(Entered as second-class matter Jnly 30, 1907, at the Post-OflQce at Chicago, 111., under Act of Marcli 3, 1879. 1 



Published Monthly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Company, 117 North Jefferson Street, 



GEORGE W. YORK. Editor. 



DR. C. C. MILLER. Associate Editor. 



CHICAGO, ILL, APRIL, 1911 



Vol. LI- -No. 4 



Cartons for Comb Honey 



From H.R.Wright has been received 

 a carton such as he prefers and urgently 

 advises. Instead of thin paper, such as 

 has been heretofore used, this carton 

 is made of very substantial pasteboard. 

 Instead of being closed on all 6 sides, 

 it is entirely open top and bottom, so 

 that the section is easily slid in or out. 

 There is then no such thing as the bot- 

 tom of the carton sticking to the bot- 

 tom of the case. With the older car- 

 tons this happens, and the thin paper 

 tears and spoils the carton. When the 

 delivery-man takes the sections from 

 the grocers, this solid pasteboard pre- 

 vents breakage of the cappings of the 

 section. One can readily see that with 

 a covering of common paper only, a 

 section is in great danger of being in- 

 jured on its way from the grocer to the 

 consumer. 



The carton makes the section less 

 liable to injury during shipment, but of 

 course the shipping-case must be 

 larger. The cost of these cartons is 

 about $3.00 a thousand. If the sections 

 are sold by weight, the carton is 

 weighed in with the section, in which 

 case there is no extra cost to the pro- 

 ducer. As, however, the tendency is 

 more and more to sell by the section 

 or case, the cost will generally come 

 upon the producer. As this is less 

 than a third of a cent per section, in 

 the long run it may be that he can well 

 afford the expense. 



Migratory Bee-Keeping a Success 



For some reason, transporting bees 

 from North to South, or from South 

 to North, in order to take advantage of 

 the two different seasons in the same 

 year, has not proved a great success in 

 this country. The attempt has been 

 made to start on the Mississippi early 

 in the season and gradually move 

 northward with the season. On paper 

 it sounds very plausible, making a con- 



tinuous season from the time the har- 

 vest opens in the South until it closes 

 in the North, but in actual practice it 

 has not been a paying scheme. 



Now, however, we have a very inter- 

 esting account in the Bee-Keepers' Re- 

 view of a very successful venture by H. 

 C. Ahlers, not at all by way of gradual 

 moving with the season, but by swiftly 

 moving the bees by rail from one ex- 

 treme to the other. In February he 

 bought 153 colonies of bees in Kenner, 

 La. From these he harvested up to 

 April 1, 6000 pounds of honey and 60 

 pounds of wax. He then made in- 

 crease, having previously started nuclei. 

 April 22 he loaded the bees on a car, 

 and in 90 hours they arrived at West 

 Bend, Wis. 



He started the season in Wisconsin 

 with 4.")0 colonies, and harvested 23,000 

 pounds of clover honey, the season be- 

 ing poor. 



August 26, which he says was a 

 month too late, he loaded 225 colonies 

 on a car and shipped them to Illinois 

 on the Illinois river bottom, and Oct. 

 4 and 5 extracted 3500 pounds of Span- 

 ish-needle honey. 



Then the bees made their hives heavy 

 with aster honey, and Oct. 24 they were 

 railroaded to Louisiana for the winter. 



Mr. Ahlers sums up his year's work 

 thus : 



"This is the story of my trip with a car- 

 load of bees. Moving ^ times in one season: 

 securing :i2.5oo pounds of honey, and leaving 

 the bees in the best place, in a perfect con- 

 dition. No winter chances. No fall, and 

 practically no spring work." 



Editor Hutchinson makes this sum- 

 ming-up in his heading: "Making 

 $4000 from Successful Migratory Bee- 

 Keeping." 



Beginner Should Have Bee-Book 



It has been said repeatedly in these 

 columns that one of the first needs of 

 a beginner is a good bee-book, and if 

 he can not have both a book and a 

 bee-paper, let the paper and not the 



book be the one to wait for. But he 

 really needs both, and there may be 

 some question whether he better not 

 let bees alone till he can get both. But 

 if one muxt come first, let it be the 

 book. The editor of the Bee-Keepers' 

 Review wisely says : 



My idea of this matter has always been 

 that all beginners ought first to read one or 

 more text-books. That is what textbooks 

 are for— to state fundamental principles 

 and well-established facts. To me. it has 

 always seemed like an injustice to the ma- 

 jority of subscribers, and a great waste of 

 space, to publish year after year, in a jour- 

 nal, those things that can be found in almost 

 every text-book. The journals are for the 

 discussion of ju-iu things. 



In a good school there will be a text- 

 book and a living teacher. The student 

 may spend the most of his time with 

 his book, but he needs the teacher, as 

 well, to explain the things that are not 

 entirely clear to him in the book. It is- 

 much the same way with the student itv 

 bee-keeping. He needs a text-book,, 

 and he would be the better for a living, 

 teacher. Lacking that, the next best 

 thing is a question and answer depart- 

 ment in a bee-paper, as a sort of cor- 

 respondence school, in which all his 

 questions may be answered. To be 

 sure, that is the only one of the things 

 a bee-paper is for; but the point here 

 urged is that if the beginner is to have 

 full benefit from the question and an- 

 swer department, the first thing he 

 should do is to have the book. 



Kxtracted vs. Comb Honey 



There is a good deal said nowadays 

 of the increase of interest in extracted 

 honey at the expense of comb. Indeed 

 this is sometimes put so strong that 

 one writer in a German bee-paper 

 summed up the matter by saying : 



" In America the price of comb honey is 

 falling, and that of extracted is risine. 

 Already 30 cents is paid for extracted, while 

 comb brings only 25." 



This sounds a bit amusing to those 

 who are familiar with market quota- 

 tions, but is no doubt in accord with 

 the desires of many. In the face of all 

 this, M. A. Gill has the audacity to 

 stand up in defense of the production 

 of comb honey, in an article in the 

 Bee-Keepers' Review. He believes in 

 comb honey, not only for the higher 

 price it brings, but because he can 



