I90.V 



Neitlier does it detract from the ap- 

 pearance of the article to be sold, but 

 rather is enhanced in looks for the 

 display of water-white honey in a five 

 pound glass jar is better than the same 

 grade in a one pound jar. I sympa- 

 thize with Mr. Aiken in the fact that it 

 is the middle classes who .ire the real 

 consumers of honey and any reduction 

 in the cost of package means increased 

 sales of honey through this channel of 

 trade. 



When selling honey through the me- 

 dium of the grocery stores, the half- 

 pound glass packages hold unbounded 

 sway. These same lovers of honey who 

 would buy the larger packages when 

 brought to their own door will here 

 show a preference for the smaller ones, 

 buying often and paying the higher 

 price. If Mr. Aiken were to bring or 

 send his paper buckets over into these 

 regions and distribute them about to 

 await the poor man's call for honey, I 

 fear that he should find some difficulty 

 in getting them disposed of in time for 

 the succeeding crop. Yes, I make the 

 venture that they would grace the 

 shelves of those houses till so many 

 generations of bees came and went that 

 he would find himself lost in the count. 

 The old adage that it is a poor rule to 

 buy a cat in the bag seems to be well 

 impressed on the mind of the intending 

 purchaser of honey, whoever he may be, 

 and he will not buy it in a bag without 

 consuming valuable time trying to dis- 

 cover if it is not merely. a "doctored" 

 article of granulated sugar. If granu- 

 lated honey could be sold in the east- 

 ern markets at the price of cane or 

 beet sugar then this, together with the 

 inferior flavor of honey, might so les- 

 sen the amount or parleying over the 

 purity of the article as to make friend 

 Aiken's rule for selling honey a pleas- 

 ant and practical possibility. 



Wheelersburg, Ohio, Dec. 5, 1902. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 25 



DEEP AND WIDE TOP=BARS 



VS. HONEY=BOARDS. 



" 7".4/f American Bee-Keeper is a ivelcome vis- 

 itor.'" — James Heddon. 



The Worcester, Mass., Bee-Keepers' 

 Association held a very successful 

 meeting, Jan. 24th, notice of which 

 reaches us, just as we close the forms, 

 Jan. 30th, from Secretary C. R. Rus- 

 sel. 



Something of Their History And Relative Merits. 

 From an Experienced Apiarist. 



(James Heddon.) 



DEAR BROTHER HILL: As you 

 are aware, my experience in bee- 

 keeping dates back thirty-three 

 years, and it was during the first two 

 years that I began experimenting with 

 honey-boards. About this time Mr. R. 

 C. Otis owner of the Langstroth pat- 

 ent for Michigan and adjoining states, 

 visited me, exhibiting a thick, bungling 

 honey-board, covering the entire top of 

 the hive and containing three slots 

 crosswise. 



Soon after this, I adopted small three 

 pound honey boxes, with two glass 

 sides, each having one slot in the bot- 

 tom. Finding the bees did not finish 

 the outside capping of the combs well, 

 I corrected this by adding two more 

 slots or passage-ways through which 

 the bees entered the boxes; this left 

 the bottoms of the little boxes practic- 

 ally composed of slats. Next, I made a 

 honey-board containing passage-ways 

 to correspond with the bottom of these 

 boxes. That worked very well but was 

 quite sticky with glue. To avoid this, 

 I made a three-eigth rise all around 

 the sides and twice across the middle, 

 lifting my little boxes up bee-space, and 

 this worked much better. Next, I 

 wondered why the top-bars of the 

 brood frames could not be made to 

 serve as a honey board, and right here 

 I experimented largely with deeo and 

 wide top bars. I made them dififerent 

 widths, up to I 1-8 inches (which would 

 leave 1-4 inch space between them) 

 and various depths from 1-2 inch to 

 I 1-8 inches. Now, it is a fact that deep, 

 wide top-bars tend to prevent the 

 building of brace-combs between the 

 tops of these bars and the bottom of 

 the surplus receptacles, but in the mat- 

 ter of brace-combs between the sides of 

 the top-bars, making them almost im- 

 movable laterally: such top-bars are 

 something villainous, and so I again 

 turned attention to the honey-board, 

 and soon developed the slatted board 

 possessing bee-space and brake-joint 

 principles, that is, the center of each 



