41st YEAR. 



CHICAGO, ILL, MAY 2, 1901, 



No, 18, 



\ * Editorial. ^ \ 



Next National Convention. — It seems 

 from the following, sent us by Secretary 

 Mason, the next meeting of the National Bee- 

 Keepers' Association will be held at Buffalo, 

 N. r., Sept. 10, 11 and 12, 1901: 



Editor Americas Bee Journal: 



Many inquiries have been received by the 

 Executive Committee of the National Bee- 

 Keepers' Association regarding the time and 

 place for holding the next convention. The 

 reply has generally been that Buffalo, N. Y., 

 would be the place of meeting; but until this 

 morning (.\pril ITth) the date of meeting had 

 not licen settled upon. 



Oil Marcli 2d the Secretary of the American 

 Pomolugical Society wrote President Root in 

 part as follows : 



" As bee-keepers and fruit-growers have 

 many interests in common which could be 

 considered and diseust with mutual profit, our 

 Executive Committee has instructed me to 

 extend to your Association a cordial invita- 

 tion to hold a joint meeting at some time dur- 

 ing our session, the exact time to be decided 

 later by correspondence. 



•' At this meeting we would suggest that the 

 subjects of discussion center round the gen- 

 eral topic of the mutual relations of bee-keep- 

 ing and fruit-growing which can he 



briefly treated by speakers selected in advance 

 from among our prominent bee-men and fruit- 

 men in order that a better understand- 

 ing of these mutual relations may be reacht. 

 It has been suggested that a consider- 

 able portion of fruit-growers do not yet appre- 

 ciate the preponderance of the benefit derived. 

 It is felt that a full public discussion of the 

 subject would, therefore, result in good to 

 both industries.'' 



Realizing, as the Executive Committee did, 

 that this was a golden opportunity for pre- 

 senting the bee-keepers' side of the subject to 

 the representative men of the fruit-growing 

 industry, the invitation of the Pomological 

 Society was at once accepted by the committee 

 in behalf of the Association. 



We have had to delay the fixing of the date 

 for our convention until the Pomological 

 Society had flxt their time of meeting. (Jur 

 convention will be held on the Ulth, 11th, and 

 12th of September next, commencing on Tues- 

 day evening the 10th. 



We were at first undecided as to place of 

 meeting, hoping that the G. A. K. would meet 

 at Denver, Colo., but when it decided to meet 

 at Cleveland, and we received the invitation 

 of the Pomological Society, we felt that we 

 ought not to miss such a splendid chance to 

 enlighten some of them on the relation of bees 

 to horticidlure, and, by meeting at Buffalo, 

 the York State and Canadian bee-kecpei^s 

 would bo within easy reach of the place of 

 meeting : so we at once flxt on Butfalo as the 

 most desirable place. 



It has been decided not to have any papers 

 or essays, but to rely wholly on the riuestioa- 

 box to bring out the best and most important 

 matters for discussion; so any <jLie not being 

 able to be at the convention, having any ques- 

 tion or (juestions that he may wish to have 



diseust, can send them to the Secretary at 

 any time. 



The committee has taken the liberty to 

 request the Secretary of the Ontario Bee- 

 Keepers' Association to ask the members of 

 that association who ma.v attend the meeting 

 at Buffalo, to bring their badges with them 

 and wear them at our sessions, whether they 

 are members of our Association or not, so 

 that we may feel more as one, and know who 

 our progressive neighbors are. 



Information regarding place of meeting, 

 entertainment, and railroad rates, will be 

 given as soon as decided upon. Don't be in a 

 hurry about securing a sleeping-place during 

 the convention. There is plenty of time, and, 

 later on, better rates can be secured; but if 

 you are in a hurry, write to the Young Men's 

 Christian Association, and don't be bled by 

 " sharks." A. B. Mason, Hk. 



Sta. B, Toledo, Ohio, 



We trust that all who can possibly "arrange 

 to do so will endeavor to be at the Buffalo 

 convention next September, It ought to he 

 a bigger and better one than was the Chicago 

 convention last August — tho, of course, that 

 could hardly be expected even at Buffalo! 

 (Now, see Mr, Hershiser buckle down to the 

 job of trying to outdo Chicago,) 



"There is Al^vays Plenty of honey," 

 said a honey commission dealer to us several 

 years ago. That seemed a strange remark to 

 make, especially in view of what have com- 

 monly been termed "poor honey-years," 

 which have been somewhat frequent in ap- 

 pearance during the past ten or fifteen years. 

 But Mr. Dealer knew what he was talking 

 about. 



The year 1900 was said by some, if not by 

 the " oldest (bee-keeping) inhabitant," to 

 have been the poorest for honey in thirty 

 years. And yet what do we find ? Why, 

 more honey in the hands of dealers to be car- 

 ried over, we believe, than for a number of 

 years past. One dealer, about two months 

 ago, had eight or ten car-loads of white ex- 

 tracted honey on hand yet. We know some 

 others who also have quite a quantity left on 

 their hands. Likely all of them will have to 

 wait-until next fall before it can be moved 

 off; and then, if there should be a large new 

 crop, it will have to be sold at a loss. 



" There is always plenty of honey " comes 

 pretty near being the truth. But it would not 

 be true if there were anything like a more 

 even distribution of the honey crop each year. 

 Why, there wouldn't begin to be enough to 

 go half way around if that were the case. 

 The great trouble is, so much of ,it is shipt to 

 the large centers, thusglutting those markets, 

 causing a demoralization of prices, while 

 many near-by, tho smaller, markets, are en- 

 tirely hare of honey. And often in such local 

 markets the very highest prices are realized. 



In a city of about 8,500 population, not 

 ciuite a hundred miles away from Chicago, a 



leading grocer agreed to take as high as five 

 car-loads of strawberries grown within 15 

 miles of his store, at 10 cents a quart ! Think 

 of it ! And yet, in Chicago strawberries are 

 often sold at four quarts for 25 cents! Why 

 is it ? Simply because nearly every straw- 

 berry-grower in the country thinks he must 

 dump his crop on the Chicago market. It is 

 all wrong. And it is the same way with 

 honej'. 



Far better prices would be secured if much 

 of the stuff that is sent to Chicago, or to other 

 lai'ge centers, were sold nearer home. This is 

 a subject worth careful investigation. 



Short-Tubed Clover is nowadays dis- 

 eust along with long-tongued bees, and it is 

 reasonable to believe that the seed saved from 

 the first crop of red clover will have in it a 

 larger percent of the short-tubed kind than 

 that from the second crop. A little explana- 

 tion will help to an understanding. At pres- 

 ent it is only the second crop of red clover 

 that is a seed crop. That is because the ferti- 

 lization of the blossoms is effected almost en- 

 tirely by bumble-bees, and at the time of the 

 first crop there are not enough bumble-bees 

 to fertilize more than a very small number 

 of blossoms. For un'like hive-bees, a single 

 bumble-bee starts a nest in spring, and only 

 later on do bumble-bees appear in numbers. 



So it happens that the proportion of hive- 

 bees to bumble-bees found working on the 

 flrst crop should be many times greater than 

 on the second. It will be only the shorter- 

 tubed kind that the hive-bees will visit, of 

 course, and the seed from that will be likely 

 to reproduce itself. It will be easily under- 

 stood that at first only a small amount of seed 

 would be secured on any given surface, but 

 the proportion ought rapidly to increase from 

 year to year. It may be well to speculate a 

 little on what might be the outcome. Sup- 

 pose we take a plot of ground from which a 

 bushel of seed of the second crop might be 

 secured. Save the seed from the first crop, 

 which may be a pint or less. But in that pint 

 half the seed may be of the short-tubed kind, 

 whereas iu the second crop there would not 

 be one in a thousand. Now sow this pint the 

 next year in a plot by itself. It is reasonable 

 to expect that at least half the plants will 

 have short tubes, and so half the seed will be 

 of the improved kind. Continuing iu this 

 way, it would be not a matter of many years 

 to have seed in unlimited quantity, half of 

 which would be of the short-tubed kind. 



But another factor comes into the problem, 

 which greatly hastens the result. As soon 

 as the amount of ground covered by clover 

 from this half-and-half seed assumes tolerable 

 proportiens. the seed fertilized by bumble-bees 



