1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



141 



Now, while I have tried to tell the bad 

 thing-s about some portions of the West, I 

 wish to say that I did not see all the dark 

 side, and therefore I can not tell about it. 



While thousands of tons of honey are pro- 

 duced in the West, yet there are certain 

 drawbacks. As I have before pointed out, 

 lands that have been wonderfully produc- 

 tive, and where there is plenty of water, 

 are now barren wastes. The two princi- 

 pal causes of this are a shortage of water, 

 and alkali forced from the lower sub-soil 

 up to the surface by the water of irrig^ation, 

 leaving" the land barren as if it had been 

 whitewashed. Alkali kills off ne^irly every 

 form of profitable veg"etation; and the only 

 thing-s that will then g-row are certain kinds 

 of alkali weeds. In some cases sweet clo- 

 ver will thrive. I found hundreds of acres 

 of this on alkali land that had been aban- 

 doned in the western part of Colorado. So 

 bear in mind that one may locate on good 

 land, and think he is going to make a for- 

 tune; but, lo and behold! alkali, the dread 

 enemy of the irrigator, may come to the sur- 

 face, and then all is up. I went through 

 one town, or vi^hat had once been a town, 

 that was literally deserted. The houses, 

 stores — in fact, every thing in sight, includ- 

 ing the railroad depot, was put on wheels 

 and pulled off from the alkali stretch. You 

 can imagine what kind of hardship such 

 moving puts on the people. 



There are some localities in Texas that 

 have produced enormous crops of honey, 

 but yet which are subject to drouth. Pos- 

 sibly they may be irrigated in time, but 

 generally there is sufficient rain to take 

 care of growing crops. And California, 

 the land flowing with honey, has too many 

 off years to be a great bonanza to the bee- 

 keeper. 



He who thinks of going west should re- 

 member that, while thousands have bettered 

 their condition, there are very many who 

 have sunk every dollar they had, and have 

 gone back east, sadder and wiser men. If 

 one happens to get into a good locality, has 

 ordinary business sense, and is honest, he 

 will do well. But he may locate on an al- 

 kali piece, he may get into the hands of a 

 land shark, or he may happen to strike a 

 locality usually productive, but sometimes 

 visited by an awful drouth. Farmers in 

 Kansas and Nebraska know something of 

 what this means. 



Taking it all in all, I hope my friends 

 who follow me through my trip in the West 

 will take the pains to write before jumping 

 over into any locality blindly. If I can 

 not give you the full particulars and all 

 the facts I can refer you to some others who 

 will tell you the truth. Many of the best 

 locations in the United States are now al- 

 ready overstocked; and the bee-keeper who 

 will go into a good location and establish 

 an apiary right by the side of one who has 

 been in the place for years — I do not like to 

 say it, but he comes pretty near being a 

 h-o-g. 



LIES ABOUT MANUFACTURED HONEY; THE 

 EFFECT OF THE RECENT BOMBARD- 

 MENT. 



The continuous stream of letter-writing 

 that bee-keepers have been keeping up in 

 response to the requests from the editors of 

 bee-journals is beg-inning to have a telling 

 effect. The result is, that many of the best 

 agricultural papers as well as some of the 

 leading dailies have published the truth 

 concerning comb honey; and so far all but 

 three of the papers that gave space to the 

 lies in the first place have either retracted 

 editorially or else have published the state- 

 ment from some bee-keeper, utterly refuting 

 the nonsense that appeared in their col- 

 umns. Among the papers that have finally 

 yielded to the pressure of hundreds and 

 perhaps thousands of letters is the Chicago 

 Tribune, the paper that started these ca- 

 nards in the first place, and which has per- 

 sistently refused to publish anything since 

 in the way of retraction. Thinking that a 

 prophet is not without honor save in his 

 own country I wrote to E. H. Schaeiiie, of 

 Murphys, Cal., asking him if he could not 

 take a hand in helping us out. Among the 

 first papers he tackled was this same Chi- 

 cago Tribune. He wrote them a strong ar- 

 ticle, and they published his letter in full 

 under a heading that it put on itself, in 

 good strong head-lines — 



" COMB HONEY IS NOT IMITATED." 



And this is not all. You will no doubt 

 remember that Commissioner Jones, of the 

 Pure-food Commission, Chicago, was re- 

 ported to have said by this same Chicago 

 Tribune that there was very little pure 

 comb honey on the market in Chicago — that 

 it was nearly all manufactured, and that 

 the bogus could be readily detected from 

 the genuine by the fact that the former was 

 white, while the latter was dark with dark 

 circles around its eyes, so to speak. For a 

 long- time Commissioner Jones seems to have 

 kept silent; but finally Editor Abbott, of 

 the Modern Fari)ier and Busy Bee, wrote to 

 him and received from Mr. Jones a letter, 

 very emphatically stating that he had been 

 misquoted; that he knew as well as any 

 one that honey-comb could not be manu- 

 factured and filled with glucose. I should 

 like to place it before our readers, but I 

 have mislaid the copy. At all events, the 

 whole foundation of these comb-honey lies 

 that have been so persistently circulated is 

 crumbling to dust. Cominissioner Jones 

 has been quoted far and wide. The Chica- 

 go Tribune refused to retract; but, thanks 

 to the persistency of bee-keepers and ed it- 

 tors (we like some glory ourselves), the lies 

 are being nailed, and the truth is being 

 spread broadcast. 



The National Stockman and Farmer, at 

 Pittsburg, Pa., a paper of wide influence, 

 published the usual stuff about comb hon- 

 ey. This paper was immediately bom- 

 barded, with the result that it published a 

 retraction; but among the bomb-throwers was 



