1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



83 



many hours and days I have spent in 

 cleaning the bottoms of cakes of wax 

 or in melting them over and straining 

 to get rid of the dirt, I cannot say. 



Now there may be something in lo- 

 cality, and bees not make as clean 

 cappings here as elsewhere, that may 

 account in part for my troubles, but 

 troubles they were, and so serious 

 that I had gone back to my old 

 method of setting the cappings + o 

 soak for a day or two in water and 

 then pressing them and using the 

 honey water to dissolve sugar in to 

 feed bees. Or, sometimes, we put 

 them in 10-gallon cans and set in hot 

 water to melt and rise to top of 

 honey. But with all our efforts there 

 was some loss of honey and a good 

 deal of vexation and loss of time. 

 How many times have I said to my- 

 self "Oh, if we could only melt these 

 cappings or combs and have the wax 

 go one way and the honey another 

 and the dirt and slumgum another, 

 how nice it would be." Having some 

 leisure this winter, I have given the 

 subject some thought and have con- 

 structed an apparatus that has pro- 

 duced very satisfactory results. 



As I had a small quantity of cap- 

 pings on hand, some/ granulated 

 combs with broken combs and odds 

 and ends of wax and honey to sep- 

 arate, I constructed a new melter 

 that I might try my wax and honey 

 separator. When through I had per- 

 haps ISO or more pounds of honey 

 and nearly 100 pounds of wax and 

 six or eight quarts of dirty wax or 

 slumgum. I was pleased to see two 

 streams running hour after hour 

 from the separator, one of wax and 

 the other of honey, and at the end 

 to have my dirty wax all by itself. I 

 was especially pleased to see my 

 cakes of wax so clean and free from 

 dirt. In nearly 100 pounds of wax I 

 do not think there was a thimblefull, 

 all told. It was by all odds the nicest 

 lot of wax I ever made. It works au- 

 tomatically and requires very little 

 attention. It will work hour after 

 hour, or day after day, with almost 

 no attention except to draw off the 

 slumgum or dirty wax occasionally. 



As the warmed honey and melted 

 wax drip into it from the capping 

 melter, the honey being much the 

 heaviest, sinks quickly to the bot- 

 tom, leaving any dirt it may have 

 carried with it from the melter in 

 the wax as it goes down, while the 

 pure wax, being lighter than the 

 dirty wax, remains on the surface 

 and the dirty wax sinks to near the 

 top of the honey. As it accumulates 

 it may nearly fill the space above the 

 honey, and should be drawn off 

 through the lower spout by removing 

 the cork, after which the spout 

 should again be corked tight. The 

 honey cannot be drawn off with the 

 dirty wax, because it is heavier and 

 lies below it, and the pure wax need 

 not be drawn off with the dirty wax, 

 as it rests above it. Neither can the 

 wax and honey run out together, for 

 they are separated by a metal par- 

 tition. 



It works by gravity, the honey, 

 wax, and slumgum separating of their 

 own accord in passing through the 



separator, each taking a different po- 

 sition and making it easy to draw 

 them off into different vessels. The 

 apparatus is quite simple and should 

 not be expensive. The slumgum is 

 mostly wax with a considerable as- 

 sortment of dirt, which should be 

 melted up in water and strained, 

 when a considerable amount has ac- 

 cumulated. In running off nearly 

 100 pounds of wax recently I had 

 only six or eight quarts of this dirty 

 wax to remelt, a small job compared 

 with remelting a hundred pounds of 

 wax and straining or scraping the 

 dirty wax from the bottom of the 

 cakes. 



Middlebury, Vt. 



Too Much Attention to Outdoor 

 Wintered Bees 



ABOUT Thanksgiving Day I 

 packed four colonies in a dry 

 goods b jx with the hives close 

 together and about 6 inches of wheat 

 chaff on top, bottom and all sides 

 with an opening at the entrance As 

 we had no cold weather, they would 

 come out and fly about a couple of 

 days each week, the rest of the time 

 it was rainy. About three days ago 

 we had our first spell of winter 

 weather, and as I was watching pret- 

 ty close, I found that my bees were 

 flying out at the rate of two or three 

 every minute, with the thermometer 

 at 20 degrees and with snow in the 

 air. As none of these bees came 

 back, I made a piece of fly screen to 

 fit the entrance and put on each hive. 

 The bees that found that they could 

 not get out crawled around on the 

 wire till they got cold and died. One 

 hive had 35 dead the same day, one 6 

 and the other two about 15 each. The 

 next morning two of the hives were 

 much in earnest and were piled 

 against the wire by thousands and 

 were working like crazy to get out. 



I feared to remove the wire for fear 

 they would pile out and die of cold, 

 so I gave each a little smoke. One 

 became quiet, while the other paid 

 no attention to the smoke. At dark 

 the screen was removed and the one 

 which was the worst only had a few 

 living bees. I found them in a hot 

 mess of dead bees and honey all 

 mixed. There is not a living bee left 

 in that hive today. Do you think my 

 bees were too warm? 



PENNSYLVANIA. 



If there was no bad food, loading 

 the intestines of the bees so that they 

 were compelled to fly, this is simply 

 a case of over-interference with the 

 bees. They were so strong that an 

 occasional bee would fly out. The 

 loss would have probably been insig- 

 nificant on that score if they had just 

 been allowed to do as they pleased. 



I have at all times noticed that the 

 colonies which lose the most bees in 

 the snow during the winter, from 

 their insisting on taking flight when 

 it is too cold, are the colonies that 

 winter best, as the quantity thus lost 

 is infinitesimal as compared to the 

 tens of thousands remaining in the 

 hive. Confining the bees against 

 their will has never proven beneficial 

 unless they may be confined so they 

 cannot see the light at the entrance. 

 Wire netting the entrance is the 

 worst thing that can be done, even in 

 shipping bees. If they are confined 

 with netting, it must be over a space 

 that allows the whole swarm to get to 

 the light. 



Of course, if bees are restless from 

 bad food, that is another question 

 altogether. In that case the condi- 

 tion gives but little hope of salvation. 



In the very best colonies that I 

 ever carried through the winter, the 

 bees were warm enough that they 

 would show themselves at the en- 

 trance in the coldest weather, if the 

 hive was stirred ever so little. — Ed- 

 itor. 



Crane's wax separator. 



