PRODUCTION AND CARE OF EXTRACTED HONEY. 7 



or can. This may be easily made at home to suit individual require- 

 ments, or any one of the several types offered for sale may be used. 

 The boxes are either made of metal or lined with tin to prevent the 

 leakage of honey, and about halfway up is a heavy wire netting 

 to catch the wax cappings and allow the honey to drain off into the 

 lower compartment. This honey may later be added to what comes 

 from the extractor. 



THE EXTRACTOR. 



The extractor consists of two or more baskets into wdiich the combs 

 of honey are placed and which are revolved inside or with a can. 

 The rotation drives out the honey by centrifugal force, leaving the 

 cells empty, provided the uncapping has been thoroughly done. 

 While the extractor is a very simple machine in principle, its con- 

 struction has been the subject of much experimenting, and various 

 types have been made. The best type of extractor has been found to 

 be one in which the surrounding can is stationary and the baskets are 

 arranged to revolve inside it. Some types are now made so that the 

 baskets may be turned and both sides of a comb emptied without 

 removing the frame from the basket of the extractor. The more 

 elaborate types, holding several frames and driven by power, may be 

 found described in catalogues of the dealers in bee keepers' supplies. 



The extracted honey flies to the side of the can and then runs to 

 the bottom of the machine; it then runs off through an opening at 

 the bottom into a vessel or tank for the purpose. As it leaves the 

 extractor it should be run through a cheese cloth to remove any par- 

 ticles of wax or other foreign substance which may have got into it. 

 The care of the honey will be described later. 



Empty combs wet with honey should not be returned to the bees 

 while extracting is in progress, for fear of inciting robbing. They 

 may be piled up in the extracting room until the work is almost com- 

 pleted and, if any additional honey flow is expected, they may then 

 be returned. If to be kept until the next year, they should be given 

 to the bees for a short time to be cleaned of honey, and then removed 

 and put away so that wax moths will not destroy them. The great- 

 est essential in the production of the maximum amount of extracted 

 honey is an adequate number of surplus combs. 



THE RIPENING OF HONEY. 



When nectar is gathered from flowers by the worker bees, the 

 amount of water contained in it is very high. It is generally sup- 

 posed that, by the time bees reach the hive to deposit the nectar in the 

 cells, part of this water has been removed; at any rate, during the 

 process of ripening, the amount of water is very much reduced, until, 

 in thoroughly ripened honey, it will not exceed 25 per cent and is gen- 



