. British bee journal & bee-keepers adviser. Bees. H THE BRITISH BEE JOURNAL. [July 15, 1883. ' green honey.' In all books we are told not to extract from unsealed combs, and also for wintering we are re- commended to extract all honey not sealed over, because the thin, watery honey is likely to produce disease. It is from its readiness to ferment that disease (dysentery) is produced. When bees collect honey they put it into the empty cells, a little into each, so as to expose a large surface of the honey to the influence of the heat of the hive. If the income has not been very great durin
. British bee journal & bee-keepers adviser. Bees. H THE BRITISH BEE JOURNAL. [July 15, 1883. ' green honey.' In all books we are told not to extract from unsealed combs, and also for wintering we are re- commended to extract all honey not sealed over, because the thin, watery honey is likely to produce disease. It is from its readiness to ferment that disease (dysentery) is produced. When bees collect honey they put it into the empty cells, a little into each, so as to expose a large surface of the honey to the influence of the heat of the hive. If the income has not been very great during the day, the bees are able to evaporate the moisture suf- ficiently during a warm night to enable them to carry the honey from the lower cells to those above. As the honey becomes ripened it is sealed over, that at the top being ready first. If, on the other hand, the bees have collected a very large quantity of honey in the day, they are not able to evaporate it in the night, and, therefore, do not store it up above. All the cells being full, the bees re- turning with honey do not find anywhere to put it, and the consequence is that they waste their time in convert- ing it into wax, and adding it to their cells. When bees are in this condition I think instinct (or reason) prompts them to make preparations for swarming. Queen-cells (which take a large quantity of wax) are constructed as a preliminary step. Now if we wish to prevent this we should extract the honey, and by extracting it daily a very much larger quantity of honey can be obtained than if we waited for it to be sealed over. We must also bear in mind that the sealing over is done at the expense of honey, twenty pounds being consumed to produce one pound of wax. Hitherto no satisfactory method has been devised for ripening honey, the ordinary cans doing very well when a small quantity of unripe honey is ex- tracted with a large quantity of ripe honey, but they are quite unfit for large quantities. From experiments
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