832 



GLEANINGS IN REE CUr,Tj:-K 



in a case of good honey is almost sure to 

 knock the price of the whole case clear 

 down. 



After the producer sells a large shipment 

 of comb honey, the honey is out of his 

 hands. The buyer turns around and com- 

 plains that he has found granulated sections 

 in man}'^ of the eases. Fearing that every 

 Geetion will granulate like the " strays " he 

 has seen, he will knock off a cent or two 

 from the agreed price " because the honey 

 was not as represented." Producers should 

 always put the baits by themselves, and sell 

 them locall}' if possible; but under no cir- 

 cumstances put them with the rest of the 

 comb honey. 



The producer can hardly avoid the use of 

 bait sections in the first super; but there 

 will be no need of using them in a second, 

 third, or fourth super. Let us suppose the 

 producer has a crop of three supers per 

 hive. One-third of the supers would have a 

 single bait. That bait shows up wrong al- 

 most at the start, and the result is that the 

 buyer when he finds it in a nice case of 

 honey is afraid of the whole shipment, and 

 he pays accordingly. Possibly the beekeep- 

 er might recover by bringing suit, but it 

 would never pay him to go to court when 

 only a cent or tAvo is involved, so he would 

 take what he could get. 



PEEniNG BACK TO COMPLETE UNFINISHED 

 SECTIONS. 



This is practiced by some of our best 

 producers: but the product is always in- 

 ferior to the regulation comb honey. Even 

 if one uses very light-colored extracted to 

 fiDish out some of his sections, the product 

 when it appears in the section is darker 

 than the rest of the honey. We do not 

 know why this is so, but it is so. Buyers 

 nowadays are becoming very discriminat- 

 ing; and it is our opinion that all fed-back 

 sections as well as baits should be sold 

 around home. Never mix them with the 

 other com.b honey for the general market. 



Can You Beat it ? 



We have a letter from William Lossing, 

 of Phoenix, Arizona, one of the largest 

 honey-producers in the country, in wldeh 

 he says he has loaded what he believes is 

 the largest car of honey that was ever 

 shipped. He had an order, he explains, for 

 a carload of honey — "the larger the better." 

 He accordingly secured the biggest car he 

 could, and crowded in 646 cases, or a total 

 of 87,589 lbs. The average car does not go 

 above 40,000 lbs. If any of our customers 

 or subscribers have ever been able to beat 

 this, let them speak out. 



Incidentally it may be well to remark 

 that there might be considerable danger in 

 making such a heavy load of honey as this. 

 Many of the western cars have a capacity 

 of 100,000 lbs., and these weights carry 

 with them permission to add 10 per cent 

 more. It is evident that our friend, unless 

 the ear was a very large one, must have 

 piled these cases clear up to the ceiling in 

 the car. The bottom cases must, therefore, 

 have had an enormous weight on them. 

 Aloreover, such weight, subjected to the 

 violent jerking, backing up, and starting 

 of a whole freight train would be almost 

 sure to cause leakage in the bottom cases. 

 Unless one takes a ride on a freight train 

 he can have not the least conception of the 

 fearful pounding that a freight car re- 

 ceives. 



Taking everything into consideration, we 

 question the advisability of loading so large 

 a car with honey. One might pile in pig 

 iron, wheat in sacks, and other commodities, 

 and the danger of loss would be compara- 

 tively slight. 



We shall be interested in learning how 

 this car got thi-ough. 



The Freight Classification Committee's 

 Designation of Comh Foundation as 

 " Bee Comb." 



A SUBSCRIBER has written us a vigorous 

 protest against billing comb foundation in 

 express and freight shipments as " bee 

 comb." He saj's he has observed that rail- 

 road men have the impression that this is 

 artificial comb, because it is sold by the 

 bee-supply manufacturers to the beekeep- 

 ers, and he thinks it is high time we should 

 stop fanning the flame of the artificial- 

 eomb-honey -canard. 



We have written our correspondent that 

 the supply manufacturers had nothing to 

 do with the term adopted by the Railroad 

 Freight-classification Committee, and at 

 present they are powerless to affect the 

 change. These people do not know what 

 comb foundation is, and therefore put into 

 the classification a term which to them ex- 

 presses what the article is; but the trouble 

 is, it expresses altogether too much. 



We suggest that, when the classification 

 committee meets again, the manufcturers 

 of bee supplies, especially the makers of 

 comb foundation, request the elimination of 

 the term " bee comb " and substitute the 

 usual term of comb foundation, for that is 

 the term that exactly expresses the name of 

 the article itself. 



We shall endeavor to give an announce- 

 ment when this classification committee 



