 



It is true that a good many things are 

 condemned prematurely; and it is also true 

 that some good devices give poor or indiffei"- 

 ent results because they have not been used 

 according to directions. Manufacturers tind 

 this out to their sorrow and annoyance. — 

 Ed.] 



»«t»« 



QUEEN-EXCLUDING ZINC. 



How the Size of the Slots was First De- 

 termined. 



BY DR. G. L. TINKER. 



[To our newer readers it is proper to say that Dr. 

 G. L. Tinker, some twenty years ago, was one of the 

 pioneers, if not the principal one. to develop the use 

 of and perfect perforated zinc. As a bee-keeper he 

 was unsurpassed, and as a fine mechanic he was the 

 finest in all beedom. The zinc put on the market 

 priortothe introduction of his product was very crude; 

 but the pattern of the metal and the size of perfora- 

 tion he put out is still the standard the world over. 



As he states, he spent not a little time in investi- 

 gating the size of the width of the perforations. The 

 fact that he was so nearly right as to size attests his 

 skill and apicultural experience. 



But, owing to his lucrative and increasing practice 

 as a physician, he was compelled to dispose of his 

 bee-supply interest, and during the last 16 years he 

 has all but dropped out of the bee-keeping world. 



It is a special pleasure to us to know that he still 

 retains an interest in bees, and therefore wbat he has 

 to say on the widths of the perforations in zinc will 

 be of more than usual interest. — Ed.] 



The method of obtaining the proper size 

 of queen-excluding zinc perforations for 

 worker bees has, I think, never been given 

 to the public. Noticing in Gleanings of 

 March 1 that there are some who think the 

 perforations of our standard zinc should be 

 a little larger for best results, I herewith 

 give the method, as it will, no doubt, satisfy 

 all that perforations j'tjV^ wide is as nearly 

 correct as we can hope to get them. My 

 remembrance is that it was my old friend 

 Doolittle who wrote about nailing strips of 

 tin on a slatted honey-board to make a 

 queen-excluder, and, of course, I had to 

 make one. I soon found that it was a diffi- 

 cult task to nail on the strips so as to make 

 the openings of a uniform width. In some 

 places the bees could not get through, and 

 in others the opening would be too large. 

 I then noticed a little eminence on the top of 

 the thorax, and that where the opening was 

 a little too narrow it was this eminence that 

 stopped them, although some could get 

 through by twisting the thorax sidewise. 



I had obtained a piece of what was called 

 Chicago zinc, and placed it before the en- 

 trance of a hive. The perforations of this 

 zinc were quite uniform in size, but plainly 

 too narrow, as every bee would be stopped 

 by that little eminence on its back; and if 



it got through it had to twist its body to do 

 so. I then carefully examined the wood-tin 

 board that I had placed over the brood- 

 chamber of a hive, and found a place be- 

 tween the tins where the bees could get 

 through without being stopped by the em- 

 inence, and also saw that the hairs on top 

 of the thorax were brushed down flat in the 

 passage, but that the brushing-down of the 

 hairs did not hinder them in their passage. 

 The conclusion was at once formed that these 

 places in the wood-tin board were the small- 

 est practicable passage that could be used. 

 I then took a common cut nail, tiled it down 

 smooth, and inserted it in one of these places 

 that would just let the bees through easily, 

 and made a mark on the nail where it came 

 through, and I had found the width of the 

 proper size of perforation to be used. Dies 

 were then made and strips of zinc punched 

 on a small wooden machine, and then fast- 

 ened to a slatted honey-board, and it was 

 found that the bees could get through the 

 perforations without any hindrance, although 

 the hairs on their backs would be brushed 

 down in passage. Strips of perforated zinc 

 were then placed before the entrances of 

 hives, and the loaded bees watched in pass- 

 age. If the edge of the zinc rested on the 

 bottom-board so that it was not more than 

 the length of their legs up to the perfora- 

 ti(ms, the bees walked right through without 

 any hindrance. If the lower euge of the 

 metal was too wide, then the bees were 

 . somewhat hindered in their passage. This 

 led to inserting the strips of perforated metal 

 in saw-cuts in the edge of the slats, and such 

 boards offered no hindrance to the bees. 

 All that was necessary was to have a point 

 on each side of the zinc that the bees could 

 catch hold of with their feet, and they could 

 pass the zinc, when heavily loaded, so quick- 

 ly that the element of hindrance could not 

 be computed. 



Where there is nothing to catch hold of on 

 each side of a perforated zinc sheet, the 

 making of the perforations a little larger 

 than necessary will not facilitate the pass- 

 age of the bees. Their action in the passage 

 of a sheet of perforated metal, even if the 

 perforations were somewhat wider than 

 necessary, might be compared to a drowning 

 man catching at straws — there is plenty of 

 room below, but nothing secure to catch 

 hold of above. 

 New Philadelphia, O. 



[The writer took pains to verify Dr. Tin- 

 ker's experiments when his zinc was first in- 

 troduced by testing the width of his perfora- 

 tions on the bees in our apiary by trying 

 both the loaded and the empty workers. 

 We found that Chicago zinc, to which the 

 doctor refers in his article above, had a width 

 of slot jVA wide. The Jones zinc had a hole 

 from j^g'g to jV;/"^ wlde. But at that time 

 there were many complaints of queens pass- 

 ing through the holes in such metal, and 

 also complaints that loaded bees would not 

 go through the Chicago pattern. It was at 

 that time that Dr. Tinker, all enthusiasm, 

 set about to find the proper width. He sent 



