118 ONE YEAR AMONG THE BEES. 



bees, and may do so yet,- and have hived swarms in old log-gums and 

 square boxes, and the next morning in looking in, by tipping up the 

 box, to see if the bees were there, discovered on the bottom board a 

 large quantity of these scales, and wondered how they came there. 

 When bees swarm they are, to their fullest extent, equipped with 

 these tiny wax scales, stored up for future use, and when thus hived 

 in an empty box, and on beginning to start their combs, they thus 

 from some cause drop a large number of these scales. 



It has been said, by good autuority, that we can double the number 

 of pounds of honey by extracting that we would otherwise get in comb 

 honey. If not altogether double the amount, we can certainly get con- 

 siderable more ; then why would it not be advisable for the small bee- 

 keeper to thus increase the quantity of honey from his few hives of 

 bees ? Producing extracted honey is less complicated and more sim- 

 ple than producing comb honey. 



EXTRACTING HONEY. 



The illustration (fig. 16), shows the simple process of extracting 

 honey from the combs. The operator on the right, with a long, thin- 

 bladed knife, is shaving the cappings from a frame of comb that has 

 partially been sealed over. He hands the frames of comb to the op- 

 erator on the left ; he, placing one in each comb basket, turns the 

 crank and the reel inside revolves around a few times, thus forcing 

 the honey from the outside of the comb by centrifugal force-; when 

 he reverses the comb baskets, thus turning the other side of comb 

 outwards, extracting it also. The combs come out without being in 

 any way injured, and are placed back in the hive to be refilled again 

 by the bees. 



FIG. 16. Extracting honey. 



