THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



131 



not good, and I have laid myself liable to be 

 couderaned for the same fault that I have 

 scolded others, viz., recommending a thing 

 I did not know to be good. 



Before I quit, I must report another very 

 interesting fact learned by friend Hitt. He 

 said that several years ago there were forty 

 acres of alsike clover four miles from his bee 

 yard and that his bees made thirty pounds 

 of fine comb honey per colony from it in 

 two weeks. I asked how he knew the honey 

 was made from that field. Well, said he, " I 

 do not })osifively know that they did ; but at 

 daylight the bees would fly in immense num- 

 bers in that direction, would keep returning 

 from the same direction until dark, the clo- 

 ver was full of bees and there were no other 

 colonies of any account in the neighbor- 

 hood, the honey flow in my yard stopped 

 when the clover was cut, and it seemed rea- 

 sonable that they got the honey from that 

 field of alsike, as there was nO other visible 

 supply." 



FoBESTViLLE, Minn. April G, 1893, 



^V^^V^J 



Experiments to Test the Blast of Smokers, 



S. COBNEIL. 



'■ It cannot be, and yet it is." 



TN making tests to 

 X determine the rel- 

 ative strength of the 

 blast in different 

 smokers, a principal 

 object I had in view 

 was to ascertain 

 which gives the 

 stronger blast, a 

 smoker having an 

 open space between 

 the exit tube in the 

 bellows and the fire 

 barrel, giving an induced current, as in the 

 case of the Bingham, or one in which the 

 current of air passes through an enclosed 

 passage from the bellows to the fire barrel, 

 as in the case of the Crane. In favor of the 

 latter method it is contended that all the air 

 driven from the bellows passes through the 

 fuel, without any part of it being lost by a 

 reverse current, and that this quantity of 

 air will give a stronger blast, and therefore 

 more smoke, than can be obtained in any 

 other way. Mr. Root says that on account 

 of the " cut off " in the Bingham, the blast 



is considerably weakened, and Mr. Bingham 

 does not deny the accuracy of his statement. 

 It is contended by others, however, that 

 smokers of the Bingham pattern have a 

 stronger blast in consequence of the large 

 quantity of air induced to join the current as 

 it passes from the bellows through an open 

 space into a larger tube behind the fuel, 

 even though a portion of the air under pres- 

 sure in the air chamber "bounds back," as 

 it certainly does, when the barrel is charged 

 with very closely packed fuel. 



Mr. Hutchinson, of the Review, kindly 

 furnished me with a Crane smoker and a 

 Bingham smoker, both being of the same 

 capacity in every respect, and I made one of 

 my own of the same size as the other two. 

 Mine differs from the Bingham in having a 

 double " cut off," that is, the air passes from 

 the exit tube in the bellows, through an open 

 space into a larger tube attached to the leg, 

 and from this tube through another open 

 space into a still larger tube, which extends 

 into the fire barrel about half its diameter, 

 preventing the possibility of ashes or cinders 

 falling into the bellows. The fire barrel is 

 supported on legs two and a quarter inches 

 above the bellows, about an inch higher Mian 

 in the case of the Bingham. 



The fire barrels were all new and clean. I 

 removed the barrels and tested the bellows 

 for leakages. The Bingham and my own 

 were air tight, and after making some little 

 repairs the Crane was air tight also, except 

 at the junction of the air passage in the 

 checkvalve with the covered passage to the 

 fire barrel. At thi? point there is a little 

 leakage which I could not see any way to 

 prevent. 



Instead of testing the Crane against the 

 other two to decide the merits of the en- 

 closed current as against the induced cur- 

 rent, I decided to temporarily convert the 

 Bingham and my own into enclosed current 

 smokers, by connecting the bellows with the 

 fire barrels by means of tubes well cemented 

 at both ends ; and after testing them in this 

 way, removing the tubes, and testing them 

 as induced currents smokers, all the other 

 conditions, as to capacity and obstructions, 

 being the same for both tests. By placing 

 the hand over the mouth of the fire barrel, 

 and pressing the Ijellows, I found that, after 

 the tubes were cemented, I had two air tight 

 smokers, having enclosed currents. 



It has been contended that, in order to 

 have a fair test, the fire barrel should be 



