BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
Each outpaiarist has his own method of getting full supers from the apiary to the extracting house. Some erect tracks with cars capable of loading several supers at a time. A larger majority locate the houses as conveniently as possible and use an ordinary garden wheellearrow equipped with springs to loosen the jur on the combs.
It is wise to be provided with burlap cloths to be used as robber cloths to cover supers from the time they are taken from the hives until they are in the shelter of the extracting buiding. A flat drip pan on the burrow is almost a necessity, especially where bees are brushed instead of using the bee-eseape.
## Extracting
The manner of extracting must vary greatly with the system of the outapiarist, whether he has a hand portable outfit, a permanent equipment at each yard, or hauls all honey to the central plant, and whether he uses a crew of men or practices the one-man system. The idea may be to work as rapidly as possible with a large crew, or take time and reduce outside labor to a minimum.
Figure 22: The placing of wet combs in piles in the open for bees to rob out and clean up is to be discouraged.
Extructors will be taken up further in another chapter dealing with extracting houses and equipment.
### Replacing Supers
There is some advantage in extracting before the close of the honey flow. In fact it will pay the apiarist to make a careful study of the honey flora and the honey flow and so time his operations that the extracting may _hw_ done just as the flow is ending, lose no honey, and still not be extracting during a honey _learth_.
During a honey flow the supers may be returned to the hives as fast as extracted, the same number being replaced on each colony as it had before.
But in a honey dearth robbing will certainly be aggravated. It is better to wait till the close of the day when all supers may be returned in a short time. All can then be cleaned by the colonies before morning. For carrying supers back to the apiary a hand barrow is very desirable. Two men can carry from ten to twenty supers at a load while one man in the apiary smokes the bees and replaces equipment.
Some few beekeepers practice setting freshly ex
Figure 2: The France honey strainer is cylindrical and will fit directly into the honey-tank.
tracted supers out in the open for the bees to clean up at will. In most cases this is very objectionable and not to be recommended. Robbing is encouraged and danger of infection, should any foulbrood be present, is great.
If the supers are to be replaced after the last flow in the fall, when the weather is cool, each strong colony may be given four, five or even six supers to clean and guard, thus making easier work in removing the supers later. Several good beekeepers do not replace supers after the last extracting but hold them until needed the next spring. N. E. France of Wisconsin has many times carried such wet supers through the next summer and states that they are much less likely to be injured by moth than the dry supers. However, an
Figure 24: The Dadant strainer for barrels.
objection is that these wet supers may be needed before the crop the following spring, for increase or otherwise, when the dry super may be used with little robbing whereas the wet one may necessitate ceasing operations in a whole apiary. There may also be a chance of honey souring in the wet combs, if any fermentation is present.
### Receptacles for the Crop
Sometimes a major portion of the honey is placed in cans as first as it comes from the extractor, though it is evidently only a makeshift way. It is impossible to remove all impurities in so short a time no matter how careful the straner. But the apary not permanently located, where all work is done with a portable outfit cannot install settling tanks for a single run, neither is it advantageous to haul the honey home and re-empty it. One prominent Wisconsin beekeeper, however, has provided himself with a number of large size milk cans. The honey is strained into these at the outpamy and transferred to the settling tank
Figure 25: Large settling tanks for storing honey, previous to drawing into proper receptacles.
at home after each day's run. He finds the plan very satisfactory.
The ideal method, of course, is to have permanently installed settling tanks and enough of them to hold the extracting until the honey is well settled. This can be done with the central extracting system where all supers are handled at home. It is also practiced to some extent with permanent outyards where buildings are well equipped. The Edson Apiaries in California have 2 or 3 ton settling tanks. The honey settles over night and is drawn into 5 gallon cans the next morning when it is stored in warehouses at the station nearest the outyard at which they are working.
### Honey Knives
The steam-heated honey knife has won its way to favor with a large majority of the best beekeepers. Its advantages are most marked when the honey is thick, the weather cool, and uncapping difficult. It can be dispensed with when extracting is done in hot weather and uncapping is comparatively easy. It is the thing for the inexperienced man, while it may be used only in the emergency by the expert with the cold knife. The chief uncapper for the Dadant apiaries made a record of uncapping solidly sealed combs in shallow frames at the rate of 1000 pounds of honey per hour on a half day run. He did it with a cold knife. Yet he realizes the advantage of the hot knife and never neglects to have it along for the emergency.
### Cappings and Capping Melters
Unfortunately one or two large beekeepers in the past have recommended the use of barrels for cappings, a few holes being bored in the barrel for honey drainage when the rest of the mass would be hauled home for disposition. I can conceive of no worse method of carmg for the cappings than by the use of such barrels or cans. I have in mind one shipment of cappings so barrelled and sent to a big comb-rendering plant to be melted up. Fivebarrels in the shipment weighed in the neighborhood of 1500 pounds. At least two thirds of this was honey, yet the beekeeper by his methods was unable to get out more honey, and the rest was to be wasted.
Although my preference is for the capping can or capping box, a large number of the best beekeepers would not work without the capping melter though they realize its shortcomings. Evident it is, that it provides the easiest and quickest methods of disposing of the cappings, turning them on the spot into honey and wax, and it is especially valuable for the one man plant.
Its disadvantages are that it is hot to work over in summer, and it dissolors the honey and injures its flavor, since it is impossible to apply sufficient heat to melt the wax without great danger of slightly scorching the honey. Cuppings from old combs in which brood has been reared, melt more slowly and cause the most trouble in scorching. Some claim that this small amount of discolored honey when added to the day's extracting mixes so readily as to be unobserved in either color, taste or smell by any observer. We are inclined to doubt this. The essential oils from the bloom, which give the finest flavor, are easily evaporated. Another criticism of the melter is that it makes added equipment when used in connection with the portable outfit. It would work best with the central plant.
Probibly one of the chief reasons for dislike of the capping can or box lies in the fact that the best manner of procedure is not always need. Explanation can probably be given by describing in detail the plan used in the Dadant apiaries which is used similarly by many beekeepers.
A portable extracting equipment is used in connection with a permanent honey house.and in this equipment is included a 24-inch capping can couple of holding usually the cuppings of a good day's run. Every hour or so during the day, time enough is taken to give these cuppings a thorough stirring and breaking up with a strong stick so that the honey may more readily drain. Honeydrains off so freely that it has to be emptied from below both noon and night and sometimes oftener. The cuppings are therefore pretty well drained when the time comes to load for home in the evening, when the full can is taken along. It is left to drain overnight. In the morning the cuppings are transferred to a larger tank with but a shallow space at the bottom for the collection of the balance of the honey. When the end of the season and a slack time come, this dried nass may be run through a nelter if desired. The cappings of the 1918 fall extracting in the Dadant apiaries from 11,000 pounds of honey were, for a test, run through a separating can and melter fashioned after those of Sechrist and ('rane. Less than sixty pounds of honey were secured from the whole lot.
P. W. Sowinski, of Michigan, running a one man plant, uses the uncapping box, spreading the cappings evenly over the box during the day's run. At evening he rolls up his sleeves and thoroughly breaks up and mixes these cappings until all is a conglomerated mass. By morning the cappings are practically dry.
Figure 26: Box arranged for holding supers of combs while they are being sulphured from below.
### Danger of Moths
With varying crop conditions the apiarist may have hives and supers of combs without protection of bees when danger of moths comes. All such should be watched carefully at two week periods and proper methods to destroy moths applied, should they be necessary. The worst damage cones, naturally, in the late summer, after successive broods have hatched out and joined forces. Carbon disulphid and sulphur are both used with success.
Combs which have been without protection of bees during cold weather, in Northern. States, are in slight danger,if properly closed to exclude moths when warm weather arrives. Those on
Figure 27:.l cylindrical honey-house mudic especially for storing combs by hanging them in raeks so the moths will not enter them, and also for using sulphur fumes. Apiary of H. C. Cook of Omaha.
which bees have wintered will have to be watched carefully from early spring, especially those of colonies that have died in early spring.
One beekeeper so built his honey house that the ratters are spaced for hanging combs between them. Such combs, isolated and exposed to the light, run snail chance of being moth-euten.
### **Foulbrood**
Second and third examinations may be necessary when the locality has fouibrood. European foulbrood should largely have disappeared with the honey-flow if proper steps were taken at its inception. American foulbrood may appear at any time and the beekeeper cannot be too careful in searching it out. A diseased colony detected and destroyed or treated late in summer or fall may save many in the spring.
### **Requeening**
Probably most of the requeening is done after the main spring honey-flow. It is desirable to carry out such requeening in the outapiary in a wholesale manner to avoid unnecessary trips. Such requeening should also be done, where possible, during a light flow, when chances of successful introduction are best.
As prominent a beekeeper as the late Wm. McEvoy practiced requeening each summer, others requeen every other year, while others requeen only when absolutely necessary, leaving it to the bees generally to supersede a poor queen when the time comes. More and more the tendency is to requeen at least every other year.
With the desirability of a full colony of young bees for wintering, requeening should be completed in time to insure it.
## Chapter 1 FALL AND EARY WINTER
If the beekeeper has been forewarned, he will have, in the summer, taken precautionary measures towards getting his bees in the best possible shape in preparation for winter. The three prime requisites for successful wintering, are:
1. Strong Colonies of young bees.
2. Plenty of healthful stores.
3. Ample protection from winds and cold.
It is necessary to begin preparations for the first requisite quite early in fall, since the bees must be reared in sufficient time to have the colony strong before cooler weather sets in. Lacking a honey flow, it may be necessary for the beekeeper to make a tour of outyards, feeding stimulatively to imitate a flow, so that proper breeding will take place. Inasmuch as young queen usually breed more prolifically, they are desirable.
Lacking good natural stores, it may be necessary to do fall feeding. Not a sma!) number let this matter go till too late, instead of getting colonies heavy with honey well ahead of cold weather, and too many colonies are underfed, resulting in dwindling in spring or the necessity of intermittent feedings in early spring.
**Protection from the Weather**
\(\Lambda\)s stated previously under the chapter on locating apiaries, it is desirable to so locate the apiary that the contour of the land,natural forestry, undergrowth, etc., may help in breaking the force of the winds. Artificial windbreaks for the apiary as a whole may also be used. But there will be required, in all northern climates at least, additional wind and cold protection for the hives individually, and such protection will serve to good purpose much further south than yet practiced \(\mathsf{l}_{\mathsf{Y}}\) many beekeepers in the milder zones.
The character of such protection for the outapiary will be dependent \(\mathsf{t}_{0}\) a great extent on three things:
1. Locality and location.
2. Permanence of the apiary.
3. Plan of operations.
It will hardly be advisable for the Southern man to consider seriously the proper conditions for cellar wintering, since the amount of protection his hees need will not warrant cellar wintering at all. \(\mathsf{S}_{\mathsf{t}}\) with wintering in the North. 'Some localities may be out of range of the hardest and coldest winds. They may be so favored that the weather is tempered, allowing an occasional flight during winter. Others may be winter-bound for months at a time, so that either cellar winter \(\mathsf{g}\) or the utmost in outdoor packing will be absolutely necessary. To this extent each beekeeper will have his own method of wintering to study out as applicable to his particular locality.
The location does not make quite so great a difference. Yet it is easy to conceive a barren plain, wind swept, which will require double the winter protection of another not two miles removed, but in a small valley with hills and brush and trees as protection from the direct blasts of the North. The outapiarists may have considered carefully the two when locating. The flora of the one may more than overbalance the disadvantages of the other.
Many apiary sites are retained only from one year to another. Many arrangements for ground rental can be made but for a single season. It would be the height of folly, under such conditions, to build a permanent cellur only to move out after having used it one season. Yet the location may be so extraordinary that the beekeeper may desire to remain and winter out-of-doors in the best available manner. Possibly, with the migratory system, it will be advisable to abandon the large winter cases as too cumbersome to carry here and there with the changed location.
Where the location is owned by the apiarist with the likelihood of his remaining over a series of years, he may select what he considers the ideal manner of protection.
Yet many of our outapiarists have grown up from a small beginning. They have started their extended beekeeping with only limited capital. One may be able, for a few years at least, to winter under conditions which neither he nor the best authorities deem advisable. It may be to his advantage to evolve a system less costly until a time when, if desirable, he can afford the capital for a new system of wintering better suited to the locality.
Moreover, his system, even if he is fortunate in having all the capital desired. may demand a wintering system that will correspond. With the centrally located plant, where all honey is hauled home to be extracted, it will not be advisable to build cellars at outyards for wintering, when the building is required for no other purpose.
Outdoor vs. Cellar Wintering
It is very difficult to define specifically just where cellar wintering is to be preferred and where outdoor wintering. It will hardly do to indicate zones with the same mean temperatures as having the same conditions applying for wintering of bees, and this because the wind protection of the two may not be the same, the humidity may be different.
We all know that the two shores of a lake may be entirely different for fruit raising, although the mean temperature may be the same. In like manner climatic conditions may govern the desirability of out-door or cellular wintering. Moderation of climate sufficient to allow of winter flights may more than offset extra winter protection in the cellar.
Roughly we may state that where your bees average two good flight days per month, with no confinement of over six weeks duration, out-of-door wintering is to be preferred, providing, of course that proper wind protection is afforded.
Certain it is that many beekeepers have turned from cellar to outdoor wintering not because their locality was more favorable
Figure 28: Hives wintering close together, the whole wrapped in tar paper.
to the latter, but more probably because their cellars were lacking in some essential.
On the other hand, outdoor wintering may be practiced in so many different forms and lend itself so readily to the variability of the beekeepers themselves that it is no wonder that it is chosen by many outapiarists in preference to the less elastic cellar.
### Outdoor Packing Methods
A method sometimes practiced in Colorado and other sections with similarclimatic conditions is to wrap colonies in tarred paper, strawberry or other similiar material. Very often this is done by first getting the colonies closely together in a long row. Probably most of the value of this protection comes through having
Figure 29: An apiary of chaff-packed Protection hives.
the lives in close proximity, though the paper wrapping has some little effect on the wind and serves to cover undesirable cracks in hives and hive-covers. It is better than no packing at all--much better.
Alfalfa regions seem to be among the last to realize the importance of winter protection, possibly owing to the fact that their main honey flow comes late and colonies nude weak by winter, as well as those lost, may be rebuilt by the time the main flow commences. Then too, their late flow insures maximum strength colonies of young bees to withstand the winter. Yet the percentage of loss in these regions seems out of proportion \(
icefrac{{10}}{{0}}\) what the extra investment for winter protection would be.
Figure 30: The single colony packing case finds many advocates.
In many sections the permanently packed hive is looked upon with favor. It has the advantage of requiring no extra labor for winter protection except additional packing on the top. J. T. Dunn, of Ontario, packs his double-walled hive with cork chips instead of the usual chaff, and reports exceptional success.
Objections advanced to it are that it is cumbersome to move, and heavy to lift. It only has two inches of packing all around while recommendations are usually for six to eight inches. Often no provision is made for bottom packing.
Yet in regions where limited packing is desired, this chaff-packed hive winters with success. It is more to be desired where the apiary is permanent and little moving necessary.
Single colony outer cases have the advantage that they usually provide for heavier packing, and may be removed when desired. But they also entail added equipment for the outward.
Figure 31: The quadruple case is best in colder latitudes where an out-door wintering system is desired.
to furnish all the forest leaves desired and at minimum expense. Experiments tend to show that this packing material is superior to straw, shavings or paper.
Large nets about six feet square are used for gathering the leaves, one net being sufficient for packing five or six of the large Dadant colonies. Nets sufficient for a full apiary are loaded on a large truck and the trip to the outapiary made.
Figure 33: The leaves are cordel on a big truck.
The deep telescope caps are filled with leaves and carefully replaced after first adjusting the straw mat above to the cluster. For hives with the shallow cover a shallow superfull of leaves is added. Two mer pack and replace the caps while two more follow and pack the hives outside, packing material being about six in-chesthicandplacedon both sides and the back, leaving the front, facing south, exposed. For holding the packing on the outside, a frame of chicken netting is used. These nets rise to the top of the telescope caps making at least four inches of packing on top and all sides except the front.
There are several advantages to this plan. First, the equipment required is reduced to a minimum; rakes, leaf nets and packing frames being all that is needed extra. The cost of packing is light, four men packing an apiary of 100 colonies in a day besides raking fresh dry leaves.
In a locality where the sun is sufficiently warm to allow of winter flights, the front of the hive warns up and induces the faces to flight, while, if they were heavily packed as with some other systems, the interior of the hive would hardly feel the sun's heat until time of day for flight was passed. In the vicinity of Hamilton, Illinois, this method has been so successful and the percentage of loss so small that it seems inadvisable to invest more in wintering equipment requiring also additional labor. Naturally, wherever possible, all apiaries are given the best advantage of location for winter protection.
Figure 34: The straw mat is placed next to the frames.
### **Cellar Wintering and Cellars**
Protection is afforded in (ellar as in outdoor wintering, the difference being that the outside protection in one case is placed around the whole apiary while in the other it is around a single colony, two colonies, or four or more, as the case may be.
The same safeguards for winter protection are to be observed as in outdoor wintering. But there are added precautions to be taken in the cellar since the bees are confined during the whole of the winter. They will have no chances for flight and changes of temperature and extreme variations in ventilation, moisture, etc., have a greater bearing.
Figure 35: Placing the big telescope covers on the hives after filling them with leaves.
In many others, perhaps sufficient ventilation is afforded through crevices swept by the wind or through the opening and closing of entrales into the eellar. More ventilation, as stated above, will be necessary when the temperature becomes lower, requiring activity on the part of the bees. It is well to arrange a ventilator for the eellar but this need not be over 6 x 6 inches and should be shielded at the top to avoid light in the repository. H. H. 'elwyn of Ontario has had good success with such a ventilator. He has, in addition, a sub-vertilator comi.g through the floor. This pipe extends from the intake for sixty feet under ground before reaching the eellar. In this way the air is tempered. No doubt also that this constant stream of earth-tempered air has its effect in maintaining the temperature of the eellar at the same degree, thus combining the desirabilities of temperature and
Figure 37: One of the France bee-rellars in Wisconsin.
ventilation. One beekeeper with the same system of ventilators has instilled an electrically operated fan in the upper ventilator so that with any variation inside the fan pumps the air out and draws the fresh air in to take its place till the temperature again becomes normal.
Usually cellular are built of a height from \(5^{1\over 2}\) to \(7\) feet. In figuring the amount of air space to be allowed, there should be at least twelve cubic feet for each colony and two or three times this amount is desirable.