358 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Hollingshed repeats this belief in 

 his " Chronicles of England, Ireland 

 and Scotland " as late as 1807. 

 " Hornets, wasps, bees and such like 

 whereof we have great store, and of 

 which an opinion is conceived, that 

 the first do breed of the corruption of 

 dead horses, the second of pears and 

 apples corrupted, and the last of kine 

 and oxen ; which may be true, es- 

 pecially the first and the last in some 

 parts of the beasts, as also the second, 

 since we never have wasps but when 

 our fruit beginneth to wax ripe." 



Swammerdam tells us that in his 

 day many great men believed these 

 stories, and among them Gcedsert and 

 De Mei, who ascribed the origin of 

 bees to certain dunghill worms. 



For tlie American Bee J oumal. 



Rendering Old Couil) into fax. 



IRA BARBER. 



son, the combs became perfectly 

 paved with bee-bread. 



The honey season was an extra 

 good one that year, and the honey 

 went into the sections while the bee- 

 bread lay in the brood-combs below, 

 and this was the comb that I had to 

 get the wax out of, and that the 

 kettle-plan proved such a success 

 with. I hope some have tried the 

 plan given at Albany with ordinary 

 comb. 



De Kalb Junction, 5 N. Y. 



Indiana Fanner. 



Honey ProWon in California, 



DELOS WOOD. 



Last winter, at the Albany and New 

 York Bee-Keepers' Convention, I read 

 an essay on rendering old comb into 

 wax. It was the last plan that I had 

 tried, and one that had proved a great 

 success with the kinds of comb that I 

 had to work with at that time. On 

 page 88 it is reported as follows : 



" Ira Barber uses a large kettle, 

 holding 25 pails of water, and melts 

 up the old comb from 20 to 25 hives at 

 once, putting in only a few combs at 

 a time ; keeps a good fire, but not to 

 boil ; takes out with an 8x10 inch bas- 

 ket ; strains as fast as dipped, and 

 cools in large dishes." 



The comb that I rendered after that 

 plan was nearly all filled with bee- 

 bread, and would sink to the bottom 

 of the kettle, leaving but little refuse 

 on top, and the wax could be readily 

 dipped off by sinking a wire basket 

 into the mass, and dipping the wax 

 from the inside of the basket. A 

 neighbor of mine lost a large part of 

 his bees the past winter, and has just 

 tried my plan of getting the wax out. 

 The result is, that he meets with per- 

 fect failure. The comb that he has 

 is nearly free from b^e-bread, and 

 when melted in the kettle it nearly all 

 floats to the top, and not 10 per cent, 

 of the wax can be dipped off ; while 

 with combs filled with bee-bread, as 

 mine were last year, fully 90 per cent, 

 could be dipped off. 



When I gave the essay to the public 

 at Albany, I had no doubt in my 

 mind but what any old combs could 

 be rendered successfully on the plan 

 given, but after seeing it fail on ordi- 

 nary comb, I think it my duty to cau- 

 tion those interested in the matter, 

 before too many meet with failure. 

 With comb containing bee-bread it is 

 a perfect success. With old comb 

 without bee-bread it is a failure. 



Two years ago I had some 75 or 80 

 colonies lose their queens while 

 swarming,and at the end of the honey 

 season the weather was so unfavor- 

 able for young queens to fly, that the 

 result was I did not get them queened 

 in time to save them, and as they had 

 no queens all through the honey sea- 



My location is in one of the many 

 canyons of the Santa Inez mountains, 

 in Santa Barbara County, Calif. The 

 ground occupied by the apiary slopes 

 to the south, and is sheltered from 

 wind by the abrupt hills that form 

 the sides of the canyon. The hives 

 are arranged in rows eight feet apart, 

 running north and south, and five feet 

 between the hives in each row, which 

 gives room to run a wheel-barrow at 

 the back of each row, and the five 

 foot space between the hives affords 

 suflicient standing room for the opera- 

 tor at the side of the hives, the en- 

 trance facing the east. The rows 

 being eight feet apart, leaves suffi- 

 cient room for the working bees to go 

 and come without interfering with 

 the manipulation of the hive in the 

 row in front. 



I work entirely for extracted honey, 

 and use the same sized frames in the 

 supers as in the brood-nest. The hive 

 is a modified Langstroth, the frame 

 being shorter and deeper than the 

 standard Langstroth. The covers and 

 bottoms are not nailed to the hives, 

 and when more room is needed I take 

 off the cover and put another full 

 sized hive on top, generally, using 

 them two stories high, but running 

 them up three and four stories high 

 when needed. I have run them up 

 seven or eight, but this is not to be 

 commended, only when the apiary is 

 large, and suflBcient help cannot be 

 obtained to extract the honey as fast 

 as it is stored, two and three stories 

 being the most profitable. The ex- 

 tracting house is at the south end of 

 the yard, which gives a down grade to 

 wheel the honey from the hives to the 



The door opens in the northeast 

 corner of the house. In the centre of 

 the north wall, is a turn-table, by 

 means of which the combs full of 

 honey are turned into the house, and 

 the empty combs are turned out with- 

 out letting the bees into the building. 



On the other three sides I have 

 windows made to slide, to admit air 

 and light. Outside of the windows 

 the opening is covered with wire cloth 

 extending 6 inches above the opening, 

 leaving a space of }4 of an inch be- 

 tween the wire and the siding at the 

 top to allow room for the bees to es- 

 cape when they happen to be brought 

 in on the combs. They fly to the win- 

 dow, run up the wire and run out. 



Bees trying to get in, pass up to the 

 top of the window, then drop down, 

 and go up again, and drop down, but 

 the wire going above the opening, 

 they cannot see in, and do not pass 

 over. 



A table 2 feet wide and 6 feet long 

 stands at the west window for un- 

 capping; a beveled hole is cut through 

 it at one end, beneath which is placed 

 a galvanized iron can 20 inches high, 

 and 22 inches across. In this can is a 

 galvanized wire basket, with stout 

 rim and handles of suflicient strength 

 to hold the weight of the cappings, 

 which fall through the opening in the 

 table. The basket should not reach 

 the bottom of the can by 6 inches or 

 more. The wires should be of coarse 

 mesh, to allow the cappings to drain 

 freely. 



A cleat nailed across the hole in the 

 table, with a ^ inch iron pivot with a 

 dull point extending upward ^ of an 

 inch on which to rest the frames while 

 uncapping, is a great help in turning 

 the combs. 



The extractor stands at the end of 

 the table in the southwest corner of 

 the room, and holds eight frames 

 at once ; is pinion geared, no cogs to 

 break, or belt to slip, and runs the 

 lightest of any extractor I ever used. 

 The combs are all reversed at once by 

 moving a small lever about 6 inches 

 without taking them out, and the 

 eight are reversed quicker and easier 

 than one could be lifted out. 



The honey runs out of a faucet at 

 one side of the bottom into a " float 

 strainer," and is carried by a 2-inch 

 tin pipe through the south wall into a 

 galvanized iron tank outside of the 

 house. 



The float strainer is a tin can about 

 one foot square, with a partition 

 reaching within J^ of an inch of the 

 bottom, placed about 4 inches from 

 one end. In the small side a coarse 

 wire basket is hung, into which the 

 honey runs from the extractor and 

 passes under the partition, runs up 

 on the other side to the top and flows 

 through the pipe which connects this 

 part of the strainer with the honey 

 tank. The chippings of comb and 

 other impurities float, and nothing 

 but pure honey passes under the par- 

 tition. The wire basket can be lifted 

 out and scraps emptied as often as is 

 required. 



The honey tanks are round, and of 

 a capacity of one ton, made of gal- 

 vanized iron, a hoop of ^4-inch round 

 iron, large enough to pass off and on 

 easily, covered with heavy brown 

 muslin, constitutes the cover of the 

 tank, the weight of the hoop holding 

 the cloth tightly over the top of the 

 tank. The heat from the sun evap- 

 orates the excess of moisture which 

 escapes through the cloth. A light 

 cover of J^inch lumber is put over the 

 tank at night to protect it from dew 

 or rain. The ripe honey settles to the 

 bottom, and is drawn off through a 

 faucet into tin cans and sealed up by 

 screwing the covers tightly on. The 

 unripe honey rises to the top of the 

 tank, and is ripened by the heat from 

 the sun. The cappings which faU 

 into the basket under the table after 

 draining, are removed to a "sun ex- 



