THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



213 



more than two oances, nud fnrtlier nloiitx lie 

 says the combs must he of uo.uly eveu 

 thickness. At the risk of appearing,' hyi)er- 

 critical I must say that if the combs are of 

 nearly eveu thickuess it is not likely that 

 they will vary in weight more than two 

 ounces, Ijesides, no man will take the pains 

 to weigh each section to see if they ditter in 

 weight more than two ounces. I would not 

 say "of nearly even thickness." While this 

 may be more exact than to simply say "of 

 even thickness," it adds to the verbiage, and 

 we must have short, siniple, general rules 

 that can be quickly read and understood. 

 Of course, we don't expect a man to take 

 calipers and measure the thickness of each 

 section, he can measure it with sufficient 

 exactness with his eye, and it will be in the 

 bounds of reason to say that the combs are 

 of even thickness, although they might vary 

 in thickness one-eighth of an inch or per- 

 haps a little more. It is not as though we 

 were drawing up a legal document. 



Then there is the matter of the number of 

 grades. Both Mr. Walker and the editor of 

 Gleanings favor four grades, and Mr. Walk- 

 er thinks we even ought to have five in order 

 to find an exact grade for all of the honey 

 that is fit to market. That may be true, but 

 if we are to have a scrupulously exact grad- 

 ing for every section that we may come 

 across, but I feel about this just as I do 

 about the matter of color, if we go to putting 

 in all of these fine points we will rear a 

 structure that will tnmb'e of its own weight. 

 For honey that is tit to ship to market two 

 grades are sufficient. As Mr. Greiner says 

 in last (ileanings, two grades are all that 

 dealers will bother with. Right in this line 

 I would say that combs containing very 

 much pollen, or those that are badly bulged, 

 or very crooked, or unsealed, or only slightly 

 attached to the wood, ought never be 

 shipped to market. If they are, tliey ouglit 

 to be simply marked "culls." 



I certainly would not have any pollen in a 

 fancy grade of iioney, and not more than 

 half a dozen ceils in a section of the second 

 grade, or that called No. 1 in the Washing- 

 ton grading. 



Bro. Hoot says that >onie think it better to 

 have no rules and let each one grade accord- 

 ing to his own notion. He then calls atten- 

 tion to the fact that in the absence of rules 

 one lot of honey cannot be compared with 

 another. Without rules a commission man 



can sell one man's honey as "fancy "but 

 make returns at a "No. 1 " grading. Even 

 with a standard of grading this might some- 

 times be done, but is not nearly so easy, as 

 each party would know what he is talking 

 about, but without rules the bee keeper is 

 completely at the mercy of the dealer. The 

 time to talk about the desirability of a 

 standard for grading has passed. 



As I have said before, I think that the 

 Washington grading is pretty good. It may 

 have some defects. For instance, it says 

 nothing in regard to pollen, but that could 

 easily be added. Who is it that is opposed 

 to the Washington grading? Dr. Miller, 

 Mr. J. E. Crane, Byron Walker and C. F. 

 Muth, and when we get a set of rules that 

 meels the opposition of only four men, I 

 think that we have done as well as we will 

 probably ever do. I presume, of course, 

 that there aie others who are opposed to the 

 grading now in use, and now that I have 

 said what I have, perhaps they will speak 

 out. 



Right here let me say that I fear that we 

 have not yet heard enough on this subject 

 from our commission men and dealers; they 

 ought to be able to give us material help on 

 the subject. There is not time for them to 

 say anything in the Review before the 

 Buffalo convention, but the American Bee 

 -Journal or Gleanings could get their views 

 before the public in time to have them con- 

 sidered at that meeting, and I wish that each 

 dealer would write to one or the other of the 

 above mentioned jour als and criticise or 

 approve of the grading that has been in use 

 for almost five years. Da it now. 



After I had written the foregoing I jumped 

 on the wheel and rode out to the home of 

 my friend Koeppen, whose apiaries were 

 pictured in the December Review for 18'.)(;. 

 He said to me frankly that the=e rules for 

 grading are working against the bee keeper. 

 Speaking of myself, personally, he said, 

 " You have raised no big crops of honey, 

 such as you used to raise, since these rules 

 came into existence. You don't know from 

 actual practice iiow they work. Y'our views 

 are almost whollj theoreticai." The trouble 

 is entirely with tiie commission men. They 

 don't sell the different grades for what they 

 really are. If a man divides his honey into 

 two grades, " f ncy " and "No. 1," the 

 " fancy " will be sold for " No. 1 " and the 

 latter for what might be called "No. 2," 

 away down to 8 cents aponnd when " fancy " 



