678 



AMERICAN BEE lOURNAL. 



Oct. 25, 1900. 



One of the burning: questions of the day is how to pre- 

 vent the fraudulent sale of adulterated honey and imitations 

 of honey. A pure-food commissioner and a corps of assis- 

 tants to help enforce the law seems to work well in Ohio. 

 Constant inspections of sales of honey and other foods, and 

 analyses followed by prosecutions, are necessary to prevent 

 fraud, and control in any degree the operations of the 

 misers. 



A pure-food law has just gone into effect in Illinois. 

 A pure-food commissioner, an assistant, a chemist and a 

 number of inspectors, have been appointed under the law, 

 and efforts are being made to enforce the law. As far as I 

 am informed no prosecutions for frauds in honey have 

 been begun, but it has been only about two months since 

 the law went into effect. 



Bee-keepers should work as one man for good pure-food 

 statutes in all the States. They are on the winning side, 

 for all the people are for pure food by instinct. 



Every bee-keeper, as well as every citizen, can aid this 

 good vpork by reporting to the proper authorities, with a 

 sample purchast, every case of violation of the law. 



A well-known bee-keeper says that when a man deeds 

 land he does not convey the honey in the flowers. Why ? 

 One reason may be that he can not deliver it. It would 

 seem to be elementary that you can not sell anything you 

 can not deliver. This question opens up a big field in more 

 ways than one. What are the rights of the first bee-keeper 

 in any given locality ? Has he any rights that the later 

 arrival is bond to respect ? 



This matter of overstocking any given locality is sure 

 to be more and more interesting as people increase in num- 

 bers per square miles. Even now, in certain localities, 

 specially favored with extraordinary honey-flows, there is 

 danger of overstocking. As far as I know no law has been 

 made touching this question. How would it do for counties 

 to give a license to the first comer, for a certain number of 

 colonies in a certain territory, rights assignable ? 



Herman F. Moorb. 



swbet clover as a weed and valuable plant. 



R. H. Longworth — What may we do to anticipate 

 action by our legislature unfavorable to the growth of 

 sweet clover ? They have made the laws different in Iowa 

 in the last year or two in regard to cutting the weeds in the 

 highways; they call sweet clover a weed, and they fight it 

 like we would rattlesnakes. They are now cutting it twice 

 a year, and the law is made so now in regard to weeds, not 

 only in the highways, but in other places, that no one need 

 to be bothered, they say, with a weed growing on their 

 neighbors' farms. All they have to do is to complain to the 

 trustees of the township, and they will see that the weeds 

 are eradicated from the man's farm. I look ahead and see 

 the time coming that after the sweet clover is killed out of 

 the highwaj's and waste-places, if we want to have a ten- 

 acre patch of sweet clover, I fear there will be a law against 

 our growing it. What may be done to anticipate that kind 

 of action by the legislature? 



Pres. Root — You want to know how we can anticipate 

 unfavorable legislation destroying the sweet clover that is 

 so valuable to bee-keepers ? 



Mr. Longworth — On our farms. 



Pres. Root — On the edges of them and the highways. 

 Those who have been in our legislatures elsewhere perhaps 

 know how to anticipate them. 



N. E. France — In reply to that last question I would say 

 that Wisconsin had sweet clover on the list of noxious 

 weeds for a term of years. The bee-keepers, thru their 

 associations, askt the legislature to take it off that list, and 

 thru the reasons shown to the members of the legislature 

 that it was not a noxious weed, it was removed. The next 

 season, as I was out on my State work, among the first 

 things I was called on in Milwaukee by a weed-warden. He 

 ordered a field of sweet clover to be plowed as a noxious 

 weed, the owner of the ground claiming that it was his 

 land, and he had sown the crop for his bees ; that the weed- 

 warden had no jurisdiction in there, and he called on me as 

 counsel. I askt the weed-warden to show me a copy of the 

 law which he was serving ; he showed it to me, and I said, 

 " My dear, sir, why don't you execute the law of to-day? 

 That law is four years old. The law to-day says sweet 

 clover is not on the noxious weed list, and you have no 

 jurisdiction." He submitted the question, acknowledged 

 that he was executing a law that was old and dead, and we 

 now have no such thing as sweet clover on the list of nox- 

 ious weeds in Wisconsin. The only way we can accomplish 

 anything is by joining together in societies. 



Frank Coverdale — There'is the point. In Iowa sweet 



clover is not yet counted a noxious weed in the law ; it is 

 not included. The law does not specify any noxious weed. 

 It provides for the cutting of weeds, specifying nothing, 

 but I fear that the law will in a few years specify sweet 

 clover because there is such an enmity towards it now. 



Rev. E. T. Abbott — Sweet clover is my pet, and I am in 

 favor of having my pets preserved, and I don't think there 

 is any danger or any occasion to be alarmed about sweet 

 clover being declared a nuisance. I live right close to 

 Iowa. We Missourians are given credit for asking to be 

 shown everything and not knowing much. I have un- 

 bounded faith and confidence in the intelligence of the peo- 

 ple who till the soil in Iowa. I don't think there is cussed- 

 ness enough in Iowa in the 19th Century, verging on the 

 20th, to call sweet clover a nuisance, or to declare it a weed. 

 If I wanted to guard against it, the way I would do it would 

 be to call on the editors of some of the papers and ask them 

 to say something about it, and thereby teach the people 

 what sweet clover is, and some of its merits. The coming 

 industry of the world — Belgian hares — will eat it right 

 along without being taught. By the way, let me tell you 

 how to cure sweet clover for hay, altho this is not a farm- 

 er's meeting. There isn't over one farmer in three hundred 

 that knows how to cure sweet clover for hay. He thinks 

 the sun ought to cure, but it burns it, it doesn't cure it. Let 

 it cure itself. The leaves have pores, and the stems have 

 not. There is no chance for moisture to evaporate out of 

 the stems, but the leaves act like pumps, and they can pump 

 the moisture out of the stems. If you want to cure sweet 

 clover, and do it well so that it will be of some value as hay, 

 don't cut it down and let the hot sun dry it ; the hot sun 

 immediately destroys the action of the pumps. Don't do 

 that, but put it up in the shade so the winds can blow thru 

 it. The leaves will keep green, and those leaves will go to 

 work and pump the moisture out of the stems ; and as soon 

 as they get their work done the stems will be dry, and you 

 will have hay that anything will eat, and that is the only 

 way to make hay of any kind. Nine-tenths of the hay that 

 comes into the markets in large cities is not fit for anything 

 to eat. Any man ought to be ashamed to bring lots of it to 

 market, yet the farmers are making that kind of hay all the 

 time. You can't cure sweet clover any other way than by 

 letting the leaves pump the moisture out of the stems ; they 

 are so large that it won't evaporate. The only thing neces- 

 sary with sweet clover is to talk about it. I am writing 

 about it all the time in the Modern Farmer — writing about 

 it as tho I thought nobody on earth knew anything about 

 it. The truth of the matter is, there are only a few people 

 who do know about it. Kansans just found out the other 

 day from the Kansas Farmer, that sweet clover hay is 

 of some use ; and the funny thing was, that men who are 

 connected with the Kansas Farmer, who are interested in 

 fine horses, got to discussing the matter with each other, 

 and one of them said (and, by the way, I had been talking 

 this very same way about sweet clover for six years, but it 

 didn't do any good — didn't make any impression on them). 

 Well, he said, " I cut some of that sweet clover the other 

 day and gave it to my horse, and he ate it up. He is a kind 

 of a fool horse, doesn't seem to have much sense, and he 

 ate it right up." The other fellow replied, " My horse won't 

 eat it." The first man then said, "When you go home, cut 

 some of the sweet clover and cure it thoroly and give it to 

 your horse, and see if he won't eat it." He did so, and what 

 was the result. The next time he called on me he said, "I 

 tried my horse on that. He is a horse that will eat almost 

 everything, and, strange to say, he ate that entirely up and 

 whinnied for more." They have just discovered over in 

 Kansas that sweet clover is fit for something besides bees. 

 It is the best thing for dairy cows outside of alfalfa ; there 

 is nothing grown to-day that will make so much milk for 

 the amount of energy exerted as sweet clover; the man 

 who lets a cow starve while there is a pasture of sweet 

 clover makes a mistake. I know plenty of people who let 

 their cows eat ragweed where they eat two inches into the 

 dirt, and haven't brains enough to cut sweet clover for 

 them. I think we will get them taught after awhile that 

 sweet clover has some little value. It is a very nice thing 

 to tell us zvhat we ought to do ; it is a great deal nicer to 

 tell us /lozv to do it. We have acres and acres in m3' locality, 

 and we have the shade to cure it. 



Dr. Mason — I wish Mr. Abbott would tell us how to make 

 shade. 



Mr. Abbott — If Dr. Mason doesn't know that the 

 Almighty makes the shade more than half the year he 

 would better find it out. 



Dr. Mason — He hasn't done it in our locality this sum- 

 mer. We have had more sweet clover this year than ever 



