BEE MANUAL. 145 
CHAPTER VII. 
THE HONEY-EXTRACTOR AND MANIPULATION OF 
EXTRACTED HONEY. 
NEXT in importance to the movable comb-hive itself, as an api- 
arian appliance, ranks undoubtedly the honey-extractor. By its 
means we are enabled to obtain the liquid honey in perfect 
purity from the comb, in the form best suited for storing and for 
transport, and without injury to the combs themselves. These 
can in this way be made to do duty over and over again, a matter 
which has an important effect upon the quantity and the cost 
of the honey produced each season by one colony of bees. 
Without the extractor the improved form of hive could not 
have developed half its real advantages. It would, of course, 
have enabled us, as it does now, to raise comb-honey in the 
best condition, but the importance of honey as an article of 
general consumption and of commerce could never have been 
anything like what it is at present if we had been obliged to 
follow the old system of obtaining it in a liquid state from the 
combs. 
STRAINED OR PRESSED AND MELTED HONEY. 
Formerly, when it was required to separate the honey from 
the comb, the bee-keeper had his choice of two methods—the 
one consisting in squeezing or pressing the honey out of the 
comb in its cold state, the other in melting or boiling down the 
honey and comb together and separating the wax, etc., which 
would settle on the surface, as soon as the mass cooled. By 
both these processes the comb must of course be sacrificed or 
reduced to the state of melted wax, and it will easily be under- 
stood that by either process the original delicate flavour of the 
honey would be partially or wholly destroyed. Those who 
have had any experience in separating honey from the combs 
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