10 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



Jan. 



premiums at our county fair. So much for Glean- 

 ings and A B C. C. M. Dixox. 

 Parrish, HI., Dec. 27, 1882. 



Well. I declare, friend Dixon, and I say it, 

 too, while I smack my lips over that honey, 

 or syrup (I think I should call it syrui)). I 

 am going to sow a held of wheat, just on 

 purpose to see if I can lind honey by cutting 

 it at different times. Why, bless your heart! 

 it beats spider plant, Simpson plant, and all 

 the other plants all hollow— it is the straws 

 that are -'all hollow," where the honey is, 

 yon know. What will ever become of usV 

 Friend JSliller, you can just go and dig your 

 ligwort roots all up, and plant wheat. Put 

 phosphate on it, you know. Friend I)., 

 don't you know whether spring wdieat will 

 doV Can somebody else tell us more about 

 itV Can't we get wheat that will ripen before 

 clover comes? Oh, yes! I forgot to say it 

 isn"t the very nicest kind of honey, but you 

 know we could let them fill up the brood- 

 chamber with it, and that would save our 

 white-clover and linden honey. It has a 

 taste very much like green wheat straw. 

 Friend D., was it nicely sealed up when you 

 extracted it? Why, our friends in Texas are 

 nowhere now with their horsemint honey. 

 W-h-e-w ! Oh! hold on a minute! Do the 

 bees crawl clear down to the bottom of the 

 straws, or have we got to raise a new race 

 of long slim ones? 



HONKV-BOARDS MADE: OF PIIIRFOKAT- 

 £D ZINC. 



SHALF- WE 1 XCI.UDE THE QUEEN FRO^t GOING "IP 

 STAIRS" ? 



MOW many are there of us who use two- 

 story hives, who have not at some 

 time been annoyed by having the 

 frames of the upper story glued fast to those 

 of the lower one by honey bridged from one 

 to the other, and all built together solid? In 

 the Simplicity and chaff hives we have tried 

 to obviate it by reducing the space to i or 

 3-16 of an inch, and with some stocks of bees 

 this will answer very well ; but with others 

 they seem bound to fill this space, no matter 

 how small it is. 



UljIlHliilllHMHir 

 iiff^rpi ti ij >i fri M H "1 ■ 



UtnUHHlvMri i < 

 DlluUulj'UUl 1 ' 



A " C^UJiKN - EXCLUDER " nONEY - BOAllD. 



The ABC class have often asked if we 

 used a honey-board, or if an enameled sheet 

 was not to be left between, and some have 

 said this latter sheet with holes in it ans- 

 wered tiptop. Well, besides this trouble 

 there is another one, from having the queen 

 get above and laying eggs in the sections, 

 for where we have extracted honey she 

 would go above and lay great numbers of 

 drone eggs, especially if we tried to utilize 

 our drone combs for the extractor, and I be- 

 lieve it is pretty well demonstrated that the 



bees will store honey quite a little faster in 

 drone combs than worker, during a heavy 

 How. Well, a honey-board made of perfor- 

 ated zinc, made as shown in the cut below, 

 fixes all these troubles at once. They have 

 been used enough the past season to dem- 

 onstrate that they will do all we wish, and 

 the evidence seems to be pretty strong that 

 the worker bees carry honey above just as 

 freely as if they were not there. At present 

 we are able to furnish these perforated zinc 

 honey-boards, lined around their edges with 

 folded tin, for an even 2.5 cents each. This 

 is for the regular L. frames, and they will 

 fit Simplicity, chaff, or almost any form of 

 L. hives. On account of weight they can 

 not well be sent by mail without injury; 

 but where wanted for a sample, we can send 

 one by mail for 2-j cents extra. 



HALF-POFJND SECTION BOXFS. 



MUST WE HAVE IT? AND IF SO, WHAT ARE TO BE 

 THE DIMENSIONS? 



M S there seems to be a demand springing up for 

 J(^^ half-pound sections, I have been trying to 

 ~" ' settle down on the shape that will be the 

 most convenient to use in the Simplicity hive. I 

 have made up my mind to use a section 4J4x3 2-5x1 f; ; 

 you will see that it will just take 10 to fill a frame 

 814x17x1 "ii, and it will take just 10 such frames to fill 

 the Simplicity upper etorj', and it will take just 10 

 sections to each course in the Simplicity shipping- 

 case, and take 100 sections to the case. I think you 

 will like this plan, as you always like to count by ten 

 and hundreds. 



By using naiTow ehits In the bottom of the 28-lb. 

 honey-rack it will hold 50 of the half-pound secticus. 

 The combs will be so near the thickness of natural 

 comb that the bees will be very likely to build 

 straight combs without separators; and if we should 

 need separators we can use the same kind of sepa- 

 rators that we use between the 1-lb. sections. I 

 should like to hear from you and others on this sub- 

 ject. Please arise, and let us hear from you. 



Rantoul, 111., Dec. 21, 1882. J. A. Osborne. 



Friend O., I like the idea of tens and hun- 

 dreds tiptop ; but I don't quite like your 

 making the sections narrower, so they won't 

 fit in the wide frames that hold the usual 

 1-lb. sections. It will be an enormous ex- 

 pense to the bee-keepers of our land to lay 

 aside the wide frames and separjftors we 

 have already in stock, and it will be compli- 

 cating matters greatly, to even use some- 

 thing different in the new hives we may 

 make or purchase. At Kalamazoo we talked 

 about having 12 sections go in a wide frame 

 in place of 8, and this same size would then 

 go in all of our shipping cases and crates as 

 well. In regard to prices for making them, 

 unless some definite size is decided upon, so 

 that we can keep machinery on them right 

 along, we can not well give better prices 

 than for the 1-lb. sections. The work on 

 them Avill be nearly the same, any way, and 

 the amount of material will make but little 

 difference. To be frank in the matter, I 

 somewhat doubt our ability to supply the 

 demand for sections this season, and would 

 advise all who don't want to be disappoint- 

 ed, to be getting their orders in at once. 



