1883 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



245 



other men sent word that they each wanted to sell a 

 load of coal for honey. Our home market has great- 

 ly increased since we began keeping bees; nearly 

 every family wants honey. We had an order for a 

 carload, or all we had, at 14 cts. per lb. on board cars 

 at Kosev'ille,but we had already disposed of the bulk 

 of it. It used to be a great study how to get rid of 

 our honey; but now that trouble has nearly vanish- 

 ed, and a market is also growing for our extracted 

 honey. Swedish people seldom use other than 

 crushed and strained honey in Sweden. 



DRONE COMBS FOR EXTRACTING. 



If you are not too tired of reading this long letter, 

 I should like to tell you how we manage the drone- 

 combs in our extracting-hives. "We have about 20 

 ten-comb hives which we use for extracting. We 

 put on top 3 drone-combs, and on each side and the 

 center fill up with worker-combs. The queens will 

 nearly always go above, and fill the -t worker-combs. 

 When I want brood in a hurry, that is just the place 

 to get it. Smoke all the bees down, and the queen 

 will stay below long enough to fill up, and then as- 

 cend and fill the combs above; no swarming in those 

 hives, and I can have brood all summer, and nearly 

 always in the fall. They are not so apt to lay in 

 them when driven down and let fill up for extract- 

 ing or spring feeding. 



WAX-EXTRACTING. 



My work to-day has been trying out beeswax by 

 the old process. I have been wishing I had one of 

 the very best wax-extractor.s that could be made. I 

 have always thought that I could get more and nicer 

 wax than with an extractor, judging from the color 

 of fdn. as compared with what I make by melting 

 in my wash-boiler; but I nearly spoiled my new cloth 

 shoes with wax, as the water struck a boil before I 

 got them changed. I think it injures wax to boil; 

 as soon as it strikes a boil I dip it out into a strainer 

 made of a coarse towel cloth. I get the nicest of 

 wax from the scrapings of sections, scrapings from 

 top of brood-frames, etc., before the racks are put 

 on in the spring. The wax rises to the top, but pro- 

 polis goes to the bottom of the boiler. 



THE PLASTER PLATES. 



We use pressing-plates made by a man in Iowa - I 

 forget his name. Mr. Axtell attached them to a 

 press of his own make, so the work is done rapidly, 

 and very thin and even foundation is made; thinner 

 than any sample sent us by manufacturers. 



ENTRANCES CLOGGED WITH ICE. 



To-day Mr. A. went over to his Timber Apiary to 

 see if things were all right; found two hives clogged 

 with ice, probably caused by melted frost inside. We 

 have a boy over there, engaged to keep the snow 

 from the entrances. Since the winter that we lost 

 80 colonies we have been careful to remove the snow 

 before it gets melted near the entrance, which I be- 

 lieve should always be kept open. 



We have just weighed our beeswax, and find we 

 have just 103 lbs., all nice bright yellow wax, and 

 about 25 gallons of vinegar, the washings from cap- 

 pings, etc., of the 4J4 barrels of extracted honey. We 

 fed the bees more scraps, and the honey in cappings, 

 etc., than ever a season before, for we had so much 

 honey it seemed Impossible to keep it away from 

 them, so they got used to their daily feed, and they 

 were not cross either. When cool weather began we 

 had to scrape sections and pack in the house; some 

 days we had a small swarm in the house, but they 

 seldom stung us. 



Our honey-houses Ivere not large enough to hold 

 all our honey. We had to put most of the large 

 brood-combs up stairs, about 2000 lbs. in all, for next 

 spring's feeding. Through haste and carelessness 

 we got it to leaking — so much so it leaked through 

 the plaster into the parlor bedroom. It was a task 

 to remove the honey, and then we had no other place 

 where we could well keep it from the bees (we had 

 honey in every common room in the house), so we 

 opened up the windows and let the bees help them- 

 selves, and they did help themselves. The most bees 

 I ever saw in one body were in there, and the loss 

 was but few. They cleaned up the floors nicely, and 

 took out the unsealed cells before uncapping a great 

 deal; but they hung around those upper windows 

 every day they could fly afterward. 



And now as I have finished my jubilee number (50 

 pages) I will close, bidding you good-by, and will not 

 come again for a while. Sarah J. W. Axtell. 



Roseville, 111., Jan., 1883. 



I am very much interested, my gcoil friend, 

 in your account of the clustering of bees in 

 your honey-houses. If J. get the right un- 

 derstanding of the matter, you have demon- 

 strated that bees will live and build comb in 

 confinement, even during the warm weath- 

 er ; for, if I mistake not, these bees did not 

 fly outdoors at all, or did they get through 

 the openings in the roof? It seems to me 

 this could not be ; because if they did, rob- 

 bers would come in through these openings. 

 I am very anxious indeed to know if there 

 was brood in these combs. You say they 

 had a queen, and you say they brought hon- 

 ey from the unsealed sections. From this re- 

 mark I inferred that they Avorked simply 

 from sections up to the cluster, not getting 

 out of doors at all. Now, if they raised 

 brood, where did they get the pollen V or 

 did they carry the pollen also from the 

 combs? — The pressing-plates you mention 

 were, we suppose, made by o\ir friend Oliver 

 Foster, Mt. ^"ernon, Iowa. I am glad to 

 know you succeeded so well with them. 

 You say Mr. A. made the press ; do you 

 press sheets, or are we to understand you 

 simply pour melted wax on the plates ? 



Had your hives been properly ventilated 

 from above, it hardly seems to me that the 

 clogging of the entrances with ice could have 

 hiut the bees. Our chaff hives are so made 

 that the entrances may be sealed up hermet- 

 ically, without any danger to the bees from 

 want of ventilation. 



No doubt you did have honey without 

 stint, and it seems to me a kind Providence 

 has thrown it into careful hands. And we 

 highly commend the way in which you took 

 so much pains to save and dispose of all the 

 odds and ends. Most of us with such a 

 quantity of bioken honey as you mention 

 would have felt the task almo.st a hopeless 

 one of disposing of so much. I hardly think 

 I should want to recommend your plan of 

 cleaning honey olf from the floors and the 

 parlor bedroom. I dare say you had bees 

 there. The reason you got along with them so 

 peaceably was, I presume, because the bees 

 had so large a quantity to work on, or every 

 bee was gorged with honey, and there was 

 but little inducement to quarrel. In fact, 

 they were much in the same condition as 

 when gathering natural stores from a boun- 



