340 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



BEE-ESCAPES — DOES THEIR USl' AFTER 



THE HARVEST CAUSE THE BEES 



TO BITE THE CAPPINGS ? 



F. Greiner, in the American Bee-Keep- 

 er, objects to the use of the bee-escape 

 when removing surplus comb honey after 

 the harvest is over; on account of the bees 

 biting holes in the cappings. He says 

 that when bees leave the super, each bee 

 will take with it a full load of honey. 

 During the honej'-flow their sacs are al- 

 ways full of honey, and no precautions 

 are needed. After the flow is over, the 

 conditions are reversed, and the bees 

 must be forced out of the supers very 

 quickly, or the cappings will suffer; so 

 says Mr. Greiner. He then goes on to 

 describe how to get them out very quick- 

 ly by the Coggshall method of putting a 

 quilt on top and flapping it up and down 

 to suck the smoke down among the combs. 

 In one particular respect, my experience 

 has been the opposite of that given by 

 Mr. Greiner. I well know the difficulty 

 of getting off supers of finished honey 

 after the flow has closed, without having 

 the cappings nmtilated by the bees. If 

 they are greatly alarmed, or smoke is 

 used to any great extent, the bees must 

 be hvistled out of the supers at once, just 

 as Mr. Greiner says, but the escape-board 

 can be put in place without alarming the 

 bees very much, not enough to set them 

 to biting the cappings, and, once the 

 board is in place, without the bees being 

 greatly frightened, they will leave the 

 super without biting the capping.s — 

 at least, that has been my experi- 

 ence. If supers of finished hone}- are to 

 be removed after the flow is over, I choose 

 the middle of a warm afternoon to put 

 the escape-boards in place. The propolis 

 is then soft, and the supers can be raised 

 without that snapping, cracking accom- 

 paniment that so arouses the bees. I 

 first puff a little smoke in at the entrance, 

 just enough to drive in the guards, then 

 quietly, quickly, yet carefullv, raise the 

 super, set it upon the escape-board, and 

 then set both back upon the hive. With 



a strong, thin screwdriver, or a heavy 

 pocket-knife, a super can be raised with 

 almost no jar, if the propolis is soft. 

 First insert the point of the knife, or 

 screwdriver, give it a twist, and the super 

 can be picked right off without the least 

 jar. After I have given the knife the 

 twist, which raises the super perhaps % 

 of an inch, I puff in a little smoke — not 

 much, but just enough to prevent the 

 bees from coming out with a rush 



The claim has been made for bee-es- 

 capes that their use enables the bee-keep- 

 er to remove honey without this trouble 

 of the l)ees biting the cappings; and I 

 think that the claim is a fair one if the 

 matter is rightly managed. 



»/il^«*;^»•^^»i^ 



don't boil DE.\D BKES. 



The American Bee Journal tells, or al- 

 lows Mr. Thos. Elliott of Illinois to tell, 

 how he boiled down the combs from 1 50 

 colonies of bees that had starved out in 

 California. From that time his health 

 failed him. Within one 3'ear he felt as 

 though he was forty years older. Everv 

 sense, feeling, or organ, in the human 

 body, that can be affected came luuler 

 the influence of the poison. He was, in 

 a manner, paralyzed; and the doctors 

 told him that he could live only a short 

 time. He finally found a physician in 

 Chicago who understood his case, and 

 who cured him. 



This reminds me of a case that occur- 

 red in our own State a year ago last sum- 

 mer. Mr. H. S. Wheeler, who lives near 

 Mt. Pleasant, sent some bees to an out- 

 apiary. Through the mismanagement of 

 the help who had the bees in charge, the 

 bees were not liberated, and succumbed 

 to the heat. Many of the combs were 

 melted down. The dead bees and ruin- 

 ed combs made a sorry looking mess in 

 most of the hives.. Mr. Wheeler's wife 

 and the hired girl tried melting up this 

 mixture of bees and honey to get the 

 wax, often using their bare hands to 

 handle the bees and combs, and both of 



