Miscellaneous Sparklets. 195 



is sacrilegious, but I do sometimes feel like exclaiming: "For God's 

 sake, don't extract green honey!" 



Where a white honey harvest is immediately followed by a dark 

 flow, the temptation is great to extract unripe white honey to get it 

 out of the way of the dark flow that is to follow, but I would allow the 

 white honey to go over and mix with the dark before I would extract 

 unripe honey. It is the bane of our business. 



PREVENTING SWARMING BY CHANGING BROOD-COMBS AND UNCAPPING 



DRONE BROOD. 



A Canadian bee-keeper says, in a private letter, that, for six years, 

 he has practically prevented swarming, and secured large crops of comb 

 honey, by transposing the brood combs in the brood nest, putting the 

 middle combs of solid brood next to the outside, uncapping the honey 

 in the outside combs, and placing them in the center, at the same time 

 uncapping all drone brood, with an occasional patch of worker brood. 

 He has had as few as three swarms from 83 colonies. He is now estab- 

 lishing out-yards ; expects to run 500 colonies the coming season for 

 comb honey, and he says that this plan of management will save all 

 trouble from swarming. I don't give his name, as there is no permission 

 in his letter that I may print it. 



HOW To LIGHT A SMOKER. 



Lighting a smoker when planer shavings are used for fuel is a slow 

 job unless you know how to do it. You may think it is well to going, 

 and yet, unless there is a little bed of live cinders in the bottom, it is 

 almost sure to go out when set down. I have used kerosene oil to start 

 the fire — squirt it on the shavings from a spring-bottom oil can, such as 

 is used to oil machinery. This works very well, but it leaves an odor 

 of kerosene about the fire for a while. Recently I have been starting 

 the fire by wadding up a piece of newspaper, lighting it, dropping it 

 down in the smoker, then sprinkling on a few shavings, puffing the 

 smoker meanwhile. Sprinkle on a few at first, then, as these take fire, 

 a few more, and so on until I have a good fire going. I like it the best 

 of any plan I have yet tried. After a shavings fire is once well under 

 way, there is no trouble from its going out. 



PREVENTING FOUNDATION PROM STRETCHING. 



At one of the conventions of the National Association of Bee- 

 keepers, several members mentioned the use of a new, or not very well- 

 known, method of treating foundation in brood frames, so that it will 

 not sag, and that without the use of wires. The process is simplicity 

 itself, and consists in painting the upper half of the sheet, on both sides. 



