THE 
JOUENAL. 
Vol. II.— No. 4.] SEPTEMBER 10, 1887. [Price Go. 
Editorial. 
HINTS FOR OCTOBER. 
Should the weather be favorable, this month 
will be a busy time for both for bees and bee- 
keepers. Strong stocks that have not already 
swarmed may be now expected to do so. The 
mode of dealing with the swarms, as pointed 
out last month, will depend upon whether the 
beekeeper wishes to increase his stocks, or to ' 
secure all the honey he can. Both cannot well 
be done unless he chooses to keep part of his 
colonics for increase and part for honey. To 
those w orking for comb-honey we cannot do 
better than advise a careful perusal of the 
articles in this and last month’s number, en- 
titled " Comb Honey,” copied from the Ameri- 
can Apiculturist. 
So many complained last season of the 
difficulty of removing sections after they 
were filled in consequence of brace comb 
connecting them with the tops of the 
frames beneath. The difficulty is simply owing 
to there being too much space between the 
bottoms of the sections or frames in the supers 
and the tops of the brood frames, which should 
never exceed g of an inch, unless a honey board 
is used. A correspondent, Mr. Watts, in our 
last number says, leaving the mat on the central 
brood frames, but not covering the outside 
frames, gets over the difficulty. Mr. Heddon 
declares his honey board is the best plan. 
Other apiarists swear by their own particular 
honey boards, while others again use and advise 
the perforated zinc honey board (Queen exclud- 
ing mnc). We scarcely know which is best, 
lleddon’s is simple and cheap and is described 
on another page (under article Hives). There 
van l*e no doubt that section box work becomes 
very troublesome and tedious when the bees 
are permitted to cement supers and brood 
together in one mass, as they certainly 
w l do, unless the space is very accurately 
gauged and some contrivances such as a honey 
board or special mat be used. 
Some beekeepers working for extracted 
honey keep the full number of frames in 
the brood-box, and as fast as honey is stored 
in the outside frames they extract it and 
return the empty combs. It is claimed for 
this method that it has a tendency to pre- 
vent swarming, and that the bees work 
harder and gather more honey than they 
will if full combs and section boxes be left in 
the hive till the honey flow ceases. If this plan 
is adopted, the best way is to contract the brood 
chamber to 8 frames, which will all be used by 
the queen if she be good, the colony strong and 
the season favorable, and keep all the surplus 
hbney stored in frames in the super. Extract- 
ing can then be carried on without disturbing 
the brood chamber so often. If the weather be 
at all dry, water must be supplied to the bees 
in the neighborhood of the hives ; for this 
purpose a regular bee-fountain should be used 
or a home-made contrivance substituted. A 
simple way is to get a small barrel or tub with 
a cover, fill with water and hang some stripes 
of bagging or old sacks over the edge, so that 
one end of the strips dips in the water and 
the other end hang outside the barrel, 
reaching below the level of the water, lhe 
result of this arrangement is that the strips 
syphon off the water slowly and are constantly 
soaked. When once the bees find this out, it 
will be pretty freely visited on every warm, dry 
day. 
Our first honey flow is usually well es- 
tablished toward the middle of this month, 
and where surplus is coming in rapidly, care 
should bo taken to give the bees plenty of 
storage room. If shallow supers of sections 
are getting weU filled, don’t wait till the 
sections are all filled and sealed, but when half 
filled lift it off and place a second half story 
super with sections on the brood chamber and 
the half filled super on the top. This mode of 
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