The bee-smoker is simply a small bellows attached to a sort of tin cup having a suitable snout from which the smoke is blown by the ac tion of the bel lows, forcing air through the cup in which there is A slow-burning fuel. Besides the bee-smoker, the bee-keeper gener ally uses a bee veil made of mos quito netting, Brussels net or any suitable mate rial, the same fas tened to the rim of the hat and tucked inside of the coat-collar or under the suspenders. Gloves are sometimes used by very timid per sons or beginners, but as a general thing all work with the bees is performed with the bare hand. Stings are, of course, occasionally re ceived, but beyond a sharp, momentary pain no permanent effect will be felt after the first sea son, for the system of the bee-keeper very soon becomes inoculated so that no swelling takes place. There are many who receive from 10 to 20 stings a day without any ill effects; but if one will work carefully he will receive almost no stings.
Marketable Products of the These are beeswax, comb and extracted honey, propo lis or bee-glue (sometimes used for making shoe polishes) and mellifica,)) a homeo pathic preparation taken from the poison sacs at the root of the stings of bees.
Production of Beeswax, which is secreted by the bees and used by them for building their combs, is an important commer cial product and commands a good price in the United States. There are frequently combs to be melted up, and it pays to take care of even scraps of comb and the tappings taken off in extracting. A common method of tak ing out the wax is to melt the combs in a solar wax-extractor. Various wax-presses are on the market, but if much wax is produced, it is advisable that the bee-keeper make a care ful study of the methods of wax extraction, as there is usually much wax wasted even after pressing.
supers require to be specially constructed and so arranged that the little boxes containing strips of comb foundation shall be accessible to the bees where they can construct the founda tion into comb, fill the cells with honey and seal them over. When their owner finds that his little servants are busily at work in the Comb Honey Production.— Comb honey is usually put up in little square or oblong boxes, of which something like 50,000,000 are made and used in the United States annually. The honey in these boxes retails all the way from 12 to 20 cents. Extracted honey is in the liquid form, thrown from the combs by means of centrifugal force in a honey-extractor, hence the name. There are bee-keepers who
make a specialty of producing honey in the comb and others the same product free from the comb. The first mentioned cannot be adulterated or manufactured, newspaper re ports to the contrary. One bee-keeper of con siderable standing and protninence has had a standing offer of $1,000 for a single sample of artificial comb honey so perfect as to deceive the ordinary consumer. Notwithstanding that this offer has been broadly published over the United States for over 2Q years, no one has ever claimed it.
It may be well to eicplain that a partial basis for these canards lies in the fact that bee keepers use a commercial product Icnown as °comb foundation,') which is nothing more or less than sheeted wax, about an eighth of an inch thick, embossed on both sides with in dentations having the exact shape and form of the bottom of the cells of honey-comb—hence the name. It is put into the hive, where the bees draw it out into comb. This is as far as the skill of man can go; hence there is no such thing as artificial comb, much less arti ficial comb honey.
fields; that the combs are beginning to whiten and to be bulged with honey in what is called the brood-nest, he puts on his honey-boxes in the part of the hive he calls the usuper.* These are allowed to remain on during the height of the honey-flow until they are filled and capped over, when they are removed and others put in their place.
The business of producing extracted (or liquid) honey requires the same intelligent care and attention. Instead of section-boxes, hon ever, an extra set of combs, or “brood-frames,' as they are called, is put in the upper story. the same being placed above the lower or brood part of the hive. When these are filled with honey and capped over, they are removed from the hive by first shaking the bees off, taken to the extracting-house and extracted. The thin film of wax covering the comb is shaved ofi with a thin-bladed knife specially designed for the purpose. After the combs are uncapped, they are put in the honey-extractor and re The business of producing comb honey re quires some knowledge of the trade. Hives and volved at a high rate of speed. The honey flies out of the comb by centrifugal force against the sides of the extractor, when the combs are reversed, exposing the other surfaces, which are emptied in a lilce manner. They are next returned to the hive to be filled by the bees, when the process may be repeated as long as the season lasts.