264 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[May, 



Judge Swayne (at Cincinnati,) of the Supreme 

 Court, and no better man could be desired by any 

 honest patentee. I think that by your next number 

 I shall be able to furnish you some memorial notice 

 of Mr. Colvin, and perhaps something on bee 

 matters." 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Information Given, 



Vol. VIII, No. 10, page 229, H. W. Davis asks 

 "Who knows" about the Merino Buckwheat? It is 

 good for nothing for bee-forage, and produces neither 

 honey nor pollen. Moreover it is one of the worst 

 weeds that could be got into our western soil. Hav- 

 ing raised hundreds of bushels and ground thousands, 

 I ought to know. E. Gallup. 



Orchard, Mitchell Co., Iowa. 



p. g. — Weather cold and hard on weak stocks of 

 bees. E. G. 



April 14th, 1873. 



«-•-» 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Honey Jars. 



Mr. Editor: — "Novice" thinks honey jars a 

 bother when one is obliged to get over a barrel of 

 honey out of the jars again, after they are nicely 

 labeled, &c. That is very true. But it may not 

 come amiss if I tell my way of handling my machine- 

 extracted honey, as I think it gives less trouble than 

 any other way I might adopt. I keep my bees on 

 the roof of my house ; the honey-slinger, friend Ste- 

 phenson's manufacture, stands in the garret, and 

 holds eighty to one hundred pounds of honey before 

 the honey touches the cylinder. When pumping, I 

 have it as near full as possible before I commence to 

 draw the honey off, so that small pieces of comb and 

 other impurities have time to rise to the top. With this 

 method the honey needs but little skimming. I have 

 two dozen tin honey buckets, which hold fifteen to 

 twenty pounds apiece, with covers to keep flies out, 

 and spouts to have an easy filling of the jars. Four 

 of these buckets fit in a tin pan, which is half filled 

 with water, and gradually heating on the stove, the 

 water comes to a boil, and with it the honey, which 

 is now skimmed and set on a table to make room for 

 four other buckets. 



When the honey in the first buckets has cooled off 

 some, there is another little chance for skimming, 

 after which the jars are filled, corked and set on the 

 shelf until they are wanted. Next season I shall cap 

 them all before setting them away, as the tinfoil can 

 easily be washed off when soiled, (not so with labels,) 

 and as it serves a good purpose. One of my neigh- 

 bors had, as he stated, ants eat through his corks 

 and spoil his honey. I had only two jars spoiled by 

 a very little insect getting in the honey through por- 

 ous corks. Tinfoil caps would have prevented it. 

 As labels will be soiled by flies and dust, I cap and 

 label only a lot of jars at a time, or at least this is 

 what I have done so far. When the honey candies 

 in the jars in winter, I set a tin pan on the stove, half 

 filled with water, and fill it with the jars of crystal- 

 ized honey, laying thin strips of boards under the 

 jars, so as to keep the glass from coming in contact 

 with the hot tin pan, and loosen the corks. By the 

 time that the water comes to a boil the honey is as 



clear as ever; it is then re-corked, capped, labeled 

 and ready for sale. I have dissolved hundreds of 

 jars of crystalized honey in winter, by setting them 

 in the water-kettle on the stove in the store, without 

 removing the tinfoil cap or loosening the cork, and I 

 don't remember of ever having broken a jar, only 

 the label, of course, is spoiled. 



It is quite a job to jar a barrel of honey at a time, 

 and to do so five or six times in a year. I should 

 prefer to do it all at once while I am at it, and in 

 the honey season. The dissolution of crystalized 

 honey is a very easy matter indeed, and can be done 

 best in a glass jar by setting it in hot water, as I 

 have proved above. 



In regard to the honey oozing out through the tin- 

 foil, in the process of candying, as Mr. Root remarks, 

 I would say that I generally set my jars upright on 

 the shelf, and there is no oozing out whatever observ- 

 able, but in order to fill a shelf I often lay a lot of 

 jars on their sides, and then I have found some jars 

 leaky, but this has been only when the cork was 

 deficient and the tinfoil not put on tightly. 



Chas. F. Muth- 



Cincinnati, April 12, 1873. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Gallup. 



Mr. J. D. Drusche, Vol. VIII, No. 10, Page 236 r 

 finds fault with Mr. Hosmer and then goes on to tell 

 us the reasons why he lost all of his bees and how he 

 lost them. Now we will venture the assertion that 

 every bee-keeper in the land can and will loose his 

 bees every winter if treated in the same manner. 

 We cautioned bee-keepers in the back numbers of 

 the Journal about this very same thing, still they 

 pay no heed to our advice. They are like young 

 children just beginning to walk. When told that 

 fire will burn them they cannot understand at all 

 until they have tried the experiment, and some of 

 them get very badly burnt. We call the loss of 

 forty-six stocks of bees rather a bad burn. We 

 were perfectly satisfiedwith losing five stocks in 

 our experiments under the same head. 



Now, Mr. Editor, we leave the readers of the 

 Journal to guess at the reasons of our friend's bees 

 dying as they did, although he has told us plainly 

 the reasons, and after all have got through guessing, 

 we will state who is right and who is wrong. For 

 we see plainly that we have to try another method 

 of beating knowledge into our pupils' heads ; a 

 plain statement of facts they will pay no heed to. 

 We must puzzle them a trifle, and then they will 

 remember their lessons better. We will venture the 

 assertion that hundreds have lost their bees from 

 the same cause, and yet but very few are willing to 

 attribute their loss to the right cause. 



E. Gallup. 

 Orchard, Iowa. 



According to the new regulations recently issued 

 by the authorities of the German Empire, no hives 

 of bees are to be placed nearer than 93.5 meters to 

 any turnpike or public thoroughfare, no nearer than 

 46.7 meters from other carriage-ways ; and for vio- 

 lating the above rules, the person convicted may be 

 fined twenty thalers, or be subjected to imprison- 

 ment. 



