25. How to Extract Honey

First, throw out the uncapped nectar, which if not thrown out may cause the honey to ferment. Drain the extractor of this nectar. Then uncap the honey and extract it, first running the extractor slowly to keep the weight of the honey on the inside of combs from breaking them. Then reverse the combs and rapidly throw out the honey. Then again reversing the combs throw out what honey is left in the side of combs first extracted. The honey is drawn from the extractor at the faucet into a bucket and poured into the cheese-cloth bag in the honey tank. It is left for a day for the scum to rise and then drawn from the faucet into containers. It should be placed in airtight containers to preserve the aroma. Friction top pails are excellent.

4215-Root two-frame Reversing Extractor with slip gear and brake, suitable for an apiary of 10 to 25 colonies.

The honey should be warm, or extracted in a room heated to at least seventy degrees.

Nectar is a thin watery sweet the bees gather from flowers and will ferment if not ripened by evaporation by the bees. Bees cap the honey only when it is ripe.

Make a rack, to set on the top of the honey tank, out of boards with a nine-inch square in the center to which the top of a cheese cloth bag that will reach and rest on the bottom of the tank is nailed.

A ten-penny nail sticking through a board placed over a container-a wash boiler-makes a splendid rest for the combs when uncapping the honey. A hive-body resting over a large oblong pan to catch the drip of the honey is good for holding combs uncapped and waiting to be placed in the extractor.

The nectar is fed back to the bees, and at nightfall the extracted combs are placed on the hives, usually three or four hive-bodies on one hive. By morning the bees are quiet. Be sure there is no opening in the hives where the other bees can get in and start robbing.

Extracting combs are left in the care of the bees till frosty weather to keep the wax-moth from laying eggs in them, the larvae of which destroy the combs.

If an empty hive-body is placed on the queen-excluder on a hive of bees and the extracting combs placed on this empty hive-body, the bees will carry any honey in the frames down into the brood-chamber. A frame of brood placed in the top hive-body will insure the bees keeping the frames free from larvae of wax-moths. Destroy any queen-cells that are constructed on this frame of brood.

26. Wiring Brood Frames

Purchase a spool of wire from a bee-supply house and an outfit for wiring frames.

First, fasten a piece of wire in the center of the under side of the top bar just beside the groove in the top bar. After fastening the wires horizontally as directed by the instruction sheet that comes with the foundation, bring the wire-now fastened to the under side of the top bar-down and wrap it around the top horizontal wire and then down and around the lower horizontal wire three times. With a knife cut a nick in the wire close to the horizontal wire and, by bending the wire back and forth, break it off at the horizontal wire.

Wiring frames.

Frame Wire.

Wire Imbedder.

Thus supported in the center, the foundation fastened by the wires pressed into it does not stretch with the weigh of the bees and worker-cells are made at the top of the frames and not drone-cells which result from stretched foundation. It pays to do this extra work when wiring frames. Some prefer to buy wired foundation and frames to fit.

27. Values and Preparation of Shallow Frames

Make an easel tall enough so that you can stand to use it. Nail three pieces of boards the size of the inside of shallow frames and half the thickness of a frame, to the easel with one end of the boards three inches lower than the other end.

Place the shallow frames, top-bar down, on these boards and then place sheets of foundation inside the frames.

Now with a tablespoon pour melted beeswax-not hot enough to melt the foundation-and let it run down fastening the foundation to the top bar. For producing "chunk honey" or for honey to be cut in cakes section size, shallow frames are excellent. The bees will more readily make thirty-five or forty pounds of comb honey in a super of ten shallow frames than twenty-eight pounds in sections in a section super. For home consumption of honey the shallow frames are best. They can be cleaned by boiling and used again. Some prefer shallow frames with thick top bars in which foundation is fastened as in brood frames.