THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



303 



(£jOXXc^j^om\tnct. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Comb Foundation. 



Mr. Editor:— Now I have brood in all 

 stages in combs made on foundation. Mr. 

 Root lias said that any foundation that 

 stretched was impure. I put mine in a 

 frame 4^ in. deep by 22 in. long, attached 

 at the ton, with X in. space at ends and 1 

 in. at bottom. It stretched up and down till 

 the cells looked oval, in only this shallow 

 depth. I sent my wax to Mr. Nell is to be 

 made up, and he assures me tliis foundation 

 is from my wax. I believe him. I put the 

 sheets in 2{x3}4 in., and as straight as a 

 board, but when the heat of the hive struck 

 them they not only sagged, but warped or 

 kinked. No doubt bee-keepers can devise 

 ways and means (as perhaps many have al- 

 ready) to make the foundation hang true; 

 and no doubt bees will work them out, but 

 whether they will be found of profit as a 

 wax economist, is yet to be tested by years 

 of its use. 



Mr. Editor, you can set me down as an 



ITALIAN BEE MAN. 



I am as ready to speak their praises, as I 

 have been to tell their faults. I now have 

 -what I call my fifth distinct strain of Italian 

 blood. Tills 'strain differs distinctly from 

 the other four, in this way: the queens are 

 smaller, longer proportionately, darker — 

 leather colored, — and the workers the same, 

 besides they are much more docile, and bet- 

 ter workers than any Italians or blacks I 

 have seen before. They go into the little 

 boxes just as readily as black bees. One 

 peculiaf point is, that hybrids from this 

 strain and blacks are just as peaceable as 

 pure Italians. These bees are much hand- 

 somer than any others I have had, for 

 "handsome is, that handsome does." I 

 keep bees for the honey they produce, to 

 :spare. I keep them for prolit. I do not 

 wish to sell honey at prices that will make 

 me rich and deprive the people of enjoying 

 the luxury. On the other hand I do not 

 mean to get excited over some new (to nie) 

 development and come to the conclusion 

 that I can sell 1-tt tumblers for 15c. with 10 

 per cent, off, and take my pay in groceries 

 at that. 



By the way, let me say a few words about 



THE HONEY MARKET. 



California is crippled nigh into death, it 

 seems. Will not this lesson teach all of us 

 to sympathise with each other and look out 

 for breakers awaiting ourselves. As I 

 wrote you in a previous article, Cass county 

 has had her bees starve by hundreds of 

 colonies all summer long. As is well 

 known, I have done little to excite produc- 

 tion of honey, and much to create demand, 

 for one who only produces and sells his own 

 crop. Bee-keepers, have I worked for or 

 against your interest? Why should it be 

 the duty of every bee-keeper to help out- 

 siders into this business, while he goes 

 about trying to crowd his honey into an 

 already-glutted market, at the same time 

 "looking daggers" at his neighbors' honey 

 just in ahead of him; and even go so far as 

 to intimate adulteration on the part of his 

 neighbor and friend. 



Two milk peddlers here are " running" 

 each other. They are delivering milk, at a 

 convenient hour to us, at 3c. per quart; all 

 to spite each other, not to help us any. We 

 sit back and drink milk and sing: "Here's 

 two fat geese my cunning brothers, you 

 pluck one and we'll pluck t'other." Of 

 course one of these men is sadly to blame. 

 Don't let any of us represent that man. We 

 don't want to " put up jobs" nor combine 

 and " corner " the market, if we could, but 

 we want a fair competition and no spite 

 work. Don't come to the coucluaion, after 

 a few years of honey-raising, that you can 

 produce honey at Ic. per lb. Remember 

 that it is small draughts that intoxicate the 

 brain, and that you will ere long have to 

 swallow something that will sober it again. 



I think Mr. Root did wrong in advising 

 honey-producers to sell their honey early. 

 In many places in this State that advice has 

 been hastily followed, and every time the 

 result has been over-stocking and a sudden 

 decline in prices. I am not going to offer a 

 pound of honey at present. I believe the 

 late market will be the best. I see nothing 

 to prevent it, unless a grand early panic to 

 get rid of the "drug" demoralizes it. 



In my opinion every man who has put a 

 pound of extracted honey on the market 

 that was not all capped over and thoroughly 

 ripened before it was extracted, has done 

 himself and honey-producers generally a 

 great wrong. In one minute you may 

 prejudice a customer against your wares so 

 much that it will take you years to undo 

 the mischief. I look upon my stock of ex- 

 tracted honey about as I do a bank check. 

 Why? Because it is honey in every sense 

 of the word, and not nectar. It was capped 

 before extracted. 



OUR HONEY CROP. 



Mr. Editor, you have printed my whistle, 

 but I "whistled before I was out of the 

 woods." Our bass wood crop was only a 

 l>artial one, as it cut right off on July 16th, 

 giving us but lo days of yield, only 10 of 

 which was good. Can you tell us wiiy we 

 are going to get no more honey from 240 

 colonies than we have before realized, in no 

 better seasons, from 50 to 75 colonies? We 

 have worked the bees as closely as of old. 

 A bee-keeper of 40 years' experience, a 

 sharp and close observer, says he has ever 

 noticed that the fewer bees kept in a locali- 

 ty the better they did, down to 4 stocks. 

 lie says that I am entirely over-stocked at 

 my home apiary of 140 colonies. I think so 

 too, writers to the contrary not withstand- 

 ing. 



SLATE REGISTERS. 



Your slate registers strike me as among 

 the few supplies that pay the money back. 



FIXING A PRICE FOR HONEY. 



Cannot the bee-keepers of this country 

 establish a minimum price for honey, some- 

 where about the cost of production, and let 

 those who are favorably situated get all 

 they can and think best to take, while this 

 fixed price will serve as a guide to a large 

 number of producers who do not seem to 

 know anything about what honey does cost. 

 I find that consumers pay whatever is 

 asked, and why can't we have something to 

 say about price, as well as honey dealers? 

 Our business is an uncertain one, and it 

 seems to me we should be laying something 

 aside for a " rainy day," or as California 



