1890 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



61 



more than half a century. I keep it, not because it 

 is honey, but, having ordered it, I feel under obliga- 

 tion to do so. This home-made article may do as a 

 substitute. Find my check for amount. Please re- 

 ceipt and return bill. Zephaniah Meek. 



Catlettsburg, Ky., Dec. 18. 



Copy of Reply. 



Zephaniah Jiefk;— Your favor is at hand inclosing 

 f5.80, balancing invoice of lath inst. Accept thanks. 

 Your letter causes a smile, without the least bit of 

 ill feeling on our part, because we know that you 

 are sincere and conscientious. However, we say 

 that we never soiled our Angers by adulteration. 

 We, too, are sincere, and I would add that we will 

 pay you one hundred dollars if you will prove that 

 the honey we sent you is not the pure product of 

 the bee, derived from clover and linden blossoms. 

 Hoping that a closer examination will convince you 

 that we have sold you some of the best honey in 

 the world, and wishing to supply you in the future, 

 we are, with best wishes of the season. 



Yours, Chas. F. Muth & Son. 



Cincinnati, Ohio, Dec. 23. 



We take pleasure in assuring friend Meek 

 that C. F. Muth never sold a drop of adul- 

 terated honey, if ha knew it ; and as he is a 

 veteran in the business, and about as keen 

 and sharp a business man as you can find in 

 Cincinnati or elsewhere, there is n >t much 

 probability that he has been deceived. 



W^ILEY'S FALSEHOOD. 



A MICHIGAN MAN WANTS TO KNOW IF TFIERE IS A 

 "SILVER LINING" TO IT. 



I HAVE long wanted some one to give me the 

 bright side of Prof. Wiley's pleasantry. I have 

 been expecting Bro. R)ot to show us the " silver 

 lining to the cloud," as he commonly sees the 

 bright side of every thing. I thought that, when 

 the Rambler got his bearings he would tell us of the 

 service the professor had done us poor bee-keep- 

 ers. But it is not likely that they ever drove into 

 town on a one-horse chaise, with seven boxes of 

 honey, and had a glass-front groceryman come out 

 and pay the high market price, " and a little more," 

 for the honey, just because he knew by the looks of 

 your rig that you were not handling bogus honey— 

 he, the groceryman, being suspicious of that honey 

 down at the commission house, "so white and fair." 

 And then when you are selling honey that you did 

 not take off the hive as soon as sealed, or, rather, 

 sections that you have been three years trying to 

 get the bee.s to put honey in, the surface of which 

 is geographically expressed as gently undulated, 

 the woodwork varnished with propolis, and color 

 variegated; and when your attention is called to 

 these defects, you can speak right out that it is 

 none of your " bogus manufactured artificial hon- 

 ey; " but that it is just as the bees made it— honest 

 honey. And then when you have put the best sec- 

 tions outside, and best side out at that, if you do 

 not have enough good ones for the outsides you 

 can cover up a poor-looking one with one of A. I. 

 Root's cards, offering one thousand dollars reward; 

 and if there is a kick, you can get in some sledge- 

 hammer blows that the bees do not make them all 

 alike, as a machine would; and even if you are not 

 much of a talker you will be able to convince nine 

 out of ten persons that the bees made it; that It is 



hoiest hoiiry, and honesty covers a multitude of 

 faults. And then your friends and neighbors buy 

 of you. They know that they are getting what 

 they pay for; but they are not so sure of that hon- 

 ey that is shipped in to commission houses by those 

 honey-kings. 



If it were not for that humbugging superstition 

 produced by Prof. Wiley's after-dinner pleasantry, 

 those king-bees of Cuba, California, and Wisconsin 

 would have crushed the life out of us poor but hon- 

 est bee-keepers, in our home market, long ago. 



Frank L. Lee. 

 Farmington, Mich., Dec. 14, 1889. 



Thanks, friend Lee. I can just fancy that 

 a comical smile was playing on one side of 

 your mouth when you wrote this. Yes, 

 there is a faint glimmer of a silver lining ; 

 but over against it, in striking contrast, is 

 the dark cloud of unretracted falsehoods 

 passed from one newspaper to another. Just 

 the other day a prominent lawyer in Cleve- 

 land sent down to Medina for a crate of 

 "choice bees' honey." "• Why in the world 

 should you send to Medina when there is 

 just as good honey in almost all the grocer- 

 ies and commission houses right in your 

 own city, and perhaps at your own door V " 

 I thought. Read lag on down the letter a 

 little further the writer said, " I am afraid 

 of the honey that is in Cleveland. I know 

 that your honey is the honest proiuct of the 

 bees." From one point of view, Wiley's 

 falsehood benefited us to the extent of a sin- 

 gle crate of honey. That was the silver lin- 

 ing you referred to. From another point of 

 view, there are thousands and thousands of 

 customers just like this prominent lawyer, 

 who like good honey, and would use it, pro- 

 viding the ban of suspicion had not been 

 placed on it by willful and malicious false- 

 hoods circulated by the press. While this 

 state of affairs enables us to sell now and 

 then a crate of honey which we should not 

 otherwise have sold, it prevents the sale of 

 thousands of other crates of just as good 

 and honest "■ bees' honey " in the city, which 

 the consumer is suspicious of. Ernest. 



CHEESE-CLOTH AS A BASE FOR 

 FOUNDATION. 



SUCCESBFCTLLY IN USE IN 100 COLONIES IN 

 ARIZONA. 



I HAVE been using foundation on cheese (or but- 

 ter) cloth for two years, and I like it very much. 

 In this hot climate, whore the mercury often goes 

 up to 110°, we feel the need of something to hold 

 our combs from melting down, especially when ex- 

 tracting. You know, as well as myself, if the bees 

 are well shaded they will take care of the combs, 

 with proper ventilation; but when we undertake to 

 extract from these combs, with the mercury up to 

 110°, we often have quite a mess of broken combs. 

 Now, friend Root, the only objection to cloth dip- 

 ped in wax is the inclination of the bees to gnaw at 

 it and take It out, as suggested in the A U C book. 

 I And, if 1 dip it often enough, or, in other words, if 

 I make the coating of wax thick enough, there is 

 no trouble about it. They will finish it up in nice 

 style, and it works all right. I have about 100 hives 

 supplied with combs made in the above way. To 

 put them in the frames, I have a machine that 



