392 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



June 21. 1900 



PUBLISHT WEEKLY BY 



GEORGE W. York & Company, 



113 Michigan Street, Chicago, III. 



[Entered at the Post-Office at Chicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter.] 



DEPARTMENT EDITORS: 



C. C. MILLER, E. E. HASTY, 



" Questions and Answers." * * " The Afterthought." 



LEADING CONTRIBUTORS: 



C. p. Dadant, Prof. A. J. Cook, 



R. C. AiKiN, "Old Grimes." 



G. M. DOOLITTLE, 



F. A. Snell, 



IMPORTANT NOTICES: 



The Subscription Price of this journal is $1.00 a year, in the United States, 

 Canada, and Me.'iico; all other countries in the Postal Union, SO cents 

 a year extra for postage. Sample copy free. 



The Wrapper-Label Date of this paper indicates the end of the month to 

 which your subscription is paid. For instance, "DecOO" on your 

 label shows that it is paid to the end of December, 1900. 



Subscription Receipts. — We do not send a receipt for money sent us to pay 

 subscription, but change the date on your wrapper-label, which shows 

 you that the money has been received and duly credited. 



Advertising: Rates will be given upon application. 



VOL. 40. 



JUNE 21. 1900. 



NO. 25 



Note— The American Bee Journal adopts the Orthography of the follow- 

 ing Rule, recommended by the joint action of the American Philolog- 

 ical Association and the Philological Society of England: — Change 

 *'d" or "ed" final to "t" when so pronounced, except when the "e" af- 

 fects a preceding sound. Also some other changes are used. 



"That Poor Joke " is what the Farm, Field and Fire- 

 side calls the newspaper yarn printed on pape 249 of this 

 journal, and credited to the New York Mail and Express. 

 The story was copied from the New York Mail into the 

 Farm, Field and Fireside, with no hint that it was anything 

 but news, whereupon we sent a letter of protest to the pub- 

 lishers of the Farm, Field and Fireside. This latter paper 

 seems deeply imprest with the fact that those who have to 

 do with bees are a very serious people, and is evidently 

 very much surprised that the American Bee Journal could 

 not see at a glance that the whole thing was " intended as 

 a pleasantry," and closes by saying ; 



" All this is sad if it is not funny. If there is a child 

 six years old who reads the Farm, Field and Fireside, and 

 who does not know that the bee makes over what it gets 

 from the flower, or from the feeding-tray, and produces 

 real honey ; and if there is any one of our readers that did 

 not see the 'pleasantry ' in the glucose story, we certainly 

 recommend to them a vacation, and a little free air and 

 sunshine. They are working too hard. And our good 

 friends of the Journal need to cheer up and expend a little 

 of the proceeds of their industry in making a good bee- 

 paper, in a playtime in the country. We would be pleased 

 to join them in a good, old-fashioned bee-hunt, such as we 

 used to have with our father, either in apple-blossom time 

 or later, when the goldenrod is out, and the bees are 

 happiest." 



The need of " a playtime in the country " is felt to the 

 full; and there is no doubt the Farm, Field and Fireside 

 people would be pleasant companions, but a bee-hunt in 



apple-blossom time would be somewhat ill-timed, seeing 

 that is the time in the year when the bees' stores get to 

 their lowest. However, it is not easy to see how a playtime 

 in the country would help toward nullifying the ill effects 

 of " that poor joke. " Fven admitting that the readers of 

 the Farm, Field and Fireside are so intelligent that they 

 need no vacation, it does not follow that some of the bor- 

 rowers of the paper might not be misled. 



It is a matter of history that not many years ago the 

 statement was made as a " pleasantry " that glucose was 

 put into artificial comb, sealed up without the aid of bees, 

 and put upon the market in large quantities. Of course, it 

 was much easier to see the pleasantry in that than in the 

 "poor joke " in question, but for all that it was taken seri- 

 ously by the great public as it made the rounds of the 

 papers, giving a severe blow to the sale of comb honey 

 from which it took years to recover. That this " poor joke " 

 will do harm in the same way is hardly doubtful, and those 

 who have helpt to speed it on its way ought to be glad to 

 undo so far as possible the harm they have done to an in- 

 dustrious, if also a very serious, class of people. 



It is to the credit of the Farm, Field and Fireside that 

 it has done its part toward discrediting the "poor joke," 

 and it would be still more to its credit if it could have made 

 a manly retraction without the attempt to bring ridicule 

 upon those who made a proper protest against its unin- 

 tended injustice. 



It is to be hoped that good, and good only, will come to 

 the six-year-old readers of our esteemed contemporary from 

 its wholesale recommendation of a vacation, for it is cer- 

 tain that not one of them knows "that the bee makes over 

 what it gets from the flower or from the feeding-tray and 

 produces real honey," seeing that even a brilliant six-year- 

 old can hardly know what is not true. 



Keeping Up Honey=Prices. — Mr. E. B. Foster, in 

 Gleanings in Bee-Culture, gives his method of trying to 

 maintain the present prices of honey in his home market. 

 Here is a copy of the letter he has sent to the bee-keepers in 

 his immediate locality : 



Mr. Beb-KkkpBR : — I take this means of laying before 

 you a matter of much importance and interest to you, which 

 I trust you will carefully consider. The present indications 

 are such that we can look for some surplus honey this sea- 

 son. Now, the vital question that confronts us will be the 

 converting of that honey into the largest possible amount 

 of cash. You no doubt have observed the steady advance 

 in price of nearly all articles we consumers have to buy ; 

 you are also aware that the honey quotations rule about 20 

 percent higher than last year. Why not maintain the pres- 

 ent price of honey by combining our interests and holding 

 out for the advanced price, thereby causing that which we 

 have to sell to compare favorably in price with what we 

 have to buy ? The only way we can accomplish the desired 

 result is not to sell our honey for less than the present 

 price, and prevail upon our neighboring bee-keepers to do 

 likewise. As an illustration : 



A farmer bee-keeper, a year ago, had some dark and 

 travel-stained comb honey which he disposed of at a price 

 that enabled the grocer to whom he sold it to put a glaring 

 advertisement in the local paper, " New comb hone)', 8 cents 

 per pound." That "8 cents per pound " was a criterion the 

 rest of the season. Every customer whom you told that you 

 were asking IS cents per one-pound section would say, 

 " Why, I can buy honey at the grocery store for 8 cents." 

 You know the result. While you were not asking more for 

 your fancy white article in nice clean sections than it was 

 worth, you were compelled, nevertheless, to lower your 

 price to meet the values created by that one inferior batch 

 of honey that some thoughtless or ignorant keeper of bees 

 had placed on the market. Our customers do not realize the 

 difl^erence in honey as they do the difi'erence in price. 



E. B. Foster. 



We commend Mr. Foster's sensible plan to bee-keepers 

 everywhere who have a home market for their honey crop. 

 There is no doubt much money lost to bee-keepers every 



