to 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



your honey house mouse-tight, and make a 

 good building if you arc able. Mine is lined 

 on the inside with tightly matched basswood 

 and painted i)ure white. This aids us greatly 

 as regards light. The outside weather- 

 boarding is what is called drop-siding, it 

 being all ''s of ii" i"ch thick, and this wall is 

 filled with dry sawdust, solid full clear up to 

 the second story and shoved back as far as 

 we could between the ceiling and floor of 

 the upper room. Build two stories if you 

 can, if not, at least 1 Sj stories, (or this room 

 up stairs will be ever so handy for storing 

 away stuff. Ours is full nearly all the time, 

 and kept in perfect order. My honey house 

 is 18xH0, two stories, with an eight-foot-deep 

 stone cellar under the entire building. In 

 this cellar I have a stove in one end, parti- 

 tioned off with a board partition, which 

 serves the double purpose of warming up 

 the bee repository in winter, and of melting 

 honey. I have a coil of inch gas pipe in the 

 top of it which runs three and one-half times 

 around on the inside of the stove, one end 

 running up through the floor on one side, 

 and the other the same on the other side of 

 the stove, both being tightly connected with 

 a large galvanized pan, or tank, wliich sets 

 on the floor in the honey house. ( )ver this I 

 have a box. I can raise the lid of this box 

 and place fourteen ,58-pound cans of honey 

 in the tank of water, and this water goes 

 down through the pipe S^o times around in 

 the stove, and back up again, in a constant, 

 slow current. I can build a fire in the stove 

 in the cellar, when it gets well going throw 

 in a chunk of wood, close the stove tight, 

 and come back the next day and find my 

 candied honey all beautifully liquified, with 

 no frothing, no discoloration and no change 

 of flavor. The whole arrangement cost me 

 about $25 or t|;50, and it is worth more than 

 that to me every season, for reliquifying 

 honey, alone. 



I have four (piite large windows in the 

 honey house, each in one sash, and the sash 

 is hung on center i)ivots at the center of Ihe 

 top and bottom, so that the window will re- 

 volve around horizontally. Outside is a wire 

 cloth bay, in which the outer half of the 

 window revolves. This keeps out all bees, 

 and if any do get in, I can revolve them 

 right into the bay, which has a pencil hole 

 in the top, and the bees soon leave and none 

 ever get back. We can have all the ventila- 

 tion we want without any trouble from bees 

 or flies. 



All my door and pad-locks are spring locks. 

 We never have time to stop to lock a door. 

 It takes time enough to unlock it. That is 

 another little thing that will save its cost in 

 a single season's operations. We keep a 

 high board fence with two strands of barbed 

 wire around the top, around both of our 

 apiaries, because we do not propose to tempt 

 sneak thieves. I consider it a moral duty to 

 keep everything securely out of the reach of 

 the morally weak. Of course we have wire 

 screen doors at each end of the honey house 

 with an automatic arrangement to open and 

 shut them, without touching them when we 

 are passing through with a load. 



These are all the points I think of just at 

 present, and probably quite enough from 

 one correspondent. 



DowAGiAc, Mich., Dec. 24, 1890. 



Full Sheets of Foundation Preferable. 



B. L. TAYLOK. 



f CANNOT as yet accept the notion that 

 more honey can be produced by allow- 

 ing starters only, in the brood chamber. 

 I do not mean by that that I question the 

 correctness of the accounts of the few experi- 

 ments that have been made in this direction, 

 but I am unable to accept their sufficiency 

 as final proof on the point. The experiments 

 are too few to establish a conclusion, and 

 reason points all the other way. I think no 

 one will deny that in years of scarcity, like 

 the last, swarms put on full sheets of foun- 

 dation make very much more progress than 

 those compelled to build their own comb. 

 But it may be said that such years are ex- 

 ceptional, and that in ordinary seasons the 

 wax necessary to make the brood combs is 

 involuntarily produced and in the absence 

 of empty brood frames is wasted. So far as 

 I have been able to observe, all the indica- 

 tions tend to show that this notion is without 

 foundation, and that a lack of emi)ty combs 

 for the storage of honey and not a good 

 honey flow alone is the chief reason for an 

 abundant wax secretion. It is not an unusual 

 thing to see the bottom boards of hives into 

 which swarms have been put on empty 

 frames nearly covered with the unused wax 

 scales wasted on account of the too rapid 

 production induced Ijy the haste of the bees 

 to provide comb room. I have never seen 

 this phenomenon in the case of hives filled 

 with foundation. Then the festoons of quiet 

 bees so familiar to all old bee keepers seen 



