

Eniered at the Post-Offlce at Chicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter. 

 Piiltlislied Weekly at $1.00 a Year by <iieorg:e %V. York &. Co., S:C4 I>earborii St. 



OEORQE W. YORK, Editor. 



CHICAGO, ILL, JULY 28, 1904. 



Vol, XLIV— No, 30, 





Editorial Comments 





Working Up the Home Market. 



General Manager N. E. France, in his home city of 

 3500 people, disposes annually of about 14,000 pounds of ex- 

 tracted and 700 pounds of comb honey. This is done 

 through the stores, at a commission of 10 percent for cash, 

 or an even swap without any commission where goods are 

 taken. The price of extracted has been 10 cents a pound, 

 cost of package added, but for the past two years the price 

 has been 8 cents. The trade is mostly in 2 and 3 pound 

 friction -top tin cans, though farmers take larger packages. 

 This is the way Mr. France says, in the Bee-Keepers' Re- 

 view, that he worked up the trade : 



Just 30 years ago we sold comb honey, in large boxes, 

 at 25 cents per pound. We then got our first extractor. I 

 wrote short articles for our local papers, telling how the 

 honey was extracted, and how much better it was than the 

 old-fashioned strained honey mixed with bee-bread and 

 other foreign material. At public gatherings, in the city 

 park, I took combs of honey, the extractor and uncapping- 

 knife, in the band-stand where all could see the honey ex- 

 tracted. Then I passed around the combs, also the honey 

 in my nicely labeled pails with a spoon to sample it with. I 

 was careful to advertise that such honey was for sale in 

 every produce store in the city, a.t i/ie same price as / (A ere 

 sold if. 



Sometimes, if sales were not as good as usual, we would 

 take the light wagon with a barrel of nice honey, the barrel 

 fitted with a faucet, and scales to weigh with, and peddle 

 out one or two barrels, taking special pains to inform cus- 

 tomers that they could get more like it at anytime in nearly 

 any store in the city, and af the same price — 10 cents per 

 pound. 



Book-Learning vs. Experience in Bee-Keeping. 



The man who attempts to become a bee-keeper by 

 studying bee-books and bee-papers without ever touching 

 a hive is not likely to be a brilliant success. Knowledge 

 gained by actual experience is likely to be worth more than 

 that gained from books. There are those whose knowledge 

 of bee-keeping has come almost entirely from personal ob- 

 servation and experience, who have never felt the need of 

 studying bee-keeping from a book, and who say, " I take no 

 bee-paper, because experience is better than book-learning." 



While all of this is true, it is one of those half-truths 

 that, stopping short of the whole truth, is equivalent to a 

 grievous error. It is true that the man who has gained a 

 certain amount of knowledge from experience is better off 

 than the man who has gained the same amount of knowl 

 edge from reading. It is also true that Jones, who has 



gained all the knowledge possible to be gained from read- 

 ing, is not so well ofi^ as Smith, who has gained that same 

 knowledge from actual experience. But Jones is a possi- 

 bility, while Smith is an utter impossibility. Smith can 

 never go beyond the experience of a single lifetime, while 

 Jones has the result of the experience that reaches back 

 through many generations. Not only that, but he has 

 within his reach the rich accumulations of the experiences 

 of many lives during each of those many generations. 



For, after all, the teachings of the books and journals 

 are merely the results of the experience of others, and next 

 to getting knowledge from our own experience comes being 

 told the experience of others. 



Besides, the well-read man has all the opportunity for 

 personal experience that the man has who reads nothing. 

 His experience, however, is based on the accumulated wis- 

 dom of all that have gone before him, while the unread 

 man begins back just where his ancestors began hundreds 

 of years ago. A few evenings devoted to the study of a 

 single book will give a man more information than he can 

 gain from actual experience in a long lifetime. The book 

 will cost him little more than a dollar, while the knowledge 

 gained without it will cost him in blunders and failures 

 many dollars. 



Next in value to the investment of money in a bee-book 

 and a bee-paper is the investment in another bee-book and 

 and another bee-paper. 



" Advantages of Late=Reared Queens." 



Editor Hutchinson has this to say in the July Bee- 

 Keepers' Review concerning requeening colonies in the 

 fall, or after the honey season is ended, enumerating the 

 advantages connected with the practice : 



So many times there comes to the bee-journal editor the 

 query : " When is the best time to buy and introduce 

 queens ?" Many seem to have an idea that the spring is 

 the best time to do this work. Unless there was some spe- 

 cial reason for doing otherwise, I should always buy and 

 introduce queens in the fall. In the first place, queens are 

 scarce in the spring and prices are high. Next, if there is 

 a failure to introduce, and the bees get the brood-nest over- 

 loaded with honey, and there is a break in brood-rearing for 

 a week or ten days, the colony is practically useless for the 

 clover honey harvest. Again, early in the season, unless it 

 is very early, the colony is populous, combs full of brood, 

 and everything is booming. The bee-keeper is busy, or 

 ought to be, and it is not " good business " to be tearing 

 up, and disturbing, and throwing out of equilibrium, a col- 

 ony just on the eve of a honey harvest. 



Queens reared after the honey season is over are every 

 whit as good as any queens, if the breeder understands his 

 business, and attends to it. It is just possible that they 

 may be less inclined to swarm. The hurry of the season is 

 over, and the bee-keeper has more time to attend to the 

 business of introducing queens. If there is a failure to in- 



