AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



145 



days of its bloom. Not so with catnip — 

 it yields honey incessantly. 



Even sweet clover is only an experi- 

 ment, some reporting success, others 

 failure. It has several bad points. Dr. 

 Miller reports its adversity to taking a 

 foothold, and also takes two years to 

 bloom. 



Mr. Root's basswood orchard of 4,000 

 trees, covering some 10 acres which 

 must have cost an immense amount of 

 money, besides occupying these 10 acres 

 for 10 years before blooming, is now 

 reported to be covered with buds — some- 

 thing which he says has not happened 

 for years. Besides the honey-yield, these 

 trees are good for nothing except being 

 one of the finest shade-trees in the world. 



Therefore, I am satisfied that catnip 

 is the best honey-producing plant in the 

 world. Mr. Quinby is quoted in "AB 

 C of Bee-Culture," that if he were to 

 grow any plant exclusively for the honey 

 it produced, that plant would be catnip. 

 It yields an excellent honey, and the 

 reason it has not caught universal at- 

 tention is that it is so scarce. The leaves 

 can be gathered for tea, and sold to 

 druggists. The seed also finds ready 

 sale. I hope all bee-keepers will give it 

 a trial. 



Evansville, Ind., July 9. 



Paper Pans for Sliliiiis[-Cases. 



Mr. G. M. Doolittle was asked the 

 following question, and requested to re- 

 ply to it in Gleanings, which he did in 

 the number for July 15th : 



Question. — I understand that you use 

 paper pans inside of your shipping-cases, 

 to catch the drip from any section that 

 may chance to "bleed" from any rea- 

 son, thus preventing this drip from soil- 

 ing the cases of honey which may be be- 

 low it, as it otherwise would, were no 

 such thing used. What I should like to 

 know is, how you fold these paper pans. 

 I have a way of folding them over a 

 sheet of tin, cut to fit the inside of the 

 case ; but it is rather slow where hun- 

 dreds of them have to be prepared in a 

 single season. It seems to me that some 

 simple machine might be devised to do 

 the folding with one or two motions, 

 without having to go over each edge and 

 corner separatelv. 



Answer. — This question comes in very 

 opportunely, as now is the time we 

 should prepare our honey for market; 

 and I know of no one thing which helps 



as much to bring favor to our goods as 

 do these paper pans in the bottom of 

 each case. 



While in New York, some years ago, 

 I saw cases of honey piled ten and 

 twelve high, and the drip from the up- 

 per cases ran all the way down to the 

 floor, daubing the snow-white cases, 

 which had been gotten out and put up 

 with great pains, not only spoiling all 

 their beauiy, but making them a sticky, 

 nasty mess to handle. Up to that time 

 I had not used paper pans ; but then re- 

 solved that I would try to fix some way 

 so that my honey should not appear in 

 market in that condition. 



That winter I met Samuel Snow, a 

 quiet bee-keeper residing in our county, 

 at the New York State Bee-Keepers' 

 Convention, and in a private conversa- 

 tion with him, he told me that he used 

 paper pans for the prevention of drip 

 through shipping-cases, telling minutely 

 how he made them, kind of paper used, 

 etc. The next season found me buying 

 manilla paper, of a quality costing 10 

 cents per pound, in quantities of from 

 five to ten pounds, when a piece of board 

 was fitted to the inside of the case, the 

 board being % inch thick. The paper was 

 now cut 1% larger each way. than was 

 this board, so that, when this paper was 

 folded up evenly all around it, the sides 

 of the paper pans were just % deep. 



The pan was then slipped inside of 

 the case, and a little strip of wood, just 

 as long as the case was wide, and }4 

 inch wide by B 16 thick, was placed at 

 such distances along the inside of the 

 paper pan as was necessary, so that the 

 ends of the sections rested upon it, thus 

 keeping them up 3/16 of an inch from 

 the paper, thus allowing the drip to rest 

 below the sections, so that the outside 

 of the cases was never soiled, while the 

 bottoms of the sections were kept clean 

 also, if anything should occur to start 

 the honey in them leaking. This, of 

 course, requires the cases to be made 

 3 '16 deeper than they would be were 

 it not for these little strips of wood ; but 

 the keeping of the sections clean is of 

 fully as much importance as the prevent- 

 ing of the drip through the cases. 



I have kept leaking honey standing 

 all winter in such cases with paper pans, 

 and the manilla paper seemed sufficient 

 to stand a wetting of honey that length 

 of time, as none of it soaked through so 

 as to come though the case any. 



I am well aware that, so far, I have 

 not answered the question ; but I thought 

 that, if I said anything on the subject, 

 it should be made plain, so that any one 



