1086 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 15 



est devices, which goes to show what can be 

 done for that race. They ai'e a very bright, 

 studious race of people, and readily take to 

 bee-keeping when some one offers to instruct 

 them how to do it. 



When Johnny Thomson gets back to Cana- 

 da we naturally expect he will go to work 

 to teach the natives of our Lady of the Snows 

 the latest kinks in twentieth-century bee- 

 breeding. In any event we expect to hear 

 more about him in the years that are to come. 



A SEASON'S WORK WITH SECTIONAL 

 HIVES. 



Swarm" Control and Comb-honey Prodiu- 

 tion; Feeding Back and Feeders. 



BY J. E. HAND, 



[The problem of feeding back has been considered 

 a difficult one. Many, in attempting it, have failed; 

 others have partially succeeded. A few, and a very 

 few, have made a grand success of it. Among this 

 minority mav be named our correspondent, Mr. Hand. 

 He has gone so minutely into the subject that there 

 should be no reason why any one should fail. In the 

 previous article he explained that, while the honey- 

 flow was on, he ran his colonies up to the point of cap- 

 ping the sections when he took them off. These he 

 held till after the honey flow had ceased, when he put 

 them on the hive again, and fed back thinneddown 

 extracted honey to get them capped over. In this ar- 

 ticle he explains fully this last procedure.— Ed.] 



Judging by the reports that have appear- 

 ed in the bee-journals from time to time it 

 would seem that very little is really known 

 regarding the science of feeding back to fin- 

 ish off fancy honey. Some of the statements 

 from those who have made a failure of feed- 

 ing back are really amusing. One bee-keep- 

 er conducted some extensive experiments 

 along this line; and, basing his judgment on 

 the result of these experiments, he offered to 

 pay $1.00 per lb. for 100 lbs. of comb honey 

 that could be produced at a profit by feed- 

 ing back extracted honey. On further in- 

 quiry regarding these experiments, we found 

 ihat they were conducted during October, 

 after every thing green was killed by the 

 frost, and at a time when the bees were in a 

 semi-dormant condition, and had settled 

 down for their winter's rest, and therefore 

 wei'e entirely unfit for such an experiment. 

 This party also caged the queen. While it 

 would, no doubt, be perfectly safe to offer 

 even $10.00 per lb. for honey that could be 

 produced at a profit under the above condi- 

 tions, yet it should be evident to even a nov- 

 ice in bee-keeping that such an experiment 

 does not amount to any thing, and that judg- 

 ment based on the result of such work would 

 be far from correct. It is folly for any one 

 to make the statement that comb honey can 

 not be finished off at a profit by feeding back 

 extracted honey, with the difference in price 

 that exists at the present time between comb 

 and extracted honey. 



Just now people are going wild about the 

 great profits to be made in feeding hens for 

 winter eggs; and, while there is a handsome 

 profit in winter-egg production for the poul- 

 tryman who is master of his business, yet the 



profits are not greater than can be obtained 

 by feeding bees to finish oft" partly filled sec- 

 tions. I speak from the standpoint of the 

 poultryman as well as that of the honey-pro- 

 ducer Feeding back is somewhat similar 

 to feeding poultry for winter eggs; and un- 

 less you possess the "know how" you will, 

 no doubt, come out at the little end of the 

 horn as did Bro. McGlade with his poultry 

 venture. 



The object of this article is to tell you jast 

 how we are not only able to feed back at a 

 handsome profit but also how we get our sec- 

 tions more perfectly and evenly filled than 

 it is possible for us to get in any other way 

 during our very short honey-flow. 



W^HAT KIND OF FEEDER SHALL WE USE FOR 

 FEEDING BACK? 



Perhaps the first thing to be considered in 

 feeding back is the feeder. For several years 

 we were handicapped in our operations be- 

 cause none of the feeders that were listed in 

 any of the supply catalogs were of any ac- 

 count for the purpose, so we invented sever- 

 al of our own; and, although some of them 

 were an improvement over the others, yet 

 they were not entirely satisfactory. 



Finally we found a feeder illustrated in 

 " Quinby's Bee-keeping Explained " that was 

 just what we wanted; and, although we have 

 used it for more than ten years, we have not 

 been able to improve it, and we are using it 

 to-day just as Mr Quinby did more than fif- 

 ty years ago. Fig. 1 will show how it is used. 



Sfi! 



\^ 



FIG. 1. — THE QUINBY FEEDER AS USED BY J. 

 E. HAND FOR FEEDING BACK EX- 

 TRACTED HONEY. 



The feeder is a tin tray two inches deep, 

 inclosed by a wooden frame of the same 

 depth. The wooden frame is of the same 

 width as the hive, and 2-1 inches longer, while 

 the tin tray is the same length as the hive. 

 This tray is pushed to the back end of the 

 frame surrounding it, leaving a space of 2| 

 inches in front for the bees to pass out and 

 in the hive, and at the same time allows the 

 tin tray to project beyond the hive at the 



