270 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



December, 



dearly beloved, but of the gas or the 

 pesky germs or sii'thin'. 



Guess again, chillun, then try John- 

 sing's way. 



That 'ere Florida Brush is a great 

 uu — bully to swat ugly Syrians with, 

 too. 



"Water Cure," is it, that Mister Horn 

 would have us tiy. Humph! Do he 

 take bees for Filipinos? 



Miller, of Little. Rhody, wants us to 

 believe that drones are first quality'' 

 blankets for baby bees. Be he a-tryin' 

 to turn this 'ere bee world topsy-tur- 

 yey? It may tumble on him if he ain't 

 keerful. But, confound him, I find he 

 ain't so durned far wrong on some 

 things. He annoys me. 



So Pharr fetched a stagger at con- 

 tradictory statements. He'll get 'cus- 

 tomed to them if he reads the bee pa- 

 pers long enough. 



You and Dr. Miller remind me of a 

 pair of shears — you cut what gets be- 

 tween, but not each other. For young- 

 sters you two make quite a team. 



Brave chap, that Rescue Smith, to 

 own up to his failures. What a sorry 

 picture some of the boys would cut if 

 they followed suit. Thunderation, I'd 

 like to see 'em. 



What for did you cut down the ed- 

 itorials? Best part of the paper, now 

 EiDd then. Pufl' up not thyself with 

 vanity, because I drop you a compli- 

 ment once in a while. 



"Who pants for glory finds but short 



repose — • 

 A breath revives him or a breath 

 o'erthrows." 



Yours as ever, 



John Hardscrabble. 



EXTRACTING UNRIPE HONEY. 



In Gleanings for July 1, R. A. Bur- 

 nett of the Chica.go honey-dealin.g firm, 

 introduces a discussion of unripe honey 

 anl its baneful effects upon the mar- 

 kets, by the following paragraph: 



"In a recent number Mr. A. I. Root, 

 in one of his Home articles, spoke of 

 a bee-keeper in Northern Michigan, 

 who sold her honey in a perfectly raw 

 state to a confectionef, and tl.at both 

 the buyer and seller of said honey 

 seemed to be well please;! with their 

 operations. 'The producer so'd a much 

 laigei quantity ">f 'lonev f;om each 

 colony of bees by taking it oiit of the 

 combs before It was sialed ai;d al- 



lowed to ripen before it was extract- 

 ed.' " 



The concluding sentence, quoted by 

 Mr. Burnett, is obviously from Mr. 

 Root's comment, to which he refers; 

 and while Mr. Burnett forcibly con- 

 demns the practice of extracting unripe 

 honey, he, in common with apiarian 

 writers, permits Mr. Root's erroneous 

 statement to stand unchallenged. 

 Whether he does so through lack of 

 knowled.ge upon the subject, or wheth- 

 er through reg^ard for Mr. Root's laud- 

 ed skill and wisdom in apiarian mat- 

 ters, is not apparent. Be that as it 

 may, Mr. Burnett merely sanctions, by 

 inference, a grave and most prevalent 

 error, as we believe. 



The popular belief that the yield is 

 increased by extra ctin.c before honey 

 has been in the hive a sufficient length 

 of time to ripen, is probably based 

 upon the assumption that a large per 

 centage of water that Avould be other- 

 wise lost throu.gh evaporation, neces- 

 sarily enters into the bulk and corres- 

 pondingly increases the avoirdupois of 

 the product. The fallacy of the as- 

 sumption will become readily apparent 

 if the opei'ator will accurately weigh 

 a hive each night and morning during 

 the extracting season, and note the ex- 

 tent of evaporation, and the relative 

 degree of rapidity with which it takes 

 place as the hours pass. In our exper- 

 ience upwards of ninety per cent, of 

 the total evaporation will occur during 

 the first night in the hive. This loss 

 of moisture, however, does not repre- 

 sent or comprise the transition from 

 raw nectar to ripe honey. It is but 

 the first step, the primary stage in per- 

 fecting our commodity in Natures lab- 

 oratoiw — the subsequent influences of 

 its contact with the bees, thou.gh uni- 

 versally recognized and accepted, are 

 not fully understood. Yet. as statec*i, 

 that a beneficial influence is exercised 

 upon the body and flavor of honey re- 

 maining for a protracted period in; the 

 hive, is positively known to every ex- 

 perienced apiarist, and this 



(Here we have to pause to announce 

 the arrival of a bee-keeping visitor. 

 We had reached this point when Mr. 

 O. O. Popiileton, the very gentl'eman 

 Avho first called our attention t>o the 

 popular error under discussion, walk- 

 ed into our sanctum, where, by the 

 way, he is always at home: and his 

 occasional visits are highly apitreciat- 

 ed. Of course, we made known the 



