Oct. 24 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



677 



during- all of my experience in attend- 

 ing the meetings of the National Bee- 

 Keepers' Association, and I have at- 

 tended all of them for a number of 

 years, and I said this means well ; but 

 a remark by the Mayor has explained 

 the whole matter to me. I understand 

 why it is. The Mayor is of German 

 descent, and the Germans are the best 

 bee-keepers there are in America, and, 

 notwithstandinf;^ the fact that America 

 is in advance of Germany in bee-keep- 

 inff, yet there is more enthusiasm in 

 Germany with regard to the industry 

 than in America, and there are more 

 Germans who have a clear and intelli- 

 g-ent conception of farm bee-keeping 

 than any other class of people ; there 

 are more Germans who are making it 

 profitable in connection with other 

 agriculture — for I look upon it as a 

 branch of agriculture. 



And now I am glad that the people 

 of Buffalo have had the good sense to 

 elect to this high office the gentleman 

 who was so closely in touch with 

 Mother Earth — so closely in touch with 

 the soil, from which all the wealth of 

 the land, and out of which all the glory 

 and beauty of this great city have 

 been builded. I say I am glad to know 

 that the people of Buffalo have had 

 the good sense to do a thing of that 

 kind. It speaks well for the future of 

 the country, for what is needed is to 

 bring the country and the city in close 

 touch which each other, to get the 

 farmer to understand that he is not a 

 " hayseed," to get the citizen of the 

 great city to understand that all the 

 brain doesn't walk abroad on asphalt 

 pavements ; to get these facts, these 

 two facts, clearly before the American 

 people will be worth a great deal; when 

 commerce and trade and traffic join 

 hands with the man who holds the 

 handles of the plow, when rural pur- 

 suits and citv commerce move hand in 

 hand and co-operate with each other, 

 then we will have reached what I 

 believe to be the ideal nation. 



I am not surprised, of course, that 

 the Mayor welcomes us to the city. 

 M'e are a great people and deserve 

 to be welcomed I We may be farm- 

 ers and ordinary professionals, a great 

 many of us, but we are the sweet- 

 est people on top of God's earth. 

 There isn't any sweeter people that 

 walk the earth, men and women both, 

 than the bee-keepers ; they deal in the 

 sweetest, purest, healthiest, noblest 

 sweet that the world has ever known. 

 It is distilled by the chemistry created 

 by the Almighty alone; it is drawn 

 out of the vital energies of the uni- 

 verse ; it is made in a retort created by 

 the hands of the Almighty and gath- 

 ered by insects that has inhabited 

 the world away back into geological 

 ages, and stored away by them in a 

 way that baffles the skill of man and 

 defies the most expert scientific man 

 to imitate. It is true we are told that 

 they manufacture comb honey out of 

 chips and fill it with glucose and sell 

 it to the ignorant people of the citj- for 

 the pure article, but we bee-people 

 know that it is a newspaper canard. 

 They do not do that. There isn't any 

 manufactured comb honey. I hope 

 that will get in print to-morrow in big 

 letters. But I tell you what they do : 

 The unscrupulous city man takes a 

 little bit of real good honey and puts 

 a great deal of real dirty, stinking 

 mean glucose into it, and puts it into 



a nice-looking bottle and labels it with 

 a nicer-looking label, " Pure Clover 

 Honey," and sells it to the people who 

 are green enough to buy it, and this 

 has greatly injured our industry. 



Now, to get back to my original 

 propisition, that I was glad the city 

 government was taking notice of us. 

 Here is where the city government can 

 greatly aid us, here is where the 

 national government can aid us, when 

 they come to our rescue and make it 

 impossible for a man to sell anything 

 for what it is not. Here is a work that 

 the government of the city of Buffalo 

 can take in hand and make it a 

 criminal offense to sell a man a spoon- 

 ful of honey and four spoonfuls of 

 glucose all for honey. Anybody who 

 wants four spoonfuls of glucose mixed 

 with a spoonful of honey has a right 

 to buy it, but call it what it is, a mix- 

 ture, and let peopl<; use it as a mixture, 

 but the bee-keepers protest against 

 having it sold for honey, for it is not 

 honey ; it is a fraud, that is what we 

 call it out West. 



Now, friends, I think I have said 

 enough and have taken enough of your 



EMEHSUN T. ABBOTT. 



time. I think we all appreciate the 

 words of welcome that have been ex- 

 tended to us, and I want to say to you, 

 Mr. Mayor, that we will avail ourselves 

 of them, we shall walk on your streets, 

 we shall go out and see the great Pan 

 American, and, of course, this has been 

 the greatest exposition of the kind 

 that has ever been held, except one we 

 shall hold in St. Louis, in 1903, the 

 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. We 

 wish Buffalo (iodspeed, and all suc- 

 cess, but we now, in behalf of the 

 I great, large- hearted people of the 

 I great State of Missouri, invite you to 

 I come and receive our welcome in that 

 State of Jesse James, if you please, 

 but of intelligence, progress and vir- 

 tue, in 1903. We will have an exposi- 

 tion that will astonish not only the 

 United States, but the world, for they 

 are coming from all over the world, 

 just as you have them here. I thought 

 Buffalo could ]icver have an exposition 

 like Chicago, but I want to say to Mr. 

 York, who lives in Chicago, that when 



he gets out to the Pan-American he 

 will see that the last is the best : and 

 it looks now as if we were going to 

 get just as many bee-keepers together 

 here, and if we don't get so many in 

 number we will make up in enthusi- 

 asm for what we lack in numbers, and 

 we will have the best North American 

 meeting we have ever had in the his- 

 tory of this society. I thank you for 

 your attention. 



Dr. A. B. Mason, of Ohio— I notice 

 here several Ontario Bee- Keepers' 

 Association badges, and I am so well 

 pleased with it that I am going to 

 move you that we give to all the mem- 

 bers of the Ontario Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation that are present with those 

 badges on, the privileges of this floor, 

 and to participate in all our discussions 

 and answer questions, and to feel per- 

 fectly free and at home. I move you 

 that we extend that privilege to them. 



The motion was seconded by Mr. 

 Abbott and carried. 



Mr. John Newton, of Ontario, presi- 

 dent of the Ontario Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation — In behalf of our Association 

 I would thank you for your kindness 

 to us, and this invitation to take in the 

 discussions the same as your own mem- 

 bers. I am sure that we will be 

 pleased to do so, and I know that we 

 will feel at home, just as we tried to 

 make your society at home when we 

 had you in our midst. 



Pres. Root — We have no set pro- 

 gram. We are trying the experiment 

 of having just a question-box, and it 

 possibly may be a failure, but we have 

 some men here who, we know, if they 

 have a mind to, can make it a grand 

 success. A good supply of questions 

 has been handed to the secretary. Dr. 

 Mason, and as we have no commit- 

 tee on question-box, he will read the 

 first one. " ^ l^ 



Dr. C. C. Miller, of Illinois— I think it 

 would be well to mention in connection 

 with this matter that any member is en- 

 tirely at liberty to hand in any question 

 that he wants discussed. 



AX APIARY OF CROSS BEES. 



' Dr. Mason then read the first ques- 

 tion, " What is to be done with an api- 

 ary of cross bees ?" 



Dr. Miller — I overheard a lady right 

 here saying, "Kill them." If I had 

 an entire apiary of cross bees I should 

 want, first, to introduce some new 

 blood of a kind that would be more 

 gentle. This, however, is what will 

 come in the experience of any bee- 

 keeper who has any number of colo- 

 nies ; he will find after a time that he 

 will go out some day and there will be 

 a lot of cross bees after him, and if he 

 takes pains enough to watch closely 

 he will find that all those cross bees 

 come from one or two colonies, and 

 then all he needs to do is to kill one 

 queen and introduce another queen ; 

 and a curious thing about that is, that 

 a change in the disposition of the bees 

 has seemed to be much more rapid 

 than the change in the blood of the 

 bees ; that is. if I find one such cross 

 colony and kill the queen and intro- 

 duce another, within two weeks' time, 

 although there would be no change yet 

 in the bees, that is, the same bees 

 would be there, there would be a very 

 decided change in their deportment, 

 and although it seems rather unrea- 

 sonable to suppose such a thing to be 



