70 



THE A3IEBICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



April 



surprise of a new editor in charge. It 

 looks well throughout, so I think we 

 had better accept it as all right. I 

 wish the new editor great success. 

 Chenango Bridge, N. Y. 



Bee-keeping in Old Mexico. 



Written for the American Bee- Keeper. 



BY F. BUSSLER. 



'ERE in Orizaba, having everlast 

 [(©If ing spring, the mountains which 

 '^^'^ surround us are filled with black 

 bees, and modern methods are laughed 

 at by the natives. Any kind of old 

 boxes are used as hives, and one can 

 hardly find a bee-keeper who knows 

 anything of the interior life of a hive. 



On the plateaus, where the climate 

 is, of course, very different from ours 

 here in the valley, are found accumula- 

 tions of from 200 to 300 colonies — you 

 would not call them apiaries — which 

 are handled mostly by Indians. Mexi- 

 cans say that honey is no good for eat- 

 ing, it is too irritating, and they have 

 the bees only for the wax, which is 

 worth from $1.00 to $1.50 a pound. 



In the terra caliente (hot lands) one 

 only finds twenty to thirty hives at a 

 time, and these are dwindling away. Of 

 course they talk many superstitious 

 things about bees and their dying off, 

 but I know it is only on account of 

 their carelessness and bee moths. I 

 am sure that Mexico could produce 

 twice the amount of honey that could 

 be produced in the United States. 



Some three years ago I saw some 

 bees near here and at once took the 

 "bee fever." I had never kept bees be- 

 fore, being by profession a German 

 gardener, though I am now one of the 

 leading bee-keepers of this section. I 

 have changed the Langstroth hive 

 more to my liking by making the 

 frames shorter and by putting them in 

 crosswise, and am now working hard 

 to have it adopted as a standard here. 

 I made the first public display of bees 

 and hives ever shown here, at a recent 

 exposition, and took as first prize$100 

 in cash. I am now keeping the Mexi- 



cans awake by writing little articles 

 for El Progresso de Mexico , on bee- 

 keeping. I mostly translate American 

 articles and change them to suit the 

 minds of the readers, just I did the 

 hive, and am also translating an Am- 

 erican bee-book into Spanish. 



It is only in the most favorable seas- 

 ons that bee-keeping pays in this lo- 

 cality. 



Colonia Mantey, Orizaba, Mexico. 



The Farmer and the Market. 



Written for the American Bee-Keeper. 



BY M. W. SHEPHERD. 



HAT an awful pity it is that the 

 scalawag farmer is so heedless 



^"^ of the rules of propriety as to 

 be continually knocking down the 

 price of honey by putting his product 

 of the "busy bee" on the market so in- 

 ferior in quality and condition. Of 

 course if some great manufacturers of 

 supplies buy honey by the car-load and 

 dump it on the retail market for less 

 money than the small producer can af- 

 ford to sell for, that might be called 

 philanthropy by some, but the farmer 

 and others who may hare a few hun- 

 dred pounds to sell, look at it in an 

 altogether different light. The farmer 

 goes to town with some pure extracted 

 clover honey, and offers it for sale for 

 eight cents per pound; and the grocer 

 says, "why, look here, I just bought a 

 dozen cans of choice alfalfa honey that 

 came clear from Colorado, (Nevada, 

 California or some other far-away 

 country), and I will sell you, my rustic 

 friend, all your old mare can haul 

 home for six and one-half cents per 

 pound." Clodhopper scratches his head, 

 where hayseed is thickest, and says, 

 "gee whiz! who demoralized this honey 

 market, I wonder?" 



The farmer don't scrape the sections. 

 Now that is certainly awful. But I 

 peep into a commission house, and 

 say: Who sent this honey? They tell 

 me, "Mr. So and So; is that not mighty 

 fine?" But I see the sections are not 

 scraped, and I say some farmer bee- 



