THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPEB. 



Wl 



It is said, in Australian Bee Bulletin, 

 that California and , Jamaica honey 

 holds first place in the London mar- 

 kets. The Bee-Keeper would welcome 

 any bee-keeping information with 

 which our Jamaica subscribers might 

 favor us, regarding that fruitful and 

 picturesque isle of the Caribbean. 



The latest account of Fred L. Cray- 

 craft, of Cuba, with whom we had ar- 

 ranged for some bee-keeping articles 

 for publication, was a letter to his 

 father, Mr. John Craycraft, of Florida, 

 dated Havana, April 18th, in which he 

 stated in the event of war he would 

 disappear into the mountains and join 

 the Cubans. Further intelligence is 

 awaited by his parents with anxiety, 

 which is hopefully shared by the bee- 

 keeping fraternity. 



That spongy residue often scraped 

 from cakes of beeswax, and gener- 

 ally supposed to be caused by a mix- 

 ture of pollen, propolis and other im- 

 purities, is in fact a result of too much 

 boiling, by which the water is taken in- 

 to the disorganized body of the wax, 

 says C. P. Dadant, in American Bee 

 Journal. Wax should be melted slowly, 

 boiled but little and always with water 

 both inside and outside of the recepta- 

 cle; then allow it to cool slowly. Da- 

 dant is authority on beeswax. 

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There are in the United States 110 

 apairian societies, eight journals de- 

 voted exclusively to this industry, and 

 15 steam factories for the manufacture 

 of the hives and apiarian implements. 

 There are 300,000 persons engaged in 

 the culture of the bee, and, according 

 to the United States census report, 

 they produced in 1869 14,603,815 pounds 

 of honey, and in 1889, twenty years 

 later, 53,894,168 pounds. According to 

 the eleventh census, the value of the 

 honey and wax production of the 

 United States at wholesale rates, was 

 $7,000,000 and a conservative estimate 

 of the present annual production is 

 $20,000,000.— Green's Fruit Grower. If 



but one-tenth of these 300,000 bee-keep- 

 ers were members of the United States 

 Bee-Keepers' Union, what would be the 

 annual production and consumption of 

 honey in the United States, ten years 

 hence? Think of it; we can do it if 

 we will. Will we? 



Where the natural extension of the 

 brood-nest is hampered by stores of 

 honey, bees sometimes transfer a por- 

 tion of it to the super when placed up- 

 on the hive. If dark or inferior grades 

 are below, in such cases, the white 

 honey crop in the sections suffers as a 

 result of the mixture. The last report 

 of the Ontario Agricultural college 

 shows this to have occurred in seven 

 out of ten cases; and the apiarist ad- 

 vises placing an extracting story above 

 until the brood-nest is fully developed. 

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Bees, says Horbis, can embalm as 

 successfully as could the ancient Egyp- 

 tians. It often happens in damp 

 weather that a slug or snail will enter 

 a beehive. This is, of course, to the 

 unprotected slug a case of sudden 

 death. The bees fall upon him and 

 sting him to death at once. But what 

 to do with the carcass becomes a vital 

 question. If left where it is, it will 

 breed a regular pestilence. Now comes 

 in the cleverness of the insects. They 

 set to work and cover it with wax, and 

 there you may see it lying embalmed 

 just as the nations of old embalmed 

 their dead. When it is a snail that is 

 the intruder, he is, of course, impene- 

 trable to their sting, so they calmly ce- 

 ment his shell with wax to the bottom 

 of the hive — imprisonment for life 

 with no hope for pardon.— Ex. To those 

 who have not chanced to observe a 

 similar instance, this may be regarded 

 as somewhat imaginary. Yet all ex- 

 perienced bee-keepers know that it is 

 according to the bees' nature, and pre- 

 cisely what they would do in such 

 cases. We have seen a three-inch liz- 

 zard thus entombed in a hive. Not 

 with "wax," of course, but propolis. 



