BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
Nuclei are small colonies of bees formed for the purpose of getting the young queens fertilized, and they should consist of three good frames of bees, two of the frames containing mature brood. The queen-raising colony will form three good nuclei, one of which, and the weakest of the three, should be left in the original hive. Nuclei may be placed either in full-sized hives or in small hives holding three frames only.
Give each of these small colonies at least one good queen-cell, enclosed in a cell-protector, and cover the whole up warmly. In a fortnight from that time, if all goes well, the young' queens should have hatched, have become fertilized, and be laying. They, can be used as may. seem desirable, and a fresh batch of cells given to the nuclei. It will be seen that although a queen raiser can breed from his best queen, he cannot select the drones with which the young virgins are to be mated. Much has been written about the fertilization of queens with selected drones, but in a country so thickly populated as our own the thing is practically impossible. Fertilization takes place high in the air, and even if the bee-keeper kept nothing but selected drones in his own apiary, a large proportion of his queens would probably be mated with those which belong to his neighbours. When introducing new queens to a colony precautions must be taken, or they may be killed. The usual method is to cage the queen on a comb, placing the cage in the centre of the broadnest and over a few open cells of honey. Feed the bees gently, and liberate the queen in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours. It will be readily seen on releasing her whether the bees are disposed to be friendly, or otherwise towards her. If they commence to pull the queen about, or enclose her in a tight mass of bees, a form of attack termed "'balling," she must be caged again until they are willing to accept her. Another method of introducing is to enclose the queen in a cage, at one end of which is a quarter-inch hole filled with soft candy. The
## 86 Profitable Bee-Keeping
queen is then released by the bees themselves eating away the candy block. In any case be sure that there is no virgin or other queen in the hive, or any attempt at introduction is bound to end in failure.
**For commercial queen raising it is usual to make up the nuclei in small hives, taking frames half the size of the standard, thus economizing the bees required for the fertilizing stage.** These small frames are clipped together and used as ordinary standards during the early part of the season, afterwards taking them apart when forming the nuclei. System is the secret of professional queen raising. Everything must as far as possible work smoothly, and batches of cells must be continually brought forward to replenish the nuclei from which fertile queens have been sold. This branch of apiculture is not for beginners, and should be adopted very cautiously and gradually, extending operations as the demand increases and experience ripens.
In the presence of disease, the hands should be well washed with carbonic soap between the examination of one stock and another, and the appliances should be disinfected with a twenty-five per cent. solution of carbonic acid. If your stocks are healthy it is a most unwise thing to introduce fresh blood into the apiary at the present time. Many thriving apiaries have been ruined by neglect of this precaution.
## Chapter 11 The preparation of honey
When the honey has been removed from the hives, much still remains to be done before it is fit for the table or the market. In the first place, if it be extracted honey that has to be dealt with, it requires grading, extracting, ripening, and finally. putting up in jars or other receptacles.
This work must be carried out in a room which is impervious to the attacks of bees or wasps, as it usually comes at a time when these insects are highly aggressive. Should they be able to effect an entrance the work will soon be brought abruptly to a standstill.
The honey should first be graded, as it is a mistake of the first order to extract the whole of the combs in one lot. The honey which is collected by the bees is of various colours and qualities, and it must not be mixed if the best is to be made of the product. If the combs be held up to the light it will readily be seen that they contain honey of both light and dark shades, and these shades should be separated and extracted apart. Light honey will fetch threepence or fourrence per pound more than dark honey,although for my own part I much prefer a good honey of a medium colour. However, the fact remains that light honey, is synonymous with high prices, and in this respect there is no dark honey that can compete with it save and except the incomparable heather honey of the Scottish moors.
This grading of honey must be done very carefully, for a very little dark honey will spoil the colour and bring down the price of a large quantity of light. The combs should be tested in a good light. After grading the extracting must be proceeded with, and for this purpose an extractor will be required, and also a few other necessary articles. The honey extractor consists of a metal cylinder, within which revolve two or more cages fixed to a vertical central shaft. The honey is extracted by uncapping and placing combs in the cages, which are then caused to rotate swiftly by means of a handle at the top or side, which handle in most cases is fitted with chain or cog gearing. The honey is thrown out by centrifugal force against the sides of the cylinder, and runs to the bottom, whence it is drawn off by means of a honey valve. All extractors work on this principle, and the machines run in different sizes, taking either two or four combs as a rule to each filling. As to which size is necessary depends on the amount of work which has to be performed and the price which the buyer wishes to pay, which may be anywhere from fifteen to fifty, shillings,
## The Preparation of Honey 91
Having the extractor, then, the other articles needed are two large sharp knives--the W. B. C. uncapping knife is best, but carving-knives will do well enough; a jug of hot water with which to heat them, or preferably a tin of water kept hot over a small oil stove; a tin for the cap-pings; and one or two cloths. Place the knives in the hot water, and then take a comb, which should be held in the manner depicted in the illustration. Now wipe the water from one of the knives, and remove the capping with one sweeping upward cut. The knife must be changed for the other side of the comb. As will be seen the comb is held at an angle so that as the capping is cut it falls away from the comb and into the tin. After uncapping both sides place the comb in one of the extractor cages, afterwards uncapping another of about the same weight for the other cage. Now turn the handle sharply, until all the honey is thrown out, after which the combs must be turned and the operation repeated to extract the other side. Do not turn the handle too quickly, or the combs will be forced from their frames. Only sufficient motion is required to effect the purpose in view, so that the speed required will be very readily seen.
Continue the work until all the combs have been extracted, raising the machine as often as may be required to draw off the honey, and taking care not to mix the various qualities.
* 92 PROFITABLE BEE-KEEPING.
The honey should be drawn off into a honey-ripener. This is a tall, cylindrical vessel, shaped something like a milk churn, and is fitted with a strainer and lid. Its 'purpose is to ripen the honey. When honey is extracted there is a considerable quantity thrown out of the cells which has not been sealed over by the bees. This honey is unripe, and if it is bottled along with the ripe honey will cause fermentation.
The ripener is for the purpose of separating this thin honey, which should not be sold, but may be fed back to the bees. Having filled the ripener, then, place it in a warm corner and allow it to stand for a week. It will now be found that the thin honey has risen to the top, and as all ripeners are fitted with valves at the bottom the good honey may be drawn off, leaving the thin behind.
We now come to the putting up of honey for sale, and the methods employed are various. First let me say that cleanliness and neatness, combined with good taste, are the great secret of it all. Take whatever form of package you like, but your ultimate success in finding a market rests in the main on your observance of the qualities mentioned.
For the retail trade, or for shopkeepers, extracted honey is usually sold in pound and half-pound screw-cap jars. These jars are fitted with a cork wad, and if tastefully labelled they, are particularly attractive. For the wholesale market The Preparation of Honey. 93 it is customary to run the honey into fourteen or twenty-eight-pound tins, with a lever lid. Larger sizes than these should not be employed, as they are very heavy to handle, besides being inconvenient in cases where it is necessary to liquefy, the honey, after granulation. Square tins are the most convenient for packing where the produce has to be sent over railways.
Comb honey in sections also requires grading, and the combs should be sorted into first and second qualities. The first quality, consisting of the very best combs, fully capped over, built out to the wood all round, and of snowy whiteness, the seconds well filled but lacking in finish. After grading the wood must be scraped round with a sharp knife, to remove any, marks of propolis, pollen, etc., and then for a finish it is best to glaze the sections. This is effected by attaching a square of glass with lace paper to each side of the section, using strong paste for the purpose. The glass should be four and three-sixteenths square for four and a quarter inch sections, and both glass and lace paper may be bought very cheaply.
It pays to glaze sections. In the first place they will make at least eighteenpence per dozen more than unglazed ones; then, again, the glass protects the combs from damp and the attacks of insects; finally, many shopkeepers will not buy them unless they, are glazed. Comb honey is of a most fragile and delicate nature, and should have some protection if it is to be kept at all. In good condition it is a most beautiful and dainty article of food ; badly put up, sticky and messy, it is most uninviting and practically unsaleable.
Another way of putting up extracted honey is in the form of compressed paper, or fibre jars. These are after the form of the jars used for sending out cream, and are very cheap and serviceable. The paper is waterproofed, and the package is made in various sizes ; some which I received lately were made to hold two pounds of honey, and were fitted with a lid displaying the name and address of the producer. These paper jars are filled with the liquid honey, and the lid closed down, when they may be packed to travel by rail. Of course when the honey has granulated very little packing is needed, the paper being of a very tough and impervious nature.
This package is a very good one indeed for heather honey, and for any honey which granulates rapidly and solidly, as charlock blends. It is not quite so good as a jar for poor honeys of thin consistency, or for some of the fine clover honeys, many of which remain semi-liquid for years.
It is a good plan when selling honey wholesale to send screw-cap jars out in returnable boxes, and each box should contain a dozen jars, with separators between. Such boxes will stand for years, are a great aid to labour saving, and prevent losses from breakage.
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very strong, and the body-box solid with brood when the bees are sent to the moors. If there is much room below, most of the crop will be stored there. Should this happen it is practically lost to the bee-keeper, as this honey cannot be extracted in the ordinary way. It is usual to work for sections, and the colonies should be strengthened until there are at least sufficient bees to fill one crate in addition to the brood chamber. Very warm packing is absolutely. necessary, or the bees will not work in the supers.
It is a great advantage if the apiarist can get his sections drawn out during the clover flow, as this saves valuable time and is true economy. Bees are usually sent to the moors on a light spring cart or day, in which they should be placed above a good thickness of straw.
When packing these strong colonies great care must be taken to ensure free ventilation, and the means employed are the same as when sending by rail. The frames should be secured from movement by screwing strips of wood over and across the lugs, and the body-box must be secured to the floor-board by screws also. Take out the entrance slides and close the entrance with a piece of wire gauze, and either gauze or cheese-cloth should be stretched over the frames after the removal of the quilts. This gives thorough ventilation.
Unless they are needed to accommodate the bees it is best to place the supers in position after
**TRANSFERING A SKEP**
Skep placed above a Frame Hive to admit of the bees transferring themselves
To face page 96
## Chapter 9 Hearter Honey
arrival at the heather. In placing the gauze over the frames it is an improvement if it be mounted on a light frame made of half-inch wood, which will give a good bee-space above.them.
If the apiarist makes a regular practice of going to the moors, he should have a three-inch hole cut in the bottom-board, and covered with perforated zinc. A cover may be made for this hole, which is only required at this particular time. The journey must be made at night, and the bees released early next morning.
As I have mentioned, heather honey cannot be extracted, but must be pressed out. For this purpose a honey press is needed. In these presses the combs are enclosed in cheese-cloth and crushed between metal plates. The honey is thus extracted and strained at the same time, ready, for ripening and bottling. As this method involves the sacrifice of the combs most bee-keepers elect to work for sections in preference.
A bee-keeper is doubly fortunate when circumstances give him access to two such crops as clover and heather. He has not only a double chance of securing surplus honey, but even in years when the heather bloom is a comparative failure he usually secures sufficient honey to feed up the bees for the winter, and this alone is well worth the trouble and expense of the journey to the moors.
Driving bees
All apiarists should be able to drive bees, and especially those who reside in country districts where skeps are much in use. Skeppists are often only too willing to allow their skeps to be driven at the end of the honey flow, and the acquisition of these bees supplies the modern beekeeper with an opportunity of strengthening his weak stocks at a nominal cost. I do not advise the buying of driven bees, but where they can be procured for the trouble of driving, or for a small consideration, they are most useful,
There are two methods of driving, open and close, and it is with the former that we have to deal. The latter method is not largely used now, but 1 may say. that it consists of inverting a full skep upon its crown and turning down upon it another empty skep of the same size. The junction is secured with a cloth, and by drumming upon the bottom skep the bees may be caused to ascend into the one placed to receive them. There is too much working in the dark with this method, however, which with open driving does not exist. Practically all that is required for open drivingtoo PROFITABLE BEE-KEEPING are known to be old. It is best to hive these bees on built-out combs where possible, and feed them up rapidly. If this cannot be done, five or six sheets of foundation must be given to them, and they may. winter on a contracted brood-nest of that extent. Comb building at this season should be spared them when possible. It is to the advantage of the bee-keeper to obtain his bees as soon after the beginning of August as he can, and to this end he should be early afoot--or perhaps I ought to say awheel--among the outlying districts. Many old skeppists will probably be averse to having their bees taken up at this early date. Then it should be explained to them that except in odd districts, or in heather localities, the skeps get lighter nearly every week after the end of July, and this they may easily prove if they take the trouble to weigh them. It is not a bad plan to go round in early spring and make arrangements with cottagers for the driving of their bees at the end of the season, and if a trifling amount per skep is offered there will usually be little difficulty in settling the matter. In hiving the bees they should be treated exactly as swarms, and then fed as rapidly as they will take the syrup. A good set of driving irons may be made by taking some stout wire, about one-eighth thick, and bending it to the desired form.
## Chapter 13 Safe wintering
With each recurring spring a large percentage of colonies fail to respond to the roll-call, and their disappointed owners cast vainly round for some explanation of what is to them an unintelligible mystery. The bees were all right in the autumn, strong, full colonies, and now they are dead. The same old thing' repeats itself year after year, and will continue to repeat itself until bee-keepers more thoroughly understand what is required in order that their bees may winter safely.
Stocks ought to, and will winter safely, and I will guarantee that ninety-five per -cent might be brought through. Personally I only admit of possible loss in one direction, and this is owing to the bees becoming queenless during the winter. There is no remedy for this. Queens, like everything else, die at times from natural causes, and if this occurs in winter the stock becomes a total loss.
All these lost colonies, however, of which I speak are starved to death in nineteen cases out of twenty. This may seem an astounding fact,
## SAFE Wintering 103
two strips of wood, about two inches apart. These strips should be three-eighths of an inch thick, and of a sufficient length to go right across the centre of the frames. Their use is to give the bees a passage over the frame tops, enabling them to travel from comb to comb in search of food, without leaving the warm atmosphere which prevails at the top of the brood-chamber. This done, pack all down as warmly as possible with good thick quilts. Finally secure the\(
angle\) roofs from high winds, and if necessary place a strip of perforated zinc across all entrances to exclude mice. Be sure that the hives are waterproof, as damp is fatal to bees.
If these instructions are thoroughly carried out, winter losses will become a thing of the past, and what was formerly a game of chance will be practically a certainty.
In connection with this chapter a word may be given as to the proper care of surplus standard and shallow combs during the winter months. These combs, which are most valuable stock, must be safely stored away, either in supers or in boxes specially made for the purpose. In any case they must be secured against the attacks of mice, and it is necessary that they be kept dry. The greatest enemy is the wax moth, the larvae of which do much damage to disused combs. Their dependations may be easily. seen\({}_{;}\) and when they are present the combs should be well fumigated with
**PROfitABLE BEE-KEEPING**
burning sulphur. Prevention, however, is better than cure, and if the combs are kept in a receptacle which is moth-tight there is small fear of any harm coming to them.
A wintering system, which has much to commend it, is one known as the claustral detention system. In this method the hives are fitted with a special porch, which can be closed at will, and the bees confined to the hive during inclement weather in spring, or at any other time should the need arise. Ventilation is provided for by means of special tubes, and many other advantages are claimed for this hive entrance, which was introduced by the Abbe Gouttefangeas. It is asserted that bees have been confined for so long as five months in this way, and it is certainly very valuable in case of moving bees to new locations, and in the making of artificial swarms, the prevention of robbing, and the eradication of bee diseases. In this latter case all that is necessary is to close the hive up entirely. Then no robbers can gain entrance, nor can the rightful inhabitants escape. There is no fetching and carrying of disease, and at the same time the medicinal treatment of the affected colony can go on.
### 11.1 Selling the produce
There are a great many bee-keepers, mostly those who have small apiaries, to whom the selling of their produce at remanerative prices is an annual source of difficulty. These men, living as they do often in good but remote honey districts, can produce honey much more easily than they can dispose of it, while others having practically an unlimited demand are at their wits' end to supply their customers. It is quite time that this state of things was remedied, and some scheme launched on a co-operative basis whereby honey can be distributed evenly over the markets. The schemes which are now being inaugurated by the _Smallholder_ would no doubt embrace something of the kind, as there are infinite possibilities in it, both for the selling of honey and any other kind of produce grown on small-holdings. As the thing stands at present, one man is producing large crops with no market for them, owing sometimes, I confess, to his own lack of business energy, while another man is running here, there, and everywhere in rain attempts to satisfy his numerous and ever increasing customers.
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Without further digression, however, I would say that there is no crop which can be more readily sold than bee-produce, whether it be honey or wax. Most bee-keepers fail owing to causes which are very obvious. They are deficient in push and energy, they reside in outlying districts and make no serious attempts to reach the towns, their goods are badly prepared for sale and offered in a messy and undesirable condition. These are the prime causes of failure, for I never knew a good bee-keeper yet who could not sell his honey; in fact, when a reputation for good honey has been made, people will readily fetch it, without causing any trouble to the apiarist.
First it is most essential that honey should be put up in faultless condition, and of a good level colour. Instructions for grading it have been given elsewhere, but the bee-keeper should try and make the grades approximately the same each season. Further, he will do well to establish a fair and regular price, to be adhered to without variation, either in good seasons or in bad. Create and establish a standard article at a fixed price. Put it up in the same way each year, until people can recognize your honey as far off as they can see the bottle. Never send out honey of inferior quality, or in a badly labelled, sticky. jar.
If these precepts are adhered to, a market will be founded in an incredibly short time, and always remember that every satisfied customer usually brings others in his wake. Circularize the dis
**SELLING THE PRODUCE 107.**
trict and advertise in the local newspaper, at the same time making a small but tasteful display, in your window, if you be living by the side of the highway. If this does not clear your produce, recourse may be had to the nearest town and honey offered to the shopkeepers there, either by means of circulars, canvassing, or advertisement. Should this fail most shopkeepers will make a display on sale or return terms.
**Try.** by. all means to deal direct with the consumer, as then the highest possible profit is made.
With regard to the packages, there is nothing better than the usual screw-cap jars for extracted honey for the retail trade, and twenty-eight-pound square tins with lever lids for the wholesale market. All comb honey should be glazed preferably, or failing that it may be wrapped in grease-proof paper, and placed in cardboard cartons stamped with the name and address of the producer.