214 



THE BEE-KEEFEHS XtEVlEvi.. 



is being quoted at 13 cents. Whether the 

 honey is sold at such reduction or not, that 

 is the way that sales are reported, and the 

 rules are a screen behind which the dealer 

 screens himself. He will contend that the 

 " fancy " was not " fancy." that there were 

 " so many cells unsealed," or something like 

 that, and what are you going to do? In 

 short, by dividing his honey into two grades 

 the bee keeper (?e£/»«des part of it and there- 

 by loses one or two cents a pound upon it, 

 while he gets no more for the cream of his 

 crop than he would if the lower grade had 

 not been taken out of it, and this, too, when 

 the dealer is honest, and it is worse still 

 if he is dishonest. My friend says that if 

 any one has sent " fancy " honey to market, 

 had it sold as " fancy " and got ' fancy " re- 

 turns, he would like to know it. He did not 

 find any particular fault with the rules as we 

 now have them, but the trouble is that deal- 

 ers do not live up to them, they simply take 

 advantage of them to beat the bee keeper. 

 If this is really true, the same objection 

 can be raised against any set of rules. 



A standard for grading would be very con- 

 venient, and if lived up to would result in 

 each man getting that which he deserves, 

 and it seems a pity that they should be 

 abused by the very men who, it seems, would 

 be most anxious for their success. Let's 

 hear from the dealers. 



A Condensed View of Current 

 Bee Writings. 



E. E. HASTY. 



The vinegar question shows considerable 

 vitality, if we may judge by the number of 

 times C. V. Dadant is called out on it. He 

 says you can sell honey vinegar to grocers, 

 but not to all grocers. Some of them want 

 live-cent vinegar. Regular sliding scale of 

 vinegars it would seem. He seems to i)lace 

 properly made honey vinegar at the top — or 

 perhaps second to the best wine vinegar. 

 Next comes malt and cider vinegars, well 

 enough in their way. Then comes pyrolig- 

 neous acid— cheap and doul)tful. Then at 

 the bottom, murderous slop, sharpened with 

 oil of vitriol. Not a practical way to dispose 

 of a whole crop of honey, he thinks. Ameri- 

 can Bee .Journal l<i2. 



Mr. Axtell says have on the supers, even 

 before they are needed, to keep the swarm- 



ing fever from getting begun. A. B. J. 16.3. 

 Plausible and sometimes works no doubt, 

 but the opposite tactics are more frequently 

 correct, 1 think — ^make them swarm as soon 

 as possible and have it over with. 



I. W. Beckwith thinks it a practical way to 

 dispose of combs of candied honey to uncap 

 them and hang in a very warm and damp 

 place for a few days, after which the entire 

 contents of the cells can be thrown out by 

 the extractor. A. B. J. 1(33. Eating is the 

 proof of that kind of pudding. If it works, 

 all right. 



McArthur gives yellow sweet clover a 

 black eye. Inferior in every way to the 

 white. But he has got several acres to grow- 

 ing in a marsh and hopes to see a thousand- 

 acre marsh covered with it. And it's not big 

 enough to incite the general public to war- 

 fare. A. B. J. 1(;3. 



Gallup says that California apiaries are 

 not troubled with overswarming as a general 

 thing. A. B. J. '2il. Worth meditating on. 

 May be it's this — the honey supply allows 

 three times the bees to be kept on the 

 ground as with us; and so many bees over- 

 reach the pollen supply, which may be more 

 profuse than ours. 



S. A. Deacon, A. B. J. 2.'>8, gives valuable 

 experience with bee stings as curative 

 agents. Before keeping bees he was a mar- 

 tyr to neuralgic toothache. The few stings 

 nearly every day, which most operators get, 

 entirely put an end to his trouble. Lately 

 he has been letting bees alone pretty much, 

 and suddenly the old enemy pounced upon 

 him in great fury, raged in his upper story 

 for awhile and then metamorpliosed itself 

 into neuralgic rlieumatism and went for his 

 legs. At this point he voluntarily took a 

 considerable number of stings in the af- 

 fected members. The result was instant 

 cessation of the pain, continuing up to the 

 time of writing, whicli was some days later. 



Adrian Getaz, A. B. .J. 27;>, has an able 

 article on Hive Construction. He illustrates 

 several spacing devices which are worth 

 looking at — by those who think they can 

 tolerate spacing devices at all. Space the 

 top by hanging each frame end from a single 

 stout nail, and let the nail rest in a very 

 shallow notch tiled in the tin rabbet — out of 

 which it can be easily pushed. The advan- 

 tages of spacing and non-spacing are both 

 secured in this way. As the best bottom 

 spacer he advises a strip of tin with as many 

 coarse teeth, ^g inch wide, as there are 



