USE OF THE EXTRACTOR.
Although some of our most experienced apiarists say nay, it is nevertheless a fact, that the queen often remains idle, or extrudes her eggs only to be lost, simply because there are no empty cells. The honey yield is so great that the workers occupy every available space, and sometimes even they become unwilling idlers, simply because of necessity. Seldom a year has passed but that I have noticed some of my most prolific queens thus checked in duty. It is probable that just the proper arrangement and best management of frames for surplus would make such occasions rare; yet, I have seen the brood-chamber in two-story hives, with common frames above—the very best arrangement to promote storing above the brood-chamber—so crowded as to force the queen either to idleness or to egg-laying in the upper frames. This fact, as also the redundant brood, and excessive storing that follows upon extracting from the brood-chamber, make me emphatic upon this point, notwithstanding the fact that some men of wide experience and great intelligence, think me wrong.
The extractor also enables the apiarist to secure honey-extracted honey—in poor seasons, when he could get very little, if any, in sections or boxes.
By use of the extractor, at any time or season, the apiarist can secure nearly if not quite double the amount of honey, that he could get in combs.
The extractor enables us to remove uncapped honey in the fall, which, if left in the hive, may cause disease and death.
By use of the extractor, too, we can throw the honey from our surplus brood-combs in the fall, and thus have a salable article, and have the empty combs, which are invaluable for use the next spring. We now have in our apiary one hundred and fifty such empty combs.
If the revolving racks of the extractor have a wire basket attachment, at the bottom as I have suggested, the uncapped sections can be emptied in the fall, if desired, and pieces of drone-comb cut from the brood-chamber, which are so admirable for starters in the sections, can be emptied of their honey at any season.
By use of the extractor, we can furnish at one-half the price we ask for comb-honey, an article which is equal, if not superior, to the best comb-honey, and which, were it not for appearance alone, would soon drive the latter from the market.