Dec. 24, 1903. 



THt AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



821 



questiou of the ownership of wild bees was argued carefully. The 

 defense claimed that the bees were the same as wild animals, and were 

 open property, but the court did not find judgment in accordance with 

 this theory. 



Boys who destroy property and steal must expect to pay for it 

 when caught. Perhaps if thuy had gone to the owner and proposed 

 to divide up the honey, in case any was found in the tree, he would 

 have consented to cutting down the tree, and possibly might have 

 helped in the work. Of course, in view of the way it ended, it would 

 have been much cheaper and easier for the boys to have gone to some 

 bee-Keeper and paid him a good price for 200 pounds of honey. 

 "Stolen sweets " sometimes " come high," as those Iowa boys can 

 testify. 



Tbe Annual Report of the General Manager of the National 

 Bee-lieepers' Association for 1903 is on our desk. It is a pamphlet of 

 60 pages, 6x9 inches in size. It is illustrated with half-tone engrav- 

 ings of all the officers and members of the board of directors. It con- 

 tains a list of the membership, some 1600 in number, besides some 

 other interesting matter. The receipts for the year, including the 

 amounts received from former officials, is ?1741. 68; the expenditures 

 were $626.60, leaving a balance on hand of SI 115.08. But the expense 

 of printing over 2000 copies of the present Report will reduce the bal- 

 ance several hundred dollars, probably. 



The Report is mailed only to members of the Association, who 

 will also ballot this month for three directors, a general manager, and 

 on some amendments to the Constitution. 



General Manager N. E. France is to spend the month of 

 January among the bee-keepers of New York State. They will find 

 him a very pleasant man to meet, rather quiet, but one who knows 

 his business, and is not afraid to say what he thinks. He is doing 

 good work as General Manager of the National Association, aad 

 should have all the support aud encouragement possible in his work, 

 which is mainly a labor of love, for the financial returns he receives 

 personally out of the general managership is simply nothing when 

 compared with the amount of work he is doing for the good of bee- 

 keeping here in America. 



3Ir. Wni. 31. Whitney, ot Walworth Co., Wis., wrote us as 

 follows. Dec. 10 : 



Friend York : — Home again, and am feeling first-rate. We had 

 a very enjoyable time at our (;hicago-Northwestern convention. 

 Never attended a better one. I shall continue my effort to form an 

 organization of the bee-keepers here. 



Say, ask " Nebraska Subscriber " (see pages 797 and 79S) to have 

 his picture taken when he gets his toggery all on. I just noticed his 

 description of it in the Journal. Wm. M. Whitney. 



Yes, we will be pleased to put his picture in the American Bee 

 Journal it he will have it taken with his " toggery " on and forward 

 it to us. 



( 



Sketches of Beedomites 



3 



MR. 6tS DITTNER. 



Gus Dittmer was born in Prussia, Germany, in 1853. He came to 

 the United States in 1862, and to Wisconsin in 1863. He received a 

 common school education, aud afterward was in the boot and shoe 

 business until 1893. He took a colony of bees from a customer in 

 payment of a debt, in the fall of 1882. He read " Quinby's Bee-Keep- 

 ing'' that winter, and the next spring began handling bees. He took 

 a great fancy to bees from the .«tart. and has been a bee-keeper and 

 reader of the bee-papers and books on bees ever since. He now keeps 

 from 75 to 100 colonies. 



After starting in the bee-business he began to furnish his custo- 

 mers and other bee-keepers with supplies, and after a few years he 

 was supplying the whole country around him, and was even doing 

 some shipping. He began making comb foundation several years be- 

 fore leaving the shoe-business. In 1S95 he started in the manufacture 

 of foundation and supply trade exclutively, the plant then consisting 

 of a building 9x16 feet,'with a cellar the same size. In 1896 he built a 



3-story house, 18x24, and in 1898 added a two-story upright to this, 

 22x28, and began buying sections by the car-load. 



Up to 1899 Mr. Dittmer's foundation was all made by the old dip- 

 ping process, but since then he has been developing the process by 

 which all ot his foundation is now made. In 1900 he perfected auto- 

 matic machines, geared to his foundation mills, that will continuously 

 pull foundation from the mills, paper it, print his card on it, cut into 

 proper length, and pile it up, all at one operation, at the rate ot from 

 25 to 75 pounds every hour, one person doing the work. 



In 1901 Mr. Dittmer added a shop, 15x24 feet, for a 2}4 horse-power 

 gasoline engine and the sheeting machines, and since that time all o( 

 the machines are run by power. 



This fall the capacity had to be further enlarged by building a 

 warehouse, 24x50 feet, two stories high, and the old building will be 

 used only for manufacturing comb foundation, for storing the same 

 and beeswax, and for a shipping-room and otBce. 



All of the work is done right in Mr. Dittmer's family. Fred works 

 with his father continually, and Clarence and Bessie are always ready 

 to run a machine. In fact, they, with the occasional help ot Mrs. 

 Dittmer, run out all of the foundation, making, during the rush, as 

 high as 750 pounds in one day. 



Mr. Dittmer has been supervisor on the Eau Claire County Board 

 since 1892, and was chairman of the Board six years out of the past 

 eight. He is a teetotaler, minds his own business, and doesn't loaf 

 around town. 



In 1S7S Mr. Dittmer was married to Jennie Hatch, and they have 

 tour children, as follows: Fred, 23 years of age ; Bessie, 21; Clarence, 

 IS ; and Margaret, 8. 



Mr. Dittmer is the efficient secretary of the Wisconsin State Bee- 

 Keepers' Association. He is also one of the regular, responsible adver- 

 tisers in the American Bee Journal, and his business is growing just 

 as one would naturally expect in view of the character of the man 

 and the pushing business methods he uses. 





Contributed Articles 





Making Vinegar Out of Honey and Water. 



BY C. P. DADANT. 



IF you simply mix the honey and water so that an egg 

 will fairly float at the top, showing about the size of a 

 dime out of water, it may be sufl&cient or it may not, ac- 

 cording to the amount of ferment contained in the honey, 

 and also according to the temperature after the mixture is 

 made. To make vinegar there must be an alcoholic fermen- 

 tation previous to the acetic, and the more thorough the 

 first fermentation is, the better the acetic fermentation will 

 be. 



In order to hasten the fermentation, it is best to add 

 some fresh fruit-juice to your honey-water. Then, if the 

 liquid is cold, or if the temperature is low, it is best to heat 

 the liquid till it reaches about 90 or 100 degrees. If it is kept 

 warm, the fermentation will soon begin, and if it remains 

 exposed to the air it will be but a short time till the sour 

 taste begins to show. 



We never allow any honey to go to waste. The wash- 

 ing of the cappings in a well-regulated apiary will furnish 

 enough vinegar for two or three families, even if only a 

 few hundred pounds of honey have been uncapped. In a 

 large apiary the cappings are first drained through the un- 

 capping-can in a warm room till they seem perfectly dry, 

 and even then several barrels of sweet liquid can be secured 

 from the washing of the cappings of 15 or 20 thousand pounds 

 of honey. We figure that each thousand pounds of honey 

 extracted gives us about 1,^ pounds of beeswax from the cap- 

 pings, and, perhaps, five gallons of sweet water fit to make 

 good vinegar. So the apiarist should never render his bees- 

 wax till it has been thoroughly washed. 



Vinegar that will not sour maj* lack two or three things, 

 which are all needed. Sufficient warmth, as stated above. 

 If all other requirements are right, it will still be impossible 

 for vinegar to sour if the weather is cold. A good place to 

 keep a gallon of vinegar is right behind the kitchen stove. 

 In a few days a jug full of mild vinegar will become very 



