Farm and Garden.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 422, 26 May 1904, Page 7

Farm and Garden.

ARTICLES.

I MANAGEMENT OF COMB HONEY. 25RS?LL Btrong colonies of bees* wSen sJk|s van for comb honey will generally 'J&M& ejasfc a swarm. The parent colony should be set aside and the swarm hived on the old stand in order to catch all the field bees, whioh will strengthen 'ffifc.'swarm considerably. In four or five days afttw the swarm has been hived, the bees will have some comb built in the brood nest, and the queen will begin laying in it. The super, which is now, probably partly filled with honey, can be taken from the parent colony' and put on the swarm, and they wiH soon have it filled. That should however not he done too soon, for the comb in the sections will induce the queen to commence laying in them and spoil a lot of nice white sections, as bees invariably start at the top and work downwards; if the queen should lay in the sections, which sometimes happens, to most careful apiarists the honey can be extracted from them and the combs melted into wax. When the bees commence to cap the middle sections the super should be lifted and an empty one put under it, and when the top one is completed the under one will probably be > half filled. They should then be lifted and a third put under the other two, and a bee escape should be slipped under the top super. In a day or two the bees will have all made their exit through the bee escape in the board, and the super will then be ready to come cS. It is not advisable to leave comb honey on the hive after it is all capped. Care should be taken about keeping the honey when oil the hives, fc should be kept m a warm dry room. Capped honey when taken from the hive is thoroughly ripened and there is nothing in it to ferment unless it is put in a damp place, where it will absorb moisture which will cause it to sour and burst the csppings. Any place where salt will keep dry is a good place to keep honey. When selling honey to grocers there is nothing neater to pack it in than twenty-four pound cases, They are easily handled and the honey Is well protected, for the sections fit in the case neatly. When selling honey from the house by the section, a neat method is to use a nicely printed cartoon with a tape handle, which is neatly folded together with the ends tucked in, the cases jast holding a pound of honey,

GREEN BONE tfOB PGULTBY. Poultry naturally lay eggs at a time of the year when they can obtain insects, worms and vegetable matter, kinds of food that enrich the blood and tone up the system, preparing them for the extra work,of laying. Green bones have the same' tonic effect and egg producing value. Generally hens will not lay in the winter months without something of this kind. When from any Cause the digestive powers are weak, the feeding of excessive quantities of grain food will aggravate the trouble, and fill the blood with crude, half digested matter unfit for egg formation.

Green cub bone not only furnisbes almost the exact material required for the egg, but it stimulates and arouses the .digestive j organs, rendering other kinds of foods of greater value in the economy °f e SS production. Many people who have followed poultry keeping, .find it greatly to their interest and profit; in fostering winter laying by feeding meat scraps, by purchasing bones and scraps from the butcher, wbich may be cut up with a hatchet in the absence of a bone mill cutter and fed to the poultry; and as meat consumers become more exacting, and the meat cutters find it expedient to cut out more bone and waste pieces, such feed is more easily obtainable and is the poultry-keeper's opportunity. The introduction of bone cutters has greatly facilitated the matter of using green cut bone. But the method of feeding varies in manner and material in different places, usually trough feeding, but occasionally of late an American inven-

tion, a cramming machine; some people using one, some the other, and many a combination of the two. The trough alone is riot so profitable, but enables more fowls to be kept in process; ten days of trough and ten days of machine feeding is more !profitable; but the beat results are obtained by machine feeding from start to finish.r