582 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Sept. 13, 1900. 



I Contributed Articles. | 



Letter from Mr. C. P. Dadant, Now in France. 



L,E Chalet, Nyon, France, Aug-. 22, 1900. 



DEAR MR. YORK :— You must think that I am very 

 neglectful of the promise I made j-ou to write you from 

 Europe, about bee-culture abroad. I must say, in expla- 

 nation, that two things have detained me from writing, the 

 main one being that I have seen but little of bee-culture so 

 far. The other reason is, that I have traveled so much, 

 and have so well occupied my time, that I have found no 

 occasion to put my thoughts and observations on paper. 



I came to Europe ostensibly to represent American bee- 

 keeping at the Paris Congress, but more particularly to 

 visit the land of my birth, and the home of my young days. 

 It is now 37 years since we landed in America, and we are 

 more attacht to our adopted country than to the land of our 

 birth ; but a visit to the scenes of one's childhood has an 

 invincible attraction. I went to the city where I was born 

 — Langres — on top of a high cliff, a walled fortress, such as 

 does not exist in America ; and when I reacht it I found 

 myself much in the position of Rip Van Winkle, after his 

 20 years' sleep, with the difference that the time was 37 years 

 instead of 20. and that I had been wide awake a good por- 

 tion of that time. But one generation has past, and I find 

 the sons where their fathers used to be. Friends of 25 years 

 of age are now 62. It is old age instead of youth. 



So far, as I already said, I have seen but few bee-keep- 

 ers, at Rouen, at Pierre, in the valley of the Saone, at 

 Macon. I find that, in France, practical bee-keeping is 

 only practiced by educated men — school-teachers, doctors, 

 lawyers, priests and cures, and a few retired merchants. 

 In the country, the villages, the peasants still cling to the 

 old ways, and it is difficult to pull them out of the rut. 

 Education, tho gratuitous, is still not so generally diffused 

 as among our American countries, and people are either 

 better educated, more scientifically, more thoroly, in a more 

 classical manner, than in America, or they are more ignor- 

 ant, slower, more rusty, than our roughest classes. Hence 

 their slow progress. But in return we can see highly edu- 

 cated men of most ancient houses who are as progressive 

 as any of our Americans, and who are impatiently trying to 

 draw the peasants out of the rut in all industries, as well as 

 in bee-keeping. 



I believe it will interest you in this connection to hear 

 of an establishment which I visited in the city of my birth. 

 I stopt with a friend, a manufacturer of cutlery, Mr. 

 Beligne ; staid a week at his home, and had occasion to 

 visit his office and his warerooms. In a massive stone 

 building, 500 or 600 years old, the office is a spacious room 

 with desks and closets. This room is warmed in winter by 

 a stove of queensware (faience), elegantly ornamented with 

 brass mouldings, and of snowy whiteness. In each angle 

 of the room is a niche with the bust of some noted man of 

 ancient days. On the walls, carefully framed, are old cir- 

 culars, advertisements, on coarse paper, dating back as far 

 as 1780, 1690, 1610, the latter being the oldest, showing that 

 the great, great, etc., grandfather of the present owner, 

 bearing the same name, was already a manufacturer of cut- 

 lery 290 years ago. But let me quote verbatim : 



"Didier Beligne, master cutler, at Langres, at the sign 

 of the Royal Scepter, manufactures and sells razors, lan- 

 cets, knives, and all surgical and tonsorial instruments. 

 Langres, 1610." 



Is not this wonderful ? A business kept up, from father 

 to son, for 290 years, and perhaps longer, for this is only the 

 length of time traced back by actual prints 1 We have no 

 idea of the steadiness of an industry which has been handed 

 from father to son for three centuries. This alone is an 

 advertisement, for it attracts the attention, and one can 

 not help thinking that a business which has been kept up 

 for so many years, and has been on the increase, must have 

 been carefully conducted, and on safe but progressive prin- 

 ciples, and must have an intrinsic value. 



Mr. Beligne produces some 3,200 difl'erent patterns of 

 cutlery, manufactured either under his supervision or for 

 his trade, which extends all over Europe. They seek but 

 little trade in America, owing to the heavy tariffs, but they 

 do extensive business with Russia, Germany, Italy, Switzer- 



land and Spain. Not only are the manufacturers steadily 

 engaged from father to son, in the same line for centuries, 

 but they often keep the same employees from father to son. 

 Our friend introduced me to a man in his employ whose 

 grandfathers were employed by his own grandfather. 



In these ancient places, one would think that the latest 

 discoveries of civilization would be slow to come, but they 

 are very readily taking advantage of the latest invention — 

 the telephone, the typewriter, the electric tramway, and 

 electric appliances, etc. Why, then, is bee-culture so far 

 behind ? Because bee-culture belongs to the rural pursuits, 

 and the peasants, as I said before, are still uneducated. 

 Routine is absolute queen of the French village. The 

 houses are old, the manners are quaint. The entire house- 

 hold is under one roof, and from the kitchen you can pass 

 into the barn, thence to the wagon-sheds, and thence to the 

 stables, without steppi:ig out-of-doors. So the apiary is 

 still represented by straw skeps or willow baskets, care- 

 fully daubed with mud in all their joints. If there is a 

 progress, it is found in the apiary of the schoolmaster, or 

 of the cure, of the village doctor, or of some wide-awake 

 horticulturist, who has brought home from the city college, 

 or from the county fair, some new ideas, and a few good 

 books. 



But as the people are evidently conservative, as all 

 changes are hooted at and condemned, they hesitate very 

 much to change from the old ways to the new, and I have 

 met men who extolled the movable-frame hives owing to 

 ■the understanding they had of the manipulations they per- 

 mit, but who were absolutely determined to use them only 

 to hive new swarms, without any thought of transferring 

 the bees out of their old skeps into new styles, unless the 

 hives were entirely rotten. 



Honey sells at a good price, and no wonder, for sugar 

 retails at double the price we pay in the United States, and 

 we all know that honey closely follows the price of sugar. 

 But why does the Frenchman paj' so high for his sugar? 

 Because there is a high revenue tariff on sugar, and at the 

 same time a premium to the exporter. Thus, French sugar 

 sells in Switzerland at 5 cents per pound, while the French- 

 man has to pay 10 cents for the same article. He is, there- 

 fore, giving a premium to a few sugar factories in order 

 that he may pay more for the article for his own consump- 

 tion. That is a finely constructed method of helping prog- 

 ress, is it not ? Protection a outraiue. 



Among things of no value to us, I have seen, at Pierre, 

 a lot of honey of the very best qualitj', put up in glass 

 tixmblers, the smallest of which, I was told, holds 40 

 grammes of honey, or about one-tenth of a pound. These 

 glasses sold for 3 cents, and as the tumbler itself costs only 

 a cent, the honey is thus retailed at 20 cents per pound. 



Labor is exceedingly cheap, and they do things that we 

 would not think of doing. For instance, an apiary will be 

 surrounded with fine flower beds and gravel walks, altho 

 the hives themselves, if they were in our hands, would 

 either be considered as unfit for use, or would be lookt upon 

 as very inferior specimens of workmanship. 



Scientific investigations, among the educated, are fol- 

 lowed very closeh-. I met an old doctor who had analj-zed 

 honey taken just after it had been harvested by the bee, 

 and at the same time some nectar from the blossoms on 

 which the bees had been working. He had also tested the 

 density of the honey comparatively when taken from the 

 bloom in the early morning and at noon. Yet he was not 

 a chemist, but had simply wisht to satisfy himself, and by 

 close personal examination, of the quality and condition of 

 the honev his bees produced. 



I am at present enjoying the hospitality of our good 

 friend, Mr. Bertrand, in his fine chalet on the shores of the 

 lake of Geneva. Mr. Bertrand is the worthy editor of the 

 Revue Internationale d'Apiculture. We are to have a meet- 

 ing of Swiss bee-keepers here, and in some future letter I 

 will speak of this, as also of my visit to the apiaries of Mr. 

 Maigre, at Macon. France. 



We are to remain here another week, then go to Paris, 

 and two weeks later we go back to dear America. 



Your friend, C. P. D.\danT. 



Wanted Better Prices for Honey. 



BY H. D. BURKEI.I.. 



AVERY small crop of honey is reported from nearly all 

 sections this season. Because of this fact, it seems to 

 me the present quotations for honey in the city mar- 

 kets are too low. There has been a sharp advance in prices 



