4 • 9 



(Entered at the Post-Office at Chicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter.) 

 Published Weekly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Co., 334 Dearborn Street. 



GKORGE W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL., SEPTEMBER 13, 1906 



Vol. XLVI— No, 37 



:orial ^Aofe 

 and Comments 



* — — - 



Feeding for Winter vs. Winter.Feed- 

 ing 



The wise bee-keeper will give timely atten- 

 tion to the matter of feeding for winter; win- 

 ter-feeding is a thing not at all on his pro- 

 gram. After the snow begins to tly, and at 

 various times from that on till spring, will 

 come inquiries how to feed bees in winter. 

 The right answer to that question is : " Don't 

 feed bees in winter." 



In many localities no time should be lost 

 now in seeing that bees are supplied, and well 

 supplied, with winter stores. If they have 

 ceased for the season to gather more than 

 they consume for their daily needs, there is 

 nothing to be gained by further delay, and 

 there may be loss by it. Indeed, in some 

 places there is loss already, for if the surplus 

 storing was finished up in August, the feeding 

 could have been done with advantage then ; 

 the advantage being two-fold. In the first 

 place, the bees know better than any one else 

 just how to arrange their brood-ne6t for win- 

 ter, and the later in the season the bee-keeper 

 does any meddling with it the worse it is for 

 winterinp. In the second place, if the feed- 

 ing is done early, equal parts of sugar and 

 water can be given, making it more like real 

 nectar than when stronger syrup is given, 

 and giving the bees a better chance to make 

 the necessary chemical changes. 



If the feeding is postponed until late, say 

 the last of September or in October, then it 

 is too late for the bees to evaporate the thin 

 food and make the needed changes, but it 

 must be fed of about the consistency of 

 honey— 2 pints of water for every 5 pints of 

 sugar; or, if you prefer to goby weight, 2 

 pounds of water for every 5 pounds of sugar. 

 Fed thu6 late, the food should be given hot, 

 whereas early it can be given cold. 



It will be readily seen that there is quite a 

 difference between having in the middle of 

 August 100 percent as much water as sugar, 

 and the first of October 40 percent as much 

 water as sugar; and, of course, the amount of 

 water must be lessened as the season ad- 

 vances. For the middle of September a good 

 proportion may be 3 parts of water to 4 part6 

 of sugar. 



Of course, the weather has something to do 

 with it, the colder it is the le6s chance to give 

 the food thin. Latitude also comes in; the 

 farther south you go from Chicago, the less 

 need for hurrying up. But always better too 

 early than too late. 



Opinions differ as to rapidity of feeding. 

 Some say to feed as rapidly as possible, the 

 only object being to get in enough for winter : 

 and if you feed slowly it will be used up in 

 brood-rearing. Others say that brood-rearing 

 is the very thing you want, so as to have a 

 force of young bees for winter and spring. 

 Perhaps it's safe to say that the later the 

 feeding is done, the more rapid the feeding 

 6hould be. 



Now after all the foregoing is said, the bet- 

 ter way is to feed no sugar at all; and the 

 wise bee-keeper will, if possible, have a store 

 of combs rilled full of honey and sealed, so 

 that before cold weather approaches he can 

 give them to any colonies not already abund- 

 antly supplied, and still have some left for 

 emergencies next spring. But some may not 

 have been sutliciently far-sighted to have 

 these combs, and in some places the 6eason 

 may have been so poor that by no possibility 

 could the bees store enough for their own use; 

 hence the need for advice about feeding. 



Be sure to hurry up feeding for winter: 

 but don't for a minute think of such a thing 

 as winter-feeding. 



Grading and Packing Honey 



The following paragraphs appeared in Farm 

 and Home, an agricultural publication-. 



Honesty in Packing and Selling. 



While farmers have as much business hon- 

 esty as any class of men, there are many who 

 are not above the tricks of the trade when it 

 comes to packing and selling certain kinds of 

 produce. The mixing of bad eggs with good 

 ones, putting small potatoes and apples in 

 the middle of the barrel, and selling old roost- 

 ers and hens for young fowls, are practices 

 far too common. They do not pay in the 

 long run. A farmer soon gets a reputation 

 for his products, and whether it be good or 

 bad depends entirely upon himself. 



The reason that some men have no trouble 

 in selling their fruit, vegetables, poultry and 

 dairy products at top market prices or above 

 is due largely to the care which they take in 

 grading and packing. Some of their neigh- 

 bors would get less money for the same goods 

 if they carried the load to town, for they have 

 been known in the past to be indifferent or 

 dishonest in their methods. If you have an 

 old hen, sell her as such. Then the next time 

 you go to town with young fowls you will 

 have no trouble in selling them for what they 

 are. The greatest difficulty in working up a 

 private trade among city and townspeople is 

 due to the deception which many farmers 

 and peddlers have practised on them in the 

 past. 



The foregoing contains some excellent ad- 

 vice that is justas appropriate for bee-keepers 

 as for producers of potatoes, apples, or any- 

 thing else. Dishonest grading and packing 

 of honey does not pay any better than the 

 "mixing of bad eggs with good ones." All 

 the honey contained in the same case should 

 be as good, both in appearance and quality, at 

 the back as at the front or glass-side of the 

 ease. 



When we were handling honey on a large 

 scale, it was very annoying to open a case 

 and find that it had been "faced." It was 

 often necessary to regrade it before selling to 

 retail grocers. Sometimes there would be 3 ' 

 grades in the same case, and in almost all 

 such instances there was either a loss to us or 

 else not very much profit, as the lower grades 

 had to be sold at a less price, and the best 

 probably would bring but little more than we 

 had paid for the lot. Of course, we were 

 careful after that to refrain from buying from 



that same bee-keeper, or insist that future 



shipments should be uniform in grade. 

 The trouble is that no two bee-keepers seem 



