THE mmmmicKM beej joprniril. 



249 



One tiling, wu make a mistake wlien 

 we handle anything but liquid honey 

 when selling extracted. It is posi- 

 tively neoe.ssaiy to have it thoroughly 

 ripened. Still another, for retailing 

 say from one to five pounds, a glass 

 paekage is far preferable to anything 

 else, and that to be something that 

 can l)e utilized after the honey is all 

 eaten. For this purpose I have never 

 found anything better than one-quart, 

 self-sealing fruit-jars, whieh will hold 

 three pounils of well-ripened hone\'. 

 With a neat label on, it forms a very 

 convenient and attractive paekage, but 

 I have complaint from eustomei's, say- 

 ing that they were investing as much 

 money in glass as honey. The small 

 packages sell better in large cities. 



There is certainly a great amount of 

 " missionary work " to be (k>ne to edu- 

 cate tl'e people concerning extracted 

 honej'. Some persons I Hnd to be 

 willfully and maliciously inclined to 

 the opinion that it is adulterated. 

 After exhausting all the arguments 

 sufficient to convince anj' reasonable 

 person ("There are none so blind as 

 those that wo?it see"), they seem to 

 prefer believing some sensational 

 newspaper article, rather than the 

 word of a bee-keeper who has had ex- 

 perience in handling and selling noth- 

 ing but the pure article, well knowing 

 that it is to his interest to put nothing 

 but the very best on the market. Our 

 reputation in this day of competition 

 is worth nuich more than could pos- 

 sibly be obtained by the sale of a few 

 hundred pounds of adulterated honey ! 

 Some people persist in calling it 

 "Strained honey," when, at the same 

 time, if they had troubled themselves 

 to thitik one moment, they would know 

 better. One groceryman whom I visit- 

 ed with a sample can, when asked if 

 he wished to buy any extracted honey 

 like the sample (which, by the way, 

 was as nice as I got last summer, ex- 

 tracted in June), he replied : "No! 

 I don't want any .strained honey !" I 

 told him the difllerence between the 

 two ; his next subterfuge was that bee- 

 keepers " never extracted any honey 

 that they could sell in the comb !" His 

 insinuations were cut short by my re- 

 ply, which was not at all complimen- 

 tary to his judgment on honey-produc- 

 tion. However, I never allow any one 

 to make me lose control of my temper, 

 although I meet with some who are 

 certainly very exasperating, of which 

 the above is a fair sample. 



Another, a near neighbor who came 

 after honey, approached me in a kind 

 of a confldential manner, and wanted 

 me to tell him what I put into my ex- 

 tracted honey. As there was no one 

 present, I suppose he thought that he 

 was going to be let into a great secret. 

 Of course I told him nothing. "Then," 



said he, " why do you call it extrncteiiT' 

 I informed him that it received tiiat 

 name from the operation re([uired to 

 get it out of the comb, and not from 

 anything put into or about it. 



Others, on seeing a paekage of 

 granidated honej-, will innoeentl}' ask, 

 " What did yon ])ut into that honey to 

 make it become solid .''" 



Again, I have been told b3' some 

 "knowing ones" that they thought 

 that the " bee-business " was calculated 

 for some one not anxiously inclined to 



work. What fal 



acy ] 



Mau3' a time 



have I been more tired at night after 

 a day's work in the apiary, than I have 

 been when binding grain in the har- 

 vest field. I could continue giving 

 similar bits of experience, but I think 

 that the above are sufficient, as it onlj- 

 corresponds with that of the fraternity. 



I will ofl'er some suggestions as a 

 remedy : It would be a good plan for 

 bee-keepers to attend our count}- and 

 district fairs, take their extractors and 

 some honey in the comb, extract it in 

 the presence of all who wish to see, as 

 there is not " one person in a thou- 

 sand " in this vicinity that has ever 

 seen a pound of honey extracted, and 

 I suppose this locality is not an ex- 

 ception. 



Another great help, I am quite cer- 

 tain, would be a liberal distribution 

 of the " Honey Almanacs." If we can 

 do something to popularize the con- 

 sumption of extracted honey, it will 

 repay us for making an extraordinar}' 

 effort. 



Perhaps all be(!-keepers are not as 

 partial to the product as I am, but as 

 proof of my preference, I will say that 

 on our table, " at a rough estimate," I 

 do not think that we eat 10 pounds of 

 comb honey in a year ; while I think 

 that we "getaway" with about 300 

 pounds of extracted honey. 



It is certainly a mistake to neglect 

 to keep our home market supplied, in- 

 stead of shipping (jur product to the 

 large distributing points, to accumu- 

 late and perhaps bre;jk prices. 



Duncan, Ills. 



WINTERING. 



Properly Preparing 

 the Winter. 



Bees for 



Written Sor. the American Dec Journal 

 BY WM. ELLIOTT. 



Mr. A. D. Ellingwood, on page 220, 

 says that last fall he put 80 colonies 

 of bees into his bee-hou.se cellar, and 

 that 40 of them were blacks, and the 

 remainder Italians and hybrids ; that 

 the blacks were in the best condition 

 to winter, and that the Italians and 



hybrids had as good a chance to pre- 

 pare for winter as the blacks. He 

 wants to know wliat aided the bees. I 

 believe that I can enlighten him some 

 by my own experience. I have learned 

 that in the fall management of bees, 

 it is very nec(;.ssary to look after those 

 colonies that have done the best, or 

 produced the most surplus lioiiey. I 

 find that they are almost always short 

 of stores for winter. The reason for 

 this is that they have the most prolilie 

 queens, and they have kept the brood- 

 combs widl-lilleii with eggs and hatch- 

 ing brood, as every good queen ought 

 to do. 



It is vr}' plain to see what is the 

 matter with the bees, as the industri- 

 ous hybrids and Italians were keeping 

 the brood-combs clear of Ijoney ami 

 storing in the sections, so that they 

 could rear great numbers of workers 

 to gather the harvest. 



The blacks were storing in the 

 brood-combs, all that they possibly 

 could, only leaving a few small patches 

 in the center combs for the not very 

 prolitic queen to lay in. and barel}- 

 keep up the nominal strength of the 

 colony. Thus it is very plain that the . 

 black bees would be in the best condi- 

 tion for winter, as they had stored the 

 best of the honey in the brood-nest, or 

 all they could of it. 



It is also easy to see why the Italians 

 and hybrids were not in such good 

 condition for winter — their brood- 

 combs were full of eggs, brood and 

 feed for the same, well up to the last 

 of the hone}' harvest. Of course, at 

 the close of the harvest, Mr. E. came 

 along and removed all their stores that 

 was over the brood -chamber. It was 

 at the close of the harvest, and there 

 was not verj' much honey for them to 

 gather ; if there was anj-, most likely 

 it was of a very poor quality — perhaps 

 some honey-dew, or the juice from 

 decaj ing fruit, or some stuff that they 

 gathered at a cider-mill. Of course 

 they could n(jt help it, for there was 

 no show for them to live through the 

 winter on such unwholesome food, 

 whereas, if Mr. E. had taken some of 

 those empty combs out, and replaced 

 them with combs of purer honey or 

 sugar syrup, they would have wintered 

 all right. 



When I was overhauling my bees 

 last fall, to prepare them for winter, 

 I found the colonies that did the best 

 (and they were pure Italians) were 

 ver^- scant of stores — so much so that 

 they would not live half through the 

 winter. I gave them frames of sealed 

 honey, and fed them syrup made of 

 the best granulated sugar ; they are 

 wintering well. If I had not fed them, 

 I would have " killed the goose that 

 laid the golden egg." 



Plainview, Minn. 



