THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



219 



On page 249, April i, in "California 

 Echoes," J. H. Martin gives a kick es- 

 pecially aimed at the California bee-keep- 

 ers who extract fjefore sealing. His par- 

 agraph saying "Thin honey is liable to 

 sour, and more or less of it will be a dead 

 loss, the flavor raw and unpalatable, etc, ' ' 

 is correct; and any one selling such an 

 article will soon ruin his market. In 

 another place he says, "It is pure shift- 

 lessnessto produce unripe honey." This, 

 if taken just as it reads by itself, can not 

 be objected to; but, taken in connection 

 with what precedes it, I infer that it is a 

 mere kick at extracting before the honey 

 is sealed. 



Now, in reply to both of these articles I 

 would ask, "Who has ever advocated 

 putting unripe honey on the market?" I 

 never have, and am willing that ever\- 

 buyer and user of honey may know that 

 I advocate and practice extracting hone}- 

 before it has been sealed by the bees; but 

 I have never sold a pound of unripe hon- 

 ey since I quit selling comb honey. I 

 have never sold a can of extracted honey 

 that did not weigh 12 lbs. or over to the 

 gallon. In a lot of two tons, sent to a 

 conmiission house in San Francisco a few 

 years ago, in 5-gallou tin cans, the net- 

 weight returns showed 63 pounds per can. 

 This honey was taken as fast as the bees 

 stored it, not waiting for any to be sealed, 

 and ripened in the sun, and sold a frac- 

 tion above market quotations. I always 

 put my name and address on every case 

 shipped, and have never received one 

 complaint of sour or unripe honey. 



Who sells unripe, watery, or sour hon- 

 e)'? It is those who wait for the bees to 

 seal their honey. Then they honestly 

 think they can join Dan White's society. 

 Bees are like some farmers. When work 

 is pressing, everything is done in a hurry. 

 Example: The farmer in the East, where 

 summer rains abound, has a large lot of 

 hay cut, and a rain is threatened. That 

 hay is hustled into the barn as soon as he 

 thinks it will do. If he fears it is not 

 well cured he perhaps will dose it with 

 salt, and in goes another load, and so on 

 until the last is well sprinkled with rain. 

 Result: That hay heats, sweats too nuich, 

 molds, and is unfit for market. 



Bees are rushed by the enormous honey- 

 flow at times, and they go it pellmell, 

 slap, kick 'em off, get done quick, a la 

 Coggshall, and seal their honey before 

 it has had time to evaporate or ripen. 

 The comb-honey man takes off the nice 

 ripe honey ( ? ) while it is white, and sells 

 the watery stuff. The man who works 

 for extracted has waited until all is sealed, 

 and he honestly thinks it is well ripened. 



He uncaps and extracts, and runs the hon- 

 ey direct from the extractor into the can, 

 and sells it, and these are the ones who 

 are selling unripe honey weighing 1 1 lbs. 

 per gallon. When honej^ is sealed it 

 ripens very slowly, and this is why E. R. 

 Root once advocated leaving it on the 

 hive until travel-stained. 



I have cut open well-sealed honey, 

 stored in May and June, and kept on the 

 hive until winter, that would run from 

 the combs almost as fast as water, and 

 would smell strongly of vinegar. Was it 

 well ripened? 



It would take a long article to tell what 

 constitutes well-ripened honey, and how 

 to produce it, and I will not attempt it at 

 present, as you may condemn this to the 

 waste-basket; but if you do not, you may 

 put a No. 10, double-soled footnote to it. 



In conclusion I wish to say that, in my 

 opinion any one who runs honey direct 

 from the extractor into the cans, no mat- 

 ter if every cell is sealed, is liable at times 

 to put unripe honey on the market. 



The editor of Gleanings makes the fol- 

 lowing comments upon the foregoing. 



There is a good deal of truth in what 

 you say. May be it is all truth. If so, it 

 only goes to show that your conditions, 

 so far as ripening honey is concerned, are 

 different from what they are in Onio. I 

 do not think I ever saw the time when 

 sealed honey in Ohio was unripe; but I 

 can imagine that the bees might pour the 

 honey into combs jiellmell, and seal it be- 

 fore it is really ripe. If that were the 

 case, then of course the honey ought not 

 to go from the extractor into the market- 

 ing-cans or barrels, but should, on the 

 other hand, as you imply, go into evapor- 

 ating-cans, there to remain until it has 

 attained the proper consistency. 



You ask me to weigh that honej' ' 'over at 

 the house," that you think will run about 

 13 lbs. I did do that, friend Wood, and 

 just as it comes from the can, and presum- 

 ably as it came from your people on the 

 Pacific slope; but I find it weighs 12 lbs. 

 to the gallon. I thought it would go 

 nearly 13; but even at the 12-pound mark 

 it is very nice and thick. I could get it 

 to the 13-pound mark by letting it stand 

 in an open vessel for days at a time. 



Win-, friend Wood, we in Ohio consid- 

 er II lbs. a fair specific gravity; and in 

 our climate I doubt whether it is possible 

 to ripen it in the hive so it will be thick- 

 er than this. We can run it up to 1 2 lbs. , 

 and perhaps 13, by letting it stand in a 

 dry place in an open vessel. During the 

 the last three or four weeks we have been 

 having a spell of weather during which 



