1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



339 



less and less differentiation between 

 these grades in price. Light amber 

 honey of eiiual flavor is worth as 

 much as water white, and the time is 

 coming when it will bring the same 

 price. 



When the price of West Indian 

 honey is quoted, how arc we to know 

 whetlier it is dark strained honey or 

 white extracted? There is too wide 

 a range of quality from different 

 sources, unless the prices of the vari- 

 ous grades are mentioned. Let us 

 have quotations something like this: 



Southern, dark, strained 8-9c 



Southern, light amber, extracted 9-lOc 



Southern, white extracted 10-12c 



Cuban, dark, strained 8-9c 



Cuban, amber extracted 9-lOc 



Cuban, white Campanilla, ex- 

 tracted 12c 



West Indian, dark strained 8-9c 



West Indian, dark extracted 9-lOc 



West Indian, light amber ex- 

 tracted 10-llc 



Orange, white, extracted 13-lSc 



Sage, white, extracted 13-15c 



Alfalfa, sweet clover, white ex- 

 tracted 12-14c 



Alfalfa, amber, extracted 10-llc 



Alfalfa, light amber, extracted ll-12c 



Mesquite. light amber ll-12c 



White clover, extracted 12-14c 



These prices are simply suggestions 

 of the probable relative values of the 

 various honeys, taking it for granted 

 that the honey is well strained, clear 

 and thoroughly ripened. A variation 

 in price would be made according to 

 the container used, whether tin cans 

 or barrels. 



Let us have definiteness in all our 

 price quotations. The fact is that 

 the average beekeeper does not know 

 within two cents per pound what his 

 honey is worth at his station after he 

 has read the market reports. This is 

 partially his fault and partially the 

 fault of the report. The beekeeper 

 should learn how to apply a report to 

 his own case and the report should 

 make it very easy for him to do this. 



A Visit at Nivers 



Ry W. A. Pryal. 



NIVEK, the New Yorker, in Cali- 

 fornia a beekeeper became. 

 All today, with vim, it's just 

 honey 

 And tomorrow the prize will be 



money. 

 But whether 'lis honey or money, he's 

 always so funny. 



And so in unmetrical rhyme may 

 the truth be told of S. A. Niver, who 

 came to California some six years 

 ago. After a few weeks spent in Cali- 

 fornia he took up his residence in 

 that portion of the city of Oakland 

 called Fruitvale. It was at this time 

 that I formed his acquaintance. Hav- 

 ing a desire to get into the beekeep- 

 ing game as it is played in the Golden 

 State, he undertook the management 

 of my apiary upon shares. The honey 

 crop that year was not so good as 

 usual, still Mr. Niver did fairly well. 

 There was little light-colored honey, 

 so a quantity of water-white honey 

 was purchased in the wholesale mar- 

 ket. Mr. Niver, being an expert in 

 the blending of honey, set to work, 

 and after heating all the honey, made 

 a blend that suited his fancy. 



He had a bosom friend, a Mr. A. B. 

 Colburn, who formed a honey-can- 

 vassing team with him and the two 

 drummed a portion of Oakland until 

 the entire crop was sold from door to 

 door, yet the city was far from cov- 

 ered. It takes time and energy to 

 canvass a city of over 200.000 inhab- 

 itants. But the work was well done 

 and the pair, with my assistance in 

 furnishing equipment, including horse 

 and rig. would have started the cam- 

 paign the next year but for the fact 

 that Niver and Colburn got the Cali- 

 fornia bee so badly tangled in their 

 bonnets that they must forthwith 

 embark in the bee and honey business 

 on their own account. They first in- 

 vited me to throw in my lot with 

 them in Monterey county. I did not 

 care to go so extensively into the 

 bee game, so I remained without the 



circle. Mr. Colburn had a friend, a 

 Mr. Smith, a gentleman living in 

 Pennsylvania, but who had large tim- 

 ber and lumber interests in Califor- 

 nia, who financed the new firm and 

 started them in a way that would 

 have given them as good an apiary as 

 was to be found in the State. 



Away out in the mountains, 56 miles 

 by the crookedest roads one could 

 find anywhere — full of rocks, holes, 

 high grades and down grades, creeks 

 without bridges, through this canyon 

 and down that gulch, and gates in- 

 numerable, one journeyed for hours 

 by auto to get there. To go to Sole- 

 dad, the nearest postoffice, was a 

 day's journey, and to get home took 

 another day. 



In 1914, myself and family went out 

 to visit them and spend a few days in 

 their mountain solitude. After much 

 trouble we reached the place. Ours 

 was the second auto to go into their 

 "diggings" and it came near being the 

 last trip for that particular automo- 

 bile. It gave me the worst experience 

 I ever had in driving a lame car, 

 nearly new, nigh sixty miles. It 

 is surprising where a beekeeper will 

 go with his bees to get honey! The 

 path of an apiarist is not strewn with 



SCENERY ON THE WAY Tij NIVER'S. THE MOUNTAINS ARE IHE HOME 



OF THE SAGES. 



MR. AND MRS. S. A. NIVER, NOW IN 

 CALIFORNIA. 



roses, neither is it surrounded with 

 giddy pleasures. We found our 

 friends comfortably domiciled in an 

 old adobe house to which Captain 

 Niver was adding a big room of rein- 

 forced mud fashioned in the most 

 approved art of "Class A" concrete 

 buildings. Their place was called 

 "Hill Crest." Though it was well 

 nigh on top of the hills, there were 

 higher ones all about. The place 

 formed a charming little valley, 

 though far from the haunts of men. 

 It had been established by some 

 home-seeking pioneer frontiersman 

 some fifty years previously. How they 

 ever got there in those days is more 

 than I can make out! And away out 

 there a nice family orchard of fruit 

 trees and grapes was planted and was 

 doing wonderfully well. For years, 

 until the Nivers came , it had been 

 neglected, but it soon revived under 

 care. 



The apiary was admirably situ- 

 ated some distance east of the house 

 on a little knoll by itself. On the 

 slant of the hill in front of the apiary, 

 was the extracting house and storage 

 rooms. The supers of extracting 

 combs were run by gravity into the 



