V. 3 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



A History of the Honey Board. - 

 Uses and Abuses. 



-Its 



JAMES HEDDON. 



ber. 



n iSUNDERSTANDINGS have result- 

 ,|3 ed from some of our writers using 

 the term honey board when meaning 

 the cover of the hive or brood cham- 

 By using the term honey board, we 

 m3an and believe that the majority of bee- 

 keepers mean, and that the definition of the 

 word means, a board or frame containing 

 perforations placed between the surplus re- 

 csptacles and the brood chamber. 



The first honey board I ever saw was the 

 Langstvoth, and it consisted of ''g boards, 

 put together in such a way as to make a ''■^ 

 thick honey board containing three or four 

 openings about % of an inch wide, upon 

 which rested boxes for the storing of comb 

 honey ; said boxes having openings to cor- 

 respond with the openings in the honey- 

 board when placed accurately upon the 

 same. This was twenty-one or twenty-two 

 years ago. 



About seventeen years ago, I think it was, 

 I was raising ex,tracted honey almost exclu- 

 sively. I began to have trouble, when re- 

 placing the Laugstroth hanging frames, by 

 their toppling sideways at the top, from the 

 reason that the projections of the top bars 

 were held off from the rabbets upon which 

 they should rest because of brace combs 

 striking the bottom bars of the frames; said 

 brace combs being built between the bottom 

 bars of the upper frames and the top bars of 

 the brood frames below, in the ?« bee space. 

 To obviate this terrible njiisanoe, for it is a 

 fearful one, I made the first honey board 

 with a bee space in the top of it, with three 

 openings, one in, the center and one on each 

 edge. Now, why did I make this space? 

 Why did not I make a plain honey board 

 without any bee space at all ? First, because 

 my supers were already made, and of such 

 depth that the surplus frames came flush 

 with the bottom, hence the bee space was a 

 necessity. Again, I fancied at that time, 

 early in the season, when the surplus cases 

 were first put on, there would be an advan- 

 tage in leaving off the honey board, and a 

 honey board with a bee space in its surface 

 was the only possible honey board fitted to 

 surplus receptacles to be used with or with- 

 out any honey board at the option of the bee- 

 keeper. With my present knowledge, were 

 I going to make everything new, I might 

 make a plain honey board, in which case I 

 could make the super cases and the brood 

 cases all alike, but I fou:id an unlooked for 

 value in the bee sjiace or sink honey board. 

 I could use a very thin surface, and yet have 

 a stiff, strong board by virtue of the bee 

 space, because, while the surface was only ^h 

 of an inch thick, the rim would be G-8 of an 

 inch thick. 



The honey board above described gave me 

 perfect satisfaction, and I could handle my 

 suspended frames twice as fast and with ten 

 times more comfort than I could before. 



By and by we began the production of 

 comb honey in four pound boxes with glass 

 on each side, and sections placed in a case 

 quickly followed; said sections coming fiush 



with the bottom of the case, and that of 

 course necessitated the bee space in the 

 honey board. But some one says, ''What 

 need of having the sections come flush with 

 the bottom of the case?" Good reason why. 

 We must have a bee space at the top of the 

 cases to adapt them to the plain cover, such 

 as covers the brood chamber with its bee 

 space at the top. Now if we had a bee space 

 at botli top and bottom of the surplus case, 

 while it would work all right so long as only 

 one case was on the honey board, the moment 

 the second case was put on and tiering up 

 began, two bee spaces would come together 

 and many brace combs would be the result, 

 and so the honey board, containing a bee 

 space, is the only one of any comparative 

 worth whatever. 



Next came the break-joint principle. 

 This came three or four years later. We 

 found that where an opening in the honey 

 board happened to come over an opening 

 between the brood frames below, brace 

 combs would creep up through and still 

 bother us a little between the top surface of 

 the honey board and the surplus receptacles, 

 but where such openings in the honey boards 

 came over a top bar of the brood frame, 

 thus breaking joints, as it were, no brace 

 combs were built to bother us. Consequent- 

 ly, we soon devised a honey board made of 

 slats, which gave an added satisfaction for 

 it prevented the building of brace combs 

 above it, at the same time tending greatly to 

 keep the queen out of the surplus recepta- 

 cles. In the above sentence we refer solely 

 to extracting combs, for we have never had 

 the least bit of trouble with our queens get- 

 ting into surplus comb honey receptacles 

 either with or without any kind of honey 

 board, but we discovered the principle when 

 the board was used between two sets of 

 combs, the upper set for the surplus ex- 

 tracted honey. N(jw this honey board stands, 

 in my mind, not only the best but the most 

 practical one at the present time, and you 

 remember, Mr. Editor, what a fight we had 

 to get bee-keepers to see its value, and even 

 now there are those who have not yet learned 

 it, and still others who do not know that if 

 either the bee-space or break-joint principle 

 is left out, the honey board is worth just that 

 much less. 



I never applied for a patent upon this 

 principle, yet I know very well that the in- 

 vention is worth thousands of dollars to 

 bee-keepers. In my new hive I have a 

 patent claim covering the combination of 

 the honey board with my close fitting frames 

 and divisible brood chamber. 



Later, Brother D. A. Jones urged upon 

 the attention of bee-keepers the merits of 

 queen excluding metal, and I was among 

 the first to experiment with it. I feared it 

 would retard the bees in entering the surplus 

 receptacles, but jiositive experiment proved 

 to the contrary, and with some forty or fifty 

 hives we had fully as much surplus honey 

 stored through the all-metal honey boards 

 with their stiueezing passage ways, as upon 

 any other hives in the yard. 



Finally, the thought struck me of combin- 

 ing the metal with my wooden slatted honey 

 board, and I nailed strips of this zinc on 



