52 The Townsend Bee Book 
work is done well, the cappings, many times, fall down in one 
whole sheet. 
While it does not take any great skill to operate the extractor 
one should be careful, especially when the combs vary greatly ix 
weight, to put them into the baskets in such a way that the reel wil! 
be as nearly balanced as possible. Where there are several combs 
to select from, one can usually pick out the ones that will balance 
the best, and, after the first two or three turns, the weight will be 
so equalized that the reel will run almost as evenly as if the comb: 
were of the same weight in the first place. 
HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE HONEY AS IT RUNS FROM THE 
EXTRACTOR; HOW TO PREVENT IT FROM RUNNING 
OVER ON THE FLOOR 
For our honey-house in Charlevoix County, a frame dwelling. 
house 18 x 26 feet was bought. The partitions were removed and 
the ceiling raised until the room was about 9 feet high. The win. 
dows were removed on both sides, and 6-ft. shop windows substi. 
tuted and covered with wire screen on the outside. Board shutters 
for each window were made to fit on the inside to keep out the 
storm. The whole interior of the building was covered with tarre¢ 
paper to prevent robber bees from getting in. 
At one end of the building toward the bee-yard, a 3-ft. door 
was placed a little to one side of the middle of the end-wall. Ai 
one side of the door at the front of the building a space of flooring 
4x7 ft. was removed, and the soil dug out to the desired depth 
We used this pit for handling the honey in a manner similar tc 
that described by Mr. Hanson, only our honey ran from the ex: 
tractor into a strainer-tank with a gate near the bottom. From 
this gate it ran into 60-pound cans, which cans, one by one, were 
set on a Coveyou automatic scale that weighed the honey, shut of 
the gate when the can was full, and rang an electric bell until some 
one removed the full can and put an empty one in its place. 
I bought a yard of bees 25 years ago, which was fitted up fo! 
extracted-honey production. Before this I had always run fo! 
comb honey; and when I bought this yard I worked the colonie: 
in the same way that they had been worked before for extractec 
honey by another party. During extracting, the honey was rw 
from the extractor into tin sap-buckets and allowed to stand ove! 
night. In the morning it was skimmed with a large spoon, anc 
then emptied into a 600-pound tank which had a gate near th 
bottom. There were two of these tanks. The following mornin; 
the honey in the tank was skimmed and drawn out into 60-poum 
