1878. 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Ill 



My wife aBd daughter both made me promise to get 

 rubber gloves and a good bee veil, or sell the bees; 

 and as I could not think of selling them I was led in- 

 to making this promise, (as it were) "by the ear." 



What say you, keep my promise or not? 



Samuel Dillman. 



New Holland, Pa., March 11th, '78. 



Not only you, but others, my friend, do a 

 most foolish thing, in attempting to open a 

 colony of bees under such circumstances, 

 without having- your smoker in readiness to 

 give them a puff, the very instant the frames 

 are uncovered. You had them fully aroused 

 by removing their queen, had let them stand 

 with the quilt off very likely, and then just 

 at dusk, the very worst time in the whole 24 

 hours, you opened the hive with nothing to 

 drive them back, and ventured to lay in the 

 cages, which they would be sure to construe 

 as the most unpardonable insult. The mo- 

 ment you heard that "zeep, zeep," you 

 should have "made" out of sight in double 

 quick, and gone for smoke. No wonder you 

 fainted ; the worst part of it is, that we 

 have accounts of similar mishaps, in our let- 

 ters every few days. If you have no mercy 

 on yourselves, my friends, do please have 

 mercy on the little workers who throw away 

 their poor little lives by dozens in every such 

 encounter. Worse than that, they are so 

 stirred up, and roused to fury, that they 

 will probably be a terror to everybody, for a 

 month afterward. Friend Bingham," if I do 

 not stop, I shall be accused of advertising 

 your smokers, but I am surely not adver- 

 tising gloves, for I cannot see that a veil or 

 gloves either, are needed at all, for such an 

 occasion. When robbers are troublesome, 

 I think a veil a convenience, but I should 

 never want one for opening a hive when the 

 smoker would enable me to be perfect mas- 

 ter of the whole colony. A roll of rags or a 

 smoking chunk of rotten wood, would an- 

 swer almost as well, if you have no smoker. 

 I thought, when I commenced the article, 

 we should have, finally, one favorable report 

 from gloves in actual use, but it seems we 

 have none yet. If you are careful, and nev- 

 er let the bees get the upper hands, there is 

 hardly a necessity of getting a sting on the 

 hands, once in a month, for bees are almost 

 always in a demoralized condition, when 

 they will sting the naked hands, unless they 

 are pinched. Bear in mind, also, that a col- 

 ony that has just been deprived of its queen, 

 or that has started queen cells, is very much 

 more disposed to make such furious attacks, 

 as have just been mentioned. 



BARNE'S HAND CIKCUI^AR RIP SAW. 



e,NE of the above machines was sent us 

 ) to try, about a month ago, and we have 

 ~"' used it daily, first by hand and lately, 

 by power. The machine is all of iron, and 

 not particularly well finished, as in fact it 

 could not well be, at so low a price. But the 

 saAv, and the saw mandrel, the most vital 

 points, are excellent. The most beautiful 

 feature of the machine is that the saw, man- 

 drel, and balance wheel, slide all together, 

 on planed ways, something like a lathe ; this 

 part of the mchine is made to work so nicely 

 that you can set the saw to cut any width, 

 without turning a single screw or bolt, yet 



it is made fast where wanted, in less than 

 one second. 



HAND CIRCULAR RIP SAW. 



To rip a board, you have only to set your 

 saw where you want it, put the end between 

 the feed rolls, as in a planer, and tiu-n by 

 the crank F. If the board is very hard, or 

 2 inches or more in thickness, you can get a 

 greater purchase— but with less speed — by 

 turning by the crank E. One thing that as- 

 tonishes me about this machine is that it 

 matters not whether you turn fast or slow- 

 ly. It is, in fact, just like having a hand 

 saw in a circular form., so that there is no 

 drawing back to it, but it is all pushing 

 ahead. As the rolls draw the stuff along, it 

 matters not if the board have uneven edges, 

 for the saw will take a straight line through 

 it, just in the direction it is started. The 

 foot power saws are excellent for inch stuff, 

 but cutting stuff as thick as two inches, such 

 as we use for section boxes, by foot power is 

 rather laborious, unless the number of boxes 

 wanted is but few, such as a moderate bee- 

 keeper might need for his own use. With 

 the above machine, it is quite an easy task 

 to rip out 2 inch pine, but the large saw — 10 

 inches — leaves the stuff rather too rough, 

 unless it is planed afterward, which it ;;1- 

 ways should be, for really nice work. 



To show you how convenient these ma- 

 chines are, 1 will describe the way we are 

 making packing boxes for fdn. "The foot 

 power saw, and hand ripper are placed side 

 by side, both running by power. From our 

 pile of cull lumber, that costs SIO. per M. 

 (by the way the i)rincipal fault with this cull 

 lumber is the worm holes which do not in- 

 jure it at all, for packing boxes, crating, and 

 a great many other piu'poses) we take 

 boards and cut them in two in the middle, 

 that they may be easier handled. They are 

 then put through the hand ripper, and sized 

 to 12i for our largest sheets, or 8i, for the L. 

 frame sheets. Tliey are then taken to the 

 cut off table again, and cut off 181, and lOI, 

 respectively. They are now taken to a split- 



