20 



THK SMEMICS:M WMM J&ViMWmi^. 



Exti-actiugr, <jii'aniiIatioii, etc.— 



Mr. W. S. Harris, o£ Lime Springs, Iowa, 

 asks: 



Please reply to the following questions 

 through the American Bee Journal : 



1. Which is the best way to strain the 

 honey after extracting ? 2. Is it necessary 

 to have the honey capped before extracting? 

 3. How should I care tor it in case it is not 

 capped? 4. Which is the best way to pre- 

 vent its granulation ? 5. Is it advisable 

 during the coming season to replace queens 

 that are four years old, with young ones ? 



1. Strain it through a cheese-cloth. 



2 and 3. If honey is extracted before it is 

 capped, it must be ripened after being ex- 

 tracted, by being exposed to the air in a 

 warm place. Care should be taken to keep 

 insects out of it. 



4. Some kinds of honey will granulate 

 more readily than others. If heated, put 

 into cans, fruit jars, etc., and sealed while 

 hot, it will remain a liquid until unsealed. 

 Care should be taken not to let the honey 

 boil, and if the jars or cans are put into hot 

 water, it will be all the better. 



5. Yes ; queens should be superseded as 

 a general thing after the third season. 



My method is to see that the bees have 

 plenty in the fall, and when I find that they 

 do not have enough, I feed them sugar 

 syrup, usually about a month before they 

 cease to fly. 1 have had good results, how- 

 ever, in feeding them but a few days before 

 the period of confinement began. 



MUST XlIE EXXRACTOR «0 ? 



Oraniilalioii of Honey.— Mr. C. A. 



Huff, of Clayton, Mich., wrote thus on Dec. 

 19, 1888, and requests a reply In the Bee 

 Journal : 



1 was in a store in Clayton, Mich., some- 

 time since, and was quite surprised to here 

 Mr. Arthur Bovee make the statement that 

 pure honey will not candy in less than two 

 months from the time it was extracted. He 

 said that when it did candy in a less time 

 than that, it was sugar. Now as Mr. Bovee 

 is well liked, and a good citizen, as well as 

 a bee-keeper, his word has great weight 

 around here. Is he correct ? 



While it is true that some pure honey 

 will not granulate at all, it is equally true 

 that nearly all the honey gathered in the 

 North will granulate upon the approach of 

 cold weather, or when the temperature is 

 below 70°, Fahr. Mr. Bovee was very in- 

 discreet to make such remarks without 

 qualification or explanation. 



Feeding; Bees in 'Winter.— Alfred 

 Kobbins, Swartswood, N. J., asks the fol- 

 lowing question : 



I bought a Heddon bee-hive last year, and 

 have bees in one brood-chamber. The hive 

 is packed in leaves, except the entrance. 

 The bees have not enough stores for the 

 winter. In what way can I feed them, and 

 what shall 1 feed them, as I have no honey? 

 They are native bees. 



In reply to the above, at our request, Mr. 

 Heddon says : 



I have had very unsatisfactory experience 

 in feeding bees after their period of confine- 

 ment had begun. I prefer that you would 

 consult back numbers of bee-periodicals and 

 books. 1 am no advocate of candy feeding. 



Under this heading a correspondent of 

 the New Zealand Bee and Poultry Jour- 

 nal gives the iolloy/infi as a severe rebuke 

 to some American apiarists, who have sug- 

 gested the condemnation of the honey-ex- 

 tractor. He says : 



Will it be believed that the above query 

 has actually been put forward in an Ameri- 

 can bee-periodical, and seriously considered 

 by the editor and several leading bee-keep- 

 ers ? The idea o£ some of them being that 

 the extractor, by enabling bee-keepers to 

 largely increase the production of honey, 

 has been the means of lowering the price of 

 that article to less than one-half what it was 

 some years ago, and this is their reason for 

 seriously considering the question of doing 

 away with it. 



Shade of Major von Hruschka ! are the 

 bee-keepers of America going mad ! The 

 low price of honey seems to have affected 

 their brains. 



The editor characterizes the suggestion 

 to discontinue the use of the extractor as 

 " one of the wisest and most important sug- 

 gestions yet advanced by any one." That 

 man should be helped to a straight-jacket 

 and be confined, before he does any serious 

 mischief ; for the person that could back up 

 such an insane suggestion must himself be 

 insane, and is notalit subject to be at large! 



It is but justice to American bee-keepers 

 to say that no such proposition has been 

 either entertained or endorsed by them as a 

 body of apiarists ! 



It is unfair to take the expressions of a 

 few (and a very few, at that), and call It the 

 opinion of American apiarists. This is a 

 country of free speech, and any man can 

 express his opinion for himself without 

 compromising his fellow men, or having his 

 individual opinion charged up to the great 

 body of apiarists, and paraded to prove that 

 they are lunatics ! 



Our New Zealand cotemporary asks : 

 "Are the bee-keepers of America going 

 mad ?" No, sir ; the great body of api- 

 arists are quite sane, and fully able to cope 

 with all the questions presented concerning 

 our pursuit. They need no "straight-jack- 

 ets" nor dungeons ; neither have they au- 

 thorized any one to speak for them on any 

 important or unimportant matter ! 



The American Bee Journal has never 

 either published the views which our New 

 Zealand neighbor condemns, nor has it en- 

 dorsed such ideas. The honey extractor 

 has come to stay, and plays too important a 

 part in honey-production to be dispensed 

 with. 



If there be anything to complain of, it 

 was the action of those who first used the 

 honey-extractor, in placing the price of 



liquid honey at a less amount than was 

 asked for honey in the comb, with wood, 

 glass and wax weighed up to the buyer ! 



It would be a very difficult matter now to 

 raise the price of tlie clean, net, liquid arti- 

 cle—but at the outset it would have been an 

 easy matter to have obtained a larger price 

 for it than for that in the comb ; and had it 

 so been ordained then, no one would ever 

 have thought of such a thing now as say- 

 ing, " The extractor must go." 



Our New Zealand cotemporary concludes 

 with this bit of irony : 



" Science ! to what point have you 

 brought us bee-keepers to ? To that point 

 where we stand ready to condemn you. 

 You, Major von Hruschka, and you. Father 

 Langstroth, have both been the means of 

 increasing the production of pure honey by 

 your inventions ; and notwithstanding that 

 we have hitherto lauded you up to the skies 

 and worshipped you as gods of the bee- 

 keeping world, our eyes have now been 

 opened to the evil you have done under the 

 guise of benefitting us. Away with you and 

 your extractor, and movable comb hives ; 

 we will have no more of them, but return to 

 the strained honey age, and our primitive 

 forms of bee-keeping. O miso-as Jionunum, 

 mentes ! o pectora caeca !" 



This should teach Americans a lesson. 

 Some excitable persons are always making 

 foolish observations, concocting unwise 

 theories, or advising impracticable methods, 

 giving a wrong impression to those who are 

 watching American apiarists in every part 

 of the world. 



Only a short time ago, the Bee-Keepers' 

 Magazine published a table prepared by a 

 New Jersey man, to show that nearly all 

 the honey on the market was adulterated, 

 and this was thrown into our faces to prove 

 that apiarists were adulterators, and to 

 clinch the assertion by a clergyman in Eng- 

 land, that many "adulterating beefarms" 

 did exist in America ! 



Later, the Bee-Keepers' Review published 

 an article written by a Detroit man. who 

 claimed to have invented a method for 

 manufacturing honey-conjb (which, how- 

 ever, is an imperfect affair, and of no prac- 

 tical use in the apiary), and this, too, was 

 used by some to give color to the " Wiley 

 lie," which asserted that " combs were 

 being made of parafline and filled with 

 glucose by machinery," etc. 



These and many other instances go to 

 show that some apiarists are forever " put- 

 ting their foot into it," by presenting an ax 

 to the enemies of American honey-pro- 

 ducers, with which they are invited to chop 

 off the heads of American apiarists gen- 

 erally. If it were used to exterminate these 

 unwise scribblers, it might be excusable— 

 but it is always used to the detriment of the 

 pursuit in general— classing all American 

 bee-keejjers together, making them re- 

 sponsible for the mistakes made by a few, 

 and holding up their hands in holy horror, 

 while they ask : " Are the bee-keepers of 

 America going mad?" 



Brethren, please take this matter Into 

 thoughtful consideration, and let there be 

 no more of such mistakes ! 



