376 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



June 15 



is wanting in the pollen and nectar of flow- 

 ers, and is supposed to be introduced into 

 the honey by the bees just before the caj)- 

 ping of the cells. The formic acid thus in- 

 troduced by the bees is supposed to act as a 

 l)reservative, and prevent the honey from 

 fermenting." 



I am a great admirer of K. W. Alexander, 

 and have one of the copies of the little book 

 which contains his waitings, which I have 

 read often. So far as I ha\ e had an ojipor- 

 tunity of working out his plans I find they 

 are well suited to the conditions existing 

 here in this locality of the middle West with 

 one excei)tion. and that is his method of ex- 

 tracting the nectar from the combs before it 

 is sealed or even well evaporated. In Mr. 

 Alexander's locality, and with his equip- 

 ment and methods, this process may work 

 out; but in this locality, and with theequip- 

 ment that the average or even extensive 

 bee-keeper has. I believe the plan is worse 

 than a failure — it is a damage to the honey- 

 marl-:et. I am of the opinion that no pro- 

 ducer of extracted honey should try it un- 

 less he wants to enter quite extensively in- 

 to the manufacture of honey vinegar, and I 

 doubt if the nectar will make as' good vine- 

 gar as ripe honey would. 



Some bee-keepers favor the frequent ex- 

 tracting of the green honey on account of 

 the apparent economy, believing that it will 

 save them something in the way of invest- 

 ment for fixtures, such as extra supers, 

 frames, foundation, ^tc. But from an eco- 

 nomical standpoint alone, to say nothing of 

 the quality of the honey, I find that it is 

 easy to prove that having the extra fixtures, 

 ami allowing the honey to stay on the hive 

 until the em] of the season, and then mak- 

 ing a business of extracting at one time, 

 rather than be dabbling in it at intervals 

 during the summer, is the cheaper method, 

 for mucli more time is sure to be wasted at 

 each small extracting llian would be wasted 

 if the work were left to be done all at once. 



Some argue that frequent extracting of 

 the honey from the combs stimulates the 

 bees to greater effort to gather more to re- 

 plenish their scanty store. On this ques- 

 tion Mr. Dadant thinks that the more stores 

 the bees accumulate the more they will con- 

 tinue to gather, provided they have the 

 combs to store it in; that is, they are not un- 

 like human beings in that they work the 

 hardest when they are prosperous; but if 

 their hard earnings are continually taken 

 away they become discouraged, and are 

 more likely to give up trying to get ahead. 



However, leaving out this i)ha.se of the 

 question, we all know that, if we are going 

 to extract partly ripened nectar, we must 

 have large open tanks to put the honey in 

 for further ripening and a suitable building 

 to hold the tanks. A ten-frame super com- 

 plete with frames, nailed and painted, is 

 cataloged at $1.15, and i}4 lbs. of foundation 

 is worth in small lots 5S els. per lb., or 7."! 

 cts., and if we add the labor of jnitting in 

 the foundation at 12 cts. per super we have 

 a total cost of $2.00 per super. Thus if we 



are fitting up for KX) colonies we have a to- 

 tal cost of $2(M» for the one extra super over 

 and above the equii)ment that we should 

 have to have if we followed the other meth- 

 od. Now, I do not belie\ e that we can pur- 

 chase tanks and build a suitable house, in 

 these days, for $200, that will last as long as 

 those supers and combs. 



But the all-important question with the 

 consumer is the flavor of the honey that he 

 is eating; and if we want him to eat more 

 honey we must give him the thick delicious 

 honey with the bouquet of the flowers in it; 

 and we can not get this from nectar, nor can 

 man rijien the nectar so that it will be equal 

 to the honey that the bees have finished. 

 There is a big demand for good honey, and 

 I predict that the fields will be taxed to their 

 limit to supply this demantl when the bee- 

 keepers will join efforts in producing the 

 right kind of honey. I do not think that 

 the consumption of honey will increase un- 

 til a good article is put on the market almost 

 universally. 



Three years ago I extracted a lot of choice 

 clover honey which I supposed was thor- 

 oughly ripe, and I wanted to get it out of 

 the hives before it should become mixed 

 with the dark fall honey. This honey was 

 put into cans and jiails very soon after it 

 was extracted, and sold. I^ater in the fall I 

 was trying to sell some more honey to a man 

 to whom 1 had sold some of this choice early 

 honey, and he objected very strongly, say- 

 ing that the other honey that I had recom- 

 mended to him so highly had fermented, so 

 that he had to throw it out, and he had 

 made up his mind after this that he would 

 buy comb honey. This is where I got my 

 first intimation of what it means to produce 

 real good honey. Some of that same nice 

 clover honey that I had in the house I no- 

 ticed was changing rapidly, and it soon 

 spoiled. I now know that I can produce 

 good extracted honey, and I know that the 

 whole bee-kee])ing fraternity can do it. The 

 peoi)Ie will then consume our product with- 

 out complaint. 



Salix, Iowa. 



CHUNK HONEY NORTH AND SOUTH. 



This Kind of Honey Finds Ready Sale in the 



South Because the Market Demands a 



Cheap Honey. 



BY A. F. BONNEY 



I have had some experience with chunk 

 honey in this part of the world, and I have 

 traveled to no small extent in the Lone Star 

 State, the last time about three years ago. 

 In 1008 and 'Of) I put up some chunk honey 

 in Mason glass jars, which I sold at ten 

 cents a pound and charged the wholesale 

 price for the jar, or, rather, what the farmer 

 had to pay for the jar at the store by the 

 case — :^8 cents for jar and honey, offering to 

 take back the jar at a cent less on account 

 of the loss of the rubber. I have yet to 

 have the first one returned. 



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