48 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 



cs accepted the position, and no objections were 

 raised. "The honey is pure, and the clover crop 

 was short," seemed to be a satisfactory excuse. I 

 see, from several quarters, tin boxes recommended 

 for the retail trade, to hold 1 or 2 lbs. of honey, but 

 I am of the opinion that their great similarity to 

 salve-boxes, in spite of fine labels, will bo for ever a 

 preventive to their successful introduction. I do 

 not suppose that I should have succeeded in estab- 

 lishing a demand for 1-lb. packages of extracted 

 honey, if these packages had been tin boxes. Tin 

 buckets answer splendidly for .i, 10, or 25 lb. packag- 

 es of honej', and I have as good a trade for these in 

 proportion, as I have for one-pound Jars. My prin- 

 cipal reason for adopting square glass jars was that 

 adulterators in New York and Chicago were offering 

 their glucose honey in round bottles. It appears 

 that I have made no mistake in this matter, as no- 

 body suspects honey in square e:lass 1-lb. jars in our 

 city, while no square nor round jars of extracted 

 honey can be sold any more in Chicago or New York. 



Offering you my best wishes of the season, I am 

 Yours truly, Chas. F. Muth. 



Cincinnati, O., Dec. 2t, 1881. 



As the honey in these tin boxes is supposed 

 to be candied 'solid, I supposed the candying 

 would be considered a proof of purity. Does 

 your honey now sell readily in those jars, 

 friend Muth, when in a candied state, or do 

 you take any pains to keep it liquidV 



ClEAKmO S m BEE CUITUHE. 



.A.. I. noo'r, 



EDITOK. AND PUBLISHER, 



MEDINA, O. 



TEKMS: $1.C0 PER YEAR, POST-PAID. 



FOR CLUBBING RATES, SEE FIRST PAGE 

 UF BEADING MATTER. 



IVEXSXDXTVr.^^, ir^AJlD^. 1, XB82. 



Great peace have they which love thy law.— Psalm 

 119:105. 



Fhiend Lechler sends us an article explanatory 

 of his great yield, which will be given in our next. 



OuB 75-cent telephones will work nicely for half a 

 mile; and if the rooms are very still, and the wire is 

 drawn vtry tight, a mile will not be dilficult. 



We have to-day, Dec. 3flth, 2791 subscribers, for 

 which we are especially grateful; the more so, as a 

 large number of them are from two to five years. 

 Truly, Gleanings has found fiicnds, and of the sub- 

 stantial kind too. 



Our friend Nellis has. it seems, sold out the Ex- 

 change to Messrs. Houck & Peet. Friend Peet is 

 well known to most of us by the queen-cage now so 

 generally in use. The new firm sends out a 20-page 

 price list, well gotten up, and of much general in- 

 terest. 



Avery large number indeed have expressed them- 

 selves in favor of Our Homes during the last month, 

 while, so far as I can recollect, only one has suggest- 

 ed that Gleanings better be entirely bees and hon- 

 ey. If I am faithful in the field in which I seem to 

 have been called, I am su-e I shall never lack sup- 

 port. 



May I suggest to friend Newman, that glucose 

 contains a little larger per cent of dextrine than 

 does grape sugar, to preserve it in a liquid state, in- 

 stead of "chemicals" being added to the latter to 

 make it stlid? We shall get at the truth after 

 awhile, if we arc only patient. 



Friend Bubch has shipped quite a number of col- 

 onies of bees during the fall, and although some of 

 the friends are far from being satisfied with bees in 

 October instead of in June, I believe all feel better 

 than if they had received nothing. As we learn that 

 Mr. B. has been purchasing bees considerably, we 

 trust all orders will be filled satisfactorily in the 

 spring. 



The December Magazine in speaking of extractors 

 at fairs, speaks of one of ours as having been gotten 

 up expressly for the occasion. Our extractors are 

 all made exactly alike, and yve have never, to our 

 knowledge, made one any better, or different in 

 finish, because it was to be used at a fair. We sell 

 extractors for so much money, to all alike, and the 

 purchaser can make whatever use of it he chooses. 

 Would it not have been better, friend King, to have 

 been sure you were right, before having put the 

 above into print? 



A great boom has come from that offer of a watch 

 for five subscribers, and the question comes up, 

 "Must we send the five names all at once, or how 

 long can we have to work?" Let me tell you how It 

 will help you, and the clerks here too. Send $5.00 

 for Gleanings to yourself for five years, get your 

 watch, and have the matter all settled; and then 

 when you get a subscriber, send a postal and order 

 your time shortened a year, to pay for him. When 

 you have the whole list, why, just do the same thing 

 over again. Of course, this great offer is solely to 

 increase the size of our list, and therefore we can 

 hardly afford it, unless the names are new ones. 

 Well, to help you all we can we will allow you to get 

 names anywhere, providing they are new ones, and 

 not renewals. In December we used one gross of 

 watches in five days. 



FOUL brood. 



A friend who bought a half-pound of bees and a 

 queen of us, insists that he thereby got foul brood 

 into his apiary. As a proof, he has sent a piece of 

 comb to friend Muth, who pronounces it foul brood 

 of the worst type. I have no doubt but that he has 

 foul brood, and I am very sorry indeed for the de- 

 struction of his apiary; but I have assured him over 

 and over that we have no such thing about here, and 

 never had. Our whole apiaries are constantly open 

 to the inspection of visitors, and if any one can find 

 a cell of foul brood in them we should be glad to 

 see It. By the way, is not the new way of buying 

 and selling bees by the pound a great improvement 

 over sending out combs and brood, as a prevent- 

 ive of the spread of this great malady? From what 

 I can gather, bees kept a week on sugar and water, 

 in a cage, would be much less likely to carry con- 

 tagion than where combs with brood were sent with 



them. 



grape sugar. 



While I have had no good reason to change my 

 mind in regard to the future of the grape-sugar in- 

 dustry, I have, for reasons already given, discon- 

 tinued keeping it for sale. In view of the fact that 

 grape sugar's near neighbor, glucose, is being used 

 so much for the adulteration of syrups, I would at 



