l82 



THE FEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



cells and queens that I ever saw. The 

 cells were very large and deeply marked 

 with those little hexagonal indentations 

 that are the hallmark of superiority. 



PRODUCING EXTRACTED HONEY. 



Wiring Frames; Use and Nonuse of Foun- 

 dation; Prevention of Swarming; 

 Useless Consumers. 



We have not many more practical men 

 in our ranks than C. Davenport of South- 

 ern Minnesota. He has not been writing 

 very much of late, but Gleanings for 

 June ist has a most excellent article from 

 his pen. I take pleasure in copying it. 

 It reads as follows: — 



Last season I changed the fixtures of 

 part of my colonies, and ran them for 

 extracted honey, and secured a little over 

 9000 lbs. of our product in the liquid 

 form. This was all sold in my home 

 market at a fair price. By "home mar- 

 ket" I mean the surrounding towns and 

 cities that I am able to reach by team. 

 The larger part was sold in a jobbing 

 way to grocers. Not having nearly 

 enough drawn combs to supply this in- 

 creased force that was to be run for ex- 

 tracted honey, I purchased roo lbs. of 

 your Weed medium brood foundation, 

 part of which was put in wired frames; 

 but, so far as stretching or sagging was 

 concerned, the wires were entire!}' un- 

 necessary — thai is, with established colo- 

 nies — for I used unwired frames contain- 

 ing full sheets in almost all sorts of ways. 

 With some colonies the upper story was 

 filled with partly drawn comb and part 

 foundation. With others the upper 

 story was filled with frames, all of which 

 had full sheets unwired. In other cases 

 part of the brood-combs were removed to ' 

 the upper story, and frames containing 

 full sheets put in their place; and in no 

 instance was there any trace of stretching 

 that I could observe or find by careful 

 measurement. But if full sheets unwired 

 were given to swarms, the conditions 

 would be somewhat different from any 

 thing I tried, and in this ca.se there might 

 be some .sagging. I believe, though, it 

 pays to have have extracting-combs well 

 wired, for I found that, on hot days, 

 these new unwired combs had to be hand- 

 led with great care when extracting, 



while it seemed to be a hard matter to 

 break a comb out of a frame that was 

 properlv wired. 



I tried a number of different ways of 

 wiring, but I believe that four horizontal 

 wires are superior to any other plan that 

 I have seen advocated. But when wiring 

 in this way we are told not to draw the 

 wires too tight or the foundation will 

 buckle. I heeded this at first, but kept 

 trying them tighter, and found there was 

 no trace of buckling with the wires drawn 

 as tight as possible. It might, of course, 

 be different with other kinds or grades of 

 foundation. But I can not .say from ex- 

 perience, for, although I am one of the 

 few who depend on bees alone for a living, 

 I have previously had but a limited ex- 

 perience with full sheets in brood-frames, 

 for I have produced comb honey princi- 

 pall}', and in my locality there is no 

 question that more surplus can be secur- 

 ed when swarms are hived on frames con- 

 taining only small starters. 



I found last season one curious matter 

 in regard to these new extracting-combs 

 drawn out from full sheets. For in- 

 stance, in the upper stories, where frames 

 containing full sheets were alternated 

 wilh frames of drawn comb, the bees, as 

 might be expected, filled and bulged out 

 these ready-built natural combs before 

 drawing out the foundation. They seem- 

 ed loath to draw it out in the upper story 

 though they took hold of it readily 

 enough, and soon drew or built beautiful 

 comb from it when it was placed in the 

 brood-chamber, and a good deal of it was 

 finally put in and drawn out, or at least 

 well started, in the brood-nest. 



I used queen-e.xcluding zinc between 

 the lower and upper stories; and I will 

 say here that, by carefulU- conducted 

 experiments in previous years, I found 

 that I could, on an average, secure at 

 least one-third tnore surplus when the 

 queen is confined to eight or ten franies 

 below than when she had the range of 

 two or more stories. This may be far 

 from being the case in the majority of 

 localities; hut there is no doubt about the 

 matter here. The principal reason for 

 this is the great horde of useless bees that 

 are reared out of season to be producers 

 but which mu.st, instead, be consumers. 



There has been a good deal of tun and 

 ridicule made by some in regard to "use- 

 less consumers;" but if these same parties 

 were set down in my locality, and obliged 

 to make a living from bees alone, they 

 would change their practice or eLse starve 

 to death. It would not be difficult for 

 me to run a yard so that tho.se useless 

 consumers would consume all the sur- 



