SCALE HIVE 
739 
pares well with that of white clover honey. 
Some retailers prefer it to alfalfa honey. 
“The chief honey plant on the chalky 
uplands of southeast England,” says Sla- 
den, “is giant sainfoin, a variety of Ono- 
brychis sativa. It is cut twice sometimes in 
a single season. It blooms first about June 
10, and yields a crop of honey if the weath¬ 
er is not too wet and it is fairly warm. It 
blooms again in July when the main crop is 
gathered. It often blooms for a third time 
in middle August, but it yields no nectar, 
altho the fields are pink with bloom and 
the conditions appear to be as favorable 
as in July.” 
SCALE HIVE. —Many of the most 
prominent beekeepers have in their yards 
during the season when honey is coming 
a sort of barometer of the daily honey flow 
or, more exactly, a scale hive. This con¬ 
sists of a hive mounted on ordinary plat¬ 
form spring scales with a dial to indicate 
any increase or decrease in the weight of 
the colony. As the honey flow begins, it 
will be apparent that the hive will gain 
slightly in weight. This weight will in¬ 
crease during the day that there is a fair 
honey flow and decrease somewhat during 
the night owing to evaporation of the 
nectar. As the season continues it is very 
easy to determine the strength of the honey 
flow, what days are best, what conditions 
are best for a honey flow, and when the 
season nears its close the dial will show a 
smaller and smaller increase until no gain 
is shown at all. 
For a scale hive it is advisable to select 
a strong colony—one of the very best in the 
yard, because a medium or indifferent one 
might not show any increase in waght, 
while the stronger colony would be al#e 5 to 
record whether any honey at all were <mm- 
ing in. While of course it is understood 
that this strong colony is not a fair av¬ 
erage of all the others in the apiary, it 
indicates, to some extent, what the nectar 
secretion is in the field. If, for example, 
the best colony should record a pound or 
two pounds in a day, it might be as¬ 
sumed that the poorer or weaker colonies 
would show proportionately anywhere from 
a half to a full pound of nectar increase in 
weight. Still again, the best colony on the 
scale might not show more than a quarter 
of a pound increase. Correspondingly the 
other colonies of the apiary might not 
show any gain if they were on the scale. 
Therefore, it is important to have the best 
colony in the yard. 
One might naturally ask why it is im¬ 
portant to have a scale hive. It might be 
argued that an expert beekeeper would be 
able to determine by the flight of the bees 
going into the hives whether a honey flow 
was on, whether there was a good flow, 
whether it was increasing, or whether it 
was letting up. Very true, but the actual 
record of the best colony in the apiary, 
together with the observation of the flight 
of the bees at all entrances, gives an ex¬ 
perienced beekeeper a much more accurate 
idea of what is going on. In a practical 
Way, the scale hive enables the apiarist to 
determine whether he should put his extra 
super on top of those partly filled, or 
whether he should place it under. See 
Comb Honey, to Produce. 
Suppose that it is at the beginning of 
the honey flow and that the bees have part¬ 
ly filled the first super given. If the scale 
hive shows a good record day by day, it 
would be advisable to place the next empty 
super under the one partly filled. If, on 
the other hand, the season is getting toward 
its close and the scale shows a gradual 
daily decrease, then it would be advisable 
to put the extra super on top of the one 
partly filled, or perhaps, better still, not 
put it on at all. 
The scale hive is very useful also in 
determining how far it is advisable to 
continue extracting in the yard. If the 
season is drawing toward a close and one 
desires to leave enough stores in the hive 
for winter, or to take care of brood-rearing, 
in anticipation of another honey flow to 
follow in another month or six weeks, then 
obvionsly it is not advisable to extract if 
such extracting would leave the hives with¬ 
out any stores, making it necessary later 
on to feed sugar syrup. 
The scale hive is of value to the honey- 
producer by enabling him to determine what 
policy to pursue during the season, so that 
in producing comb honey he will not have 
too many unfinished sections on his hands; 
or, if he is running for extracted, he will 
not leave his brood-nests bare of honey, if 
he extracts at all from the brood-nest as 
