- i^>. 



[Entered as second-class matter July 30, 1907. at the Po3t-Offlce at Chicago, III., under At-t ol March '3. 1879. ) 



Published Monthly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Company, 146 West Superior Street, 



GEORGE W. YORK. Editor. 



DR. C. C. MILLER, Associate Editor. 



CHICAGO, ILL., DECEMBER, 1910 



Vol. L-No. 12 



Editorial Notes and Comments 



" Karo Com .Syrup" Ad^erti.snig: 



The extensive advertising of this 

 miserable concoction seemed to cease. 

 Then the thought came, " They have 

 found out that the public will not be 

 deluded, and will waste no more money 

 in advertising." The thought was a 

 delusion. A big lot of money is again 

 being put into advertisements that are 

 so well worded that readers can hardly 

 fail to be saying: "We must have 

 some of that delicious article." 



If there is profit in spending thou- 

 sands of dollars in advertising Karo, 

 why would there not be profit in spend- 

 ing the same amount to advertise 

 honey? "Oh, Karo is a new thing, 

 and must be brought to public notice 

 in order to create a demand for it, 

 while honey has been on the market 

 thousands of years and everybody 

 knows about it." That argument will 

 hardly do. Thousands upon thousands 

 have never had their first taste of 

 honey, and the tables where honey is a 

 daily article of food are few and far 

 between. 



If the same company that sells Karo 

 could get a monopoly of honey, bee- 

 keepers would see some advertising 

 that would make them sit up and take 

 notice. And the advertising would 

 bring returns. The whole thing in a 

 nutshell is that Karo is in the hands of 

 a single concern, while honey is scat- 

 tered among thousands of bee-keepers 

 who are not all pulling together, and 

 some of them pulling apart. It would 

 be to the interest of bee-keepers, and 

 perhaps still more to the interest of 

 the consuming public, if bee-keepers 

 would "get together" and inaugurate 

 a campaign of advertising that would 

 make the advertising of Karo look 

 pale. Why can't they ? Why don't 

 they ? Who can give the right an- 

 swers to these short questions ? 



Haml'.s Plan to Pre vent Swaruiing- 



At different times swarming has been 

 prevented more or less satisfactorily 

 by depriving a colony temporarily of 

 its flying force. J. E. Hand describes 

 in Gleanings a double bottom-board 

 devised by him, through which the 

 plan may be successfully carried out. 

 .■\ switch is so arranged that when the 

 bees go into the front entrance they 

 are all switched into one of the hives. 

 That leaves the other without field-bees. 

 and the colony, feeling its poverty, will 

 at once destroy the preparations for 

 swarming that had been begun. Then, 

 later, when the colony has made a start 

 on queen-cells, the switch is changed, 

 and so on. 



"The bee that gets the honey doesn't han',; 

 around the hive." 



IJee-Keepiiig in Ontario 



Under this title appears in the Cana- 

 dian Bee Journal the report of Morley 

 Pettit, Provincial Apiarist. Mr. Pettit 

 sent out report blanks to 2175 bee- 

 keepers, but only one in o responded. 



The summer honey-plants reported 

 are uniformly white and alsike clover. 

 Basswood is reported from many coun- 

 ties, but is not of so much importance 

 as formerly. Raspberry is reported 

 from 7 counties. Alfalfa is being in- 

 troduced into many counties, but its 

 vilue as a honey-plant is problematical. 

 Alsike is the most dependable source 

 of light honey. Buckwheat is growing 

 in popularity. 



For the fall of 1909, 18,44-5 colonies 

 are reported, with a winter loss of 9.3 

 percent, leaving the average spring 

 count of each reporting bee-keeper 34.:? 

 colonies. Mr. Pettit thinks it would 

 be a fair estimate to count about 100,000 

 as the total number of colonies in the 

 Province. 



Bees Builrting' Comb Upwards 



Lately mention has been made in 

 ditTerent bee-papers of bees building 

 comb upwards, and pictures of such 



combs have been given. The fact is 

 that bees will probably always build in 

 that way when conditions favor it. At 

 the beginning of the honey harvest it 

 sometimes happens that place has not 

 yet been given for storing surplus, but 

 an empty super is over the brood-cham- 

 ber. In that case, if the super is deep 

 enough the bees will surely begin build- 

 ing upward from the brood-frames. 



A peculiarity of this upward building 

 is that the bees do not build straight, 

 parallel combs, but circular. It is easy 

 to see a good reason for this. Set a 

 sheet of tin on one edge, and it will 

 immediately fall over. But bend the 

 sheet into a curved form, and stand it 

 up on the curved edge, and it stands 

 upright. Just so a straight comb built 

 upright would fall over sidewise, while 

 the circular comb stands erect. 



Biilk-Comb Honey in the North 



Texas is the special home of bulk- 

 comb honey, but at least one man in 

 the North has tried it successfully, 

 Charles J. Greene, who reports in 

 Gleanings. In some respects he de- 

 parts from the Southern fashion. In- 

 stead of filling into the package as 

 much liquid honey as he can, he uses 

 just as little as he can, only putting in 

 enough to bring the package up to 

 weight if it lacks weight. He uses reg- 

 ular o and 10 pound butter-pails with 

 straight sides, setting the combs on 

 edge in the pail, and cutting the combs 

 of such size that each comes clear to 

 the top of the pail. He prefers straight 

 sides to slanting sides, and would not 

 have a vessel smaller at the top than 

 the full size of the vessel. 



Don't Clamp Bee.s in Clay Soil 



.\ good many years ago there was a 

 good deal said about wintering bees 

 in clamps. Some succeeded, but there 

 were bad failures, and wintering bees 

 in clamps seemed to go out of style. 

 Latterly, however, there seems a re- 

 vival of the practice. It appears to be 

 a matter of locality, or rather of soil, 

 Root's "A B C and X Y Z" says it 

 can be practiced only where the soil is 

 sandy and porous, but not where there 

 is much clay. It is easy to understand "^ 

 that a porous soil will let through 



