1 86 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



ting to work. The same is true at the 

 close of the day's work, which comes 

 when the entire apiary of loo to 150 col- 

 onies have been treated. On the road to 

 and from these apiaries the boys have 

 their sport, playing card«, or tricks on 

 each other, or telUng stories, or playing 

 on musical instruments and singing. 

 The light covered wagon with the boys in 

 arrives at home in time for them to do 

 the few chores common around a farm- 

 house; so they are ready, as the freight 

 wagon backs up to the warehouse, to 

 roll the barrels in the house, the floor 

 being on a level with the wagon-bed, 

 carefully weigh each barrel, and mark its 

 gross and net weight on the label. 



The honey is stored in these barrels, 

 until sold, without any other care — except 

 a few dozen cases of 60-pound square 

 cans for farmer trade. If barrels are 

 made of a good quality of staves, kiln- 

 dried, and iron-hooped, the barrels then 

 stored a short time in a dry, airy room, 

 and the hoops driven the day barrel is 

 filled, they will never leak. That is our 

 experience for the past twent}^ years; 

 sending barrels thousands of miles, and 

 to nearly every state east of the Rockies. 

 We must use such packages for extracted 

 honey as our markets demand. The 

 next best package is the 60-pound tin 

 can, cased; and where good cooperage 

 cannot be had, and at cheap figures, the 

 boxed tin can package is perhaps as good 

 as any. Our home-market consumes 

 about 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of ex- 

 tracted honey, and 500 pounds comb 

 honey per year. 



The extracted is sold in common tin 

 pails, holding three, five and ten pounds 

 each. We furnish every grocery store 

 with the honey in these pails; and, to 

 catch some customers that do not want to 

 buy the pails, they are allowed to pay for 

 pail and honey, and, when the pail is 

 empty and clean, they can return it to 

 the store and get pa}' for it, the same as 

 it cost. 



Almost all kinds of gummed labels 

 will not stick to new tin cans or pails, 



but they will stick for all time and not 

 wash ofT. if put on with a paste made of 

 demar varnish reduced with alcohol. 

 Pl..\TTEVlLi,E, Wis., March 20, 1900. 



MPROVEMENT IN STOCK IS 

 THE MOST HOPEFUL FIELD 

 IN COMMERCIAL BEE-KEEP- 

 ING. BY J. E. CRANE. 

 ( The prize article.) 



"In what direction is commercial bee- 

 keeping susceptible of the greatest im- 

 provement?" Somehow, the editor of 

 the Review has a 

 happy knack of 

 g o i n g straight 

 for the most im- 

 portant facts in 

 connection with 

 bee-keeping; and 

 this question is 

 no exception to 

 the rule. There 

 are certainly 

 many directions 

 in which connnercial bee-keeping is sus- 

 ceptible of improvement. Yet, doubt- 

 less, there is no class engaged in any 

 branch of rural industry more thoughtful 

 or studious than those engaged in com- 

 mercial bee-keeping. Probably no other 

 branch of rural industry will show so 

 large a number of inventions and im- 

 provements connected with it, as will 

 bee-keeping. On the other hand, few 

 animals or plants that have been long 

 under cuUivalion by man show so little 

 change or improvement as do bees. 



It is not certain that the great mass of 

 bees to-day are any belter for honey 

 gathering than in the days of Virgil or 

 Aristotle. 



So bus} , indeed, have bee-keepers been 

 during this nineteenth ceinury inventing 

 hives, boxes, sections, supers, foundation, 

 smokers, extractors, with systems of 

 management, manipulation, and a thous- 

 and and one other things connected with 



