186 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apk. 



^^adi of ^mkif 



From Different Fields. 



PARAFFINE FOR FOL^NDATION. 



BO you thiuk it would do to use full sheets of 

 ) parafflne fdn. in sections? Please give an ac- 

 ' couat of your experience. I intend to try it, 

 on a small scale at least; and if I find there is no 

 danger of melting- down, I will use it altogether for 

 comb honey. I think It is foolishness to condemn 

 the use of paralBne for fdn., simply because it isn't 

 beeswax. We make the fdn., and why should we 

 not also make the wax? Paralflne is cheaper, clean- 

 er, and better looking than beeswax. We use it to 

 put extracted honey in, when we wax our barrels, 

 and I have never heard any one protest against its 

 use for that; why, then, may we not have the bees 

 put up comb honey in it? Its low melting-point 

 making it softer at a lower temperature than bees- 

 wax, seems to be the only real objection to it. If 

 we can overcome that, no sensible man can object 

 to its use. Now, beeswax is hardened by bleaching. 

 Can we not mix enough of this hardened beeswax 

 with paralflne to make it nearly like ordinary bees- 

 wax, without raising it too much in price? As I 

 have a mill, and shall make my own fdn. hereafter, 

 I intend to experiment, and hope others will do the 

 same. 



HEART'S-EASE. 



M. F. Tatman inquires about hcart's-easc (Poh.igo- 

 mmi pcrsicaria) aa a honey-plant. From five years' 

 observation, I am inclined to plac? it at the head of 

 honey-producing plants in this locality. Only one 

 year out of the five has it failed to produce honey. 

 This year almost all of our honey was from heart's- 

 ease. It began to yield honey Aug. 15, and produc- 

 ed a steady flow for about thirty days; in fact, until 

 it grew too cold for the bees to leave the hive. It 

 grows thickly along the roadside, and in neglected 

 cornfields. A late, wet spring produces a luxuriant 

 growth. This diffei-s from smartweed (Pijhjfjonum 

 hydropipcr), which has a slender raceme sparsely set 

 with greenish-white flowers, while the flowers of 

 heart' s-ease are ihlckly set, and vary in color from 

 light to deep pink. The honey that was produced 

 late in the season was the nicest, thickest honey I 

 ever saw. I extracted some in December; and 

 when it got cold (10° below zero before it candied), it 

 had to be cut with a knife, and could be handled 

 like molasses candy. Many persons, too, prefer the 

 flavor to that of clorcr honey. J. A. Gkeen. 



Dayton, 111., Fc b. 13, 1883. 



Our experiments with parafflne, friend G., 

 were mostly made by mixing it with bleach- 

 ed wax. I think we used about three parts 

 of white wax to one of parafflne. This 

 would roll and work very nicely ; but if we 

 used more par fflne, it would break up. \Ve 

 soon found, however, that common yellow 

 wax would bring much more parafflne to 

 working condition than would the white 

 wax, and we therefore concluded that the 

 bleachers, or some one else, had already 

 added more or less parafflne, or some similar 

 substance. I think we made very nice 

 working fdn. with two parts of common wax 

 and one part parafflne. To make sure it 

 would do, I hung sheets in the hive, and fed 



the bees until they worked it out ; and for 

 aught we could see, it worked just as well as 

 real wax. Several hundred pounds were 

 made and sold before we discovered that, al- 

 though it worked all right in the spring 

 months, it would not do at all in the hot 

 weather of June and July. The combs 

 melted and fell down so badly, that, after 

 tolerating a few of them for a few years, we 

 cut them all out, melted them up, and used 

 the material for waxing honey-barrels. Now, 

 although we used it quite largely for thin 

 fdn. for sections, I can not now remember 

 that we had any trouble with our comb hon- 

 ey in sections. The sections used then were 

 cfuite a little larger than our present 1-lb. 

 sections, so there would seem to be little 

 danger from it for this use, unless the honey 

 should happen to stand in the sun ; in that 

 case it might melt down. It also seems as 

 if it might work all right in brood-frames 

 well supported with wires, and we are told 

 it is used in this way. As we sold it to many 

 individuals when we made the experiments 

 noted above, perhaps some of them can tell 

 us more about it. If so, please speak out, 

 brethren, and thus save us expensive exper- 

 iments. 



SECTIONS FOR 75 CENTS PER THOUSAND. 



The veneer sections are made at a fruit-box facto- 

 ry in Benton Harbor, expressly for me. You see, 

 in filling those fruit-boxes with strawberries, the 

 thought popped into my head. Why not use them 

 for sections for honey? Very soon some were on a 

 hive, and in a short time were nicely filled; but they 

 were not the right sizf^; so I saw the proprietor of 

 the factory, and ho told me if I would get a spur 

 made, at a cost of $3.00, that would cut them the 

 right size, he would cut them for '5 cts. per 1000. I 

 did so, and have been using the one-piece veneering 

 sections for years. They do not cut the entrances 

 in the sections, but I have a knife made crooked so 

 as to cut them in such a manner as to take a piece 

 out of the edge of the section. 



FORMIKG THE ENTRANCES. 



It is fastened to a treadle; I can put ten or twelve 

 sections under the knife, come down with my foot 

 on the treadle, and out come the entrances. I put 

 them close together in the hives, mostly without 

 separators, and I like them better than any dove- 

 tailed sections I ever used; in fact, I never used but 

 1500 of them, of which lOOO were not worth one cent. 

 1 offered to return them by express, at my own ex- 

 pense, but the manufacturer came pretty near call- 

 ing mc a fool, by saying I did not know how to use 

 them, and he would not have them back, and so I 

 have gone back on him. Now about those 



FOREST LEAVES FOR WINTER COVERING, 



that friend Hasty speaks about on p. 150, Juvenile. 

 I have twelve hives, with the upper story filled with 

 leaves. After the long cold spell, when the mercu- 

 ry stood at from 13 to 10° below zero for a number of 

 days, I went out to see how they were getting along. 

 On taking off the cover I found the leaves on top 

 frozen together. I said, " Well, well; this will nev- 

 er do;" and the way I went for those leaves was a 

 caution; but before I got down far they were nice 

 and warm — the bees in nice order. What surprised 

 me most was that the hives were all alike, the leaves 

 frozen together on top'; but after getting down two 

 or three inches they were dry and warm, and the 



