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aeORGE W. YORK, Editor. 



CHICAGO, ILL, JAN. 7, 1904, 



Vol, XLIV— Na t. 





Editorial Commente 



) 



Volume Fopty-Four Begins. 



The Atnerican Bee Journal, with this issue, begins its forty-fourth 

 volume. In a few years more the half-century mark will be reached. 

 Id its first eight or ten volumes it had two editors, and in its past 

 thirty or more it has had only two. While not its editor except dur- 

 ing the past twelve years, for nearly twenty years we have been closely 

 connected with its publication ; that means for almost half of its en- 

 lire existence. It seems quite a long time. Especially so when one 

 thinks of the many changes and advances made in the pursuit of bee- 

 keeping during that length of time. 



While it has been the American Bee Journal's aim to keep in the 

 vanguard of progress, it does not claim to have done all that has been 

 done. It has helped. It will continue to help. It will try to make 

 the year upon which it now enters— its forty-fourth— the best and 

 most helpful year of its whole existence. It is in a better position 

 now, in every way, to do better work— to be of more value than ever 

 before to its readers. 



The American Bee Journal's friends and supporters have grown 

 with the years. It has become in thousands of homes a welcome 

 weekly visitor. We are often told in most appreciative and grateful 

 words of its helpfulness to those who have read and studied its con- 

 tents most faithfully from year to year. We rejoice that it is so. It 

 goes far to brighten and illuminate our pathway, to know that our 

 efforts have not been in vain. It will also be an encouragement, per- 

 haps, when we say that without the loyal and enthusiastic support 

 the American Bee Journal has had throughout the passing years, we 

 could not have carried out our part of the program. So we are each 

 dependent upon the other. No man liveth to himself. 



It is our aim to make this forty-fourth volume of the American 

 Bee Journal the very bast of all. We can not do it alone, but with 

 the hearty cooperation of the reading, wide-awake, progressive bee- 

 keepers of this and other lands, we know that success can be con- 

 quered — be compelled to companionship with the old American Bee 

 Journal. 



FouF-Piece vs. One-Pieee Sections. 



The danger that basswood lumber will become .so scarce that it 

 can no longer be used for making sections, is not viewed with any 

 great degree of alarm by those who prefer four-piece to one-piece sec- 

 tions. Editor Hill says in the American Bee-Keeper that he would 

 rather pay full price for four-piece sections than to receive the one- 

 piece kind as a gift, and James Heddou is still more emphatic, saying 

 in the same paper: 



" I have gone through every phase, with sections, allotted to the 

 bee-keeper, and, oh, horror! I would not accept one-piece sections as 

 a gift if a ?10 bill was presented with every box. I have found more 

 objectionable features connected with them than I had any idea ex- 

 isted. I wonder that they are in use at all. They glue up far worse 

 than the four-piece with their entire open top. They are soft, soak- 

 ing honey, and daub and stain much more easily than the white pop- 

 lar. They do not come into square position when put together. Some 

 are stained, and others are loose. They will not bear cleaning with 

 water when a little honey drops on them, as will white poplar. They 



are a miserable thing to handle in and out of cases and shipping- 

 crates, and it is only a trifle faster that they can be put together than 

 the four-piece sections. I want no more of them, and I can not con- 

 ceive that a basswood one-piece section (and no other kind of wood. 

 seems tit to make them of) can much longer satisfy American bee- 

 keepers. Good-bye, one-piece sections tor James." 



If, perforce, we must go back to four-piece sections, we may as 

 well take all the comfort we can out of the advantages they offer. 

 They can be made of any kind of wood, and no one pretends that bass- 

 wood is the best lumber for sections where no bending of joints is 

 needed. It is true that a one-piece section that is not square can be 

 made square, but it will not stay square unless rigidly held so, while 

 a four-piece section stays square of itself. There is generally danger 

 of breaking some sections in putting together one-piece sections un- 

 less the joints are wet, and it is extra trouble to wet the sections aside 

 from the danger of discoloration from wetting. This breakage and 

 wetting is saved when using four-piece sections. Besides the breaking 

 when folding sections, there is the breaking that sometimes happens 

 after the foundation is put in, which is worse, and very much worse 

 if it occurs after the section is filled with honey. Four-piece sections 

 avoid this. Possibly we may find comfort in discovering other advan- 

 tages, but these are enough to show that the change, if the change 

 must come, will not be an unmixed evil. 



"The Rival of the Bee." 



This, in large type, is the heading of a full-page three-column 

 advertisement we saw in one of our exchanges recently. To make it 

 more deceptive, at each end of the headline is the picture of a straw- 

 skep. The first column of the wonderful, rivalling stuff started off 

 like this: 



" Words sweet as honey frnm his lips distUVd." 



—Iliad op Homek. 



Long has the honey of the bee reigned as sweet of sweets. Homer, 

 Milton, Shakespeare, Tennyson and others of the poets made tribute 

 to its sovereignty, using its name as the superlative of sweetness. 



When these men wrote, and until a recent day, the industrious 

 bee toiled on without a rival. 



But twentieth century skill and science came upon the field to 

 wrest from the bee his laurels. Man went to Nature, even as the bee 

 does, but with better equipment, (inly the blossoms, with their mites 

 of sweet, are open to the bee for his sources of supply. Man may go 

 where the store is richer though more strongly guarded. 



So he drew upon the King of Nature's cereals, corn, and made 

 therefrom a syrup clear and golden as the honey of the bee ; richer in 

 nutriment, sweeter in flavor, less in cost. 



And when this syrup is placed where the bee may have access to 

 it, he forsakes the roses and the clover, mutely acknowledging his 

 vanquishment, and making the triumph of man complete. 



This wonderful syrup, extracted from the golden grains is 



meeting with a warm welcome from the housewives of America, won 

 by its purity, flavor, nutriment, and low cost. 



It is being used in place of honey and other syrups on griddle 

 cakes and as a spread — because it is " better than honey for les? 

 money." It is being used instead of molasses in baking and candy 

 making, because it is purer, more nutritious, and more digestible. 



How eloquently beautiful that is! Then think how goes " the 

 bee for liis sources of supply " — the blossoms. But when he (the bee) 

 finds this great " rival," " Tie forsakes the roses,'' etc. 



It is safe to say that the chap who wrote the nonsense quoted 

 doesn't know any more about the genuine honey produced by honey- 

 bees than he does concerning the Uowers from which it is gathered ; 

 and, also, he seems not to know that the he bees do not gather nectar 

 at all. 



But just for our own satisfaction we asked Mrs. York to buy a 10- 



S./n^^l 



