20 



AMERICAN BEE lOURNAL 



Jan. 9, 1902. 



•'bj' the piece.'' meaa ! There was a little 

 quiet amusement in the late Chicago conven- 

 tion when, after Mr. R. A. Burnett had said 

 he never sold honey " by the ease," a member 

 "called him down" by saying Mr. Burnett 

 had sold thousands of cases of honey " by the 

 case.'' It was true that all the honey was 

 weighed, and so it was sold by weight, but in 

 a certain sense it was also sold " by the case," 

 for it was not sold " by the section," nor " by 

 the car-load,'" but " by the case." 



When the grocer retails section honey, he 

 either sells it "by weight" or "by the piece.'' 

 When retailed "by weight," it is universally 

 understood that each section is weighed ; and 

 as universally it is understood that when sold 

 " by the piece "' there is no weighing, and the 

 weight is not considered. As " by the piece " 

 has meant without regard to weight, so "by 

 the case" has had the same meaning. But 

 Colorado bee-keepers now have a new mean- 

 ing for " by the case," a meaning which they 

 have a right to use, only it needs to be ex- 

 plained to the uninitiated, for, according to 

 their rules, weight is distinctly considered, 

 and they are practically i^i'Vintj by vrif/hf. If 

 any one will turn to page 7.59 (1001), he will 

 see that what is said there had no reference to 

 selling by Colorado rules, which distinctly 

 have reference to weight, for the thing spe- 

 cially mentioned on page 759 is, " so much 

 per case of 2i sections, without reference to 

 the actual weight of honey contained in the 

 case." Selling by the case, with a certainty 

 of 21 pounds for every case, is a very dillerent 

 thing. 



If it is true that by the Colorado system 

 there may be a gain to the buyer, with no real 

 loss to the seller, it is hard to find fault with it. 



But why not buy and sell by actual weight ? 

 There should be a uniform method, and "by 

 the case" can hardly become the general 



method. 



♦ 



Cold-Water Paint for Hives.— L. T. 



Chambers writes in thp Australian Bee-Bul- 

 letin ; 



For years I have been trying and looking 

 for experiments in the way of discovering a 

 paint which will be inexpensive and yet dur- 

 able, and I am happy to say that at last I have 

 found what is needed. Cold-water paint 

 needs simply mixing with water in place of 

 oil, saving the cost of the oil. The powder 

 of which it is composed is no dearer than 

 white-lead, but will spread much further, 

 and will adhere to any surface with more 

 tenacity than oil paint, being unaffected by 

 weather, and at the same time it is water- 

 proof as well as tire-proof. 



Nothing is said as to the composition of 

 this powder, and it remains to be seen what 

 others may think of its value. 



Does a Queen Carry Foul Brood ?— 



Le Rucher Beige quotes a writer in the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal, who says it is the workers 

 and never the queen which carry foul brood 

 from an infected to a healthy colony. Editor 

 Wathelet insists that a queen may carry the 

 spores to a healthy colony, and warns against 

 putting into such colony a queen from one 

 that is diseased. 



A Knotty Problem is what the .\meri- 

 can Bee-Keeper calls the problem of nomina- 

 ting and electing officers of the National Asso- 

 ciation. About right. 



I The Buffalo Convention. 



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(Contiaued from page 9.) 

 Pres. Watrous then called upon Prof. 

 H. W. Colling-wood, editor of the Rural 

 New-Yorker, who delivered an address 

 on, 



The Pomologist and the Fruit- 

 Qrower. 



I am not a bee-keeper, although I 

 help keep my neighbors' bees. I don't 

 pretend to be a pomolog-ist. I'm a 

 plain fruit-grower, far enough along 

 to realize that, with all his proud 

 dominion over the lower forces of 

 nature, man cannot produce the finest 

 and most perfect fruits without the help 

 of his friend, the bee. That, I believe, 

 will be the conclusion of every fruit- 

 grower who will really study the ques- 

 tion. 



The relation between the fruit-grower 

 and the bee itself are physical, mental 

 and moral. Interfere with a bees' no- 

 tion of duty and right, and she at once 

 administers a stinging rebuke to those 

 faint-hearted humans who permit 

 others to interfere with their homes 

 and privileges. Perhaps some of you 

 have heard of the young man who said 

 he called his sweetheart " honey," and 

 in 24 hours she broke out in an attack 

 of the hives. 



The mental relations appear when a 

 thoughtful man studies the wonderful 

 life and habits of the bee, and the 

 social order that prevails inside the 

 hive. That man must admit that even 

 the civilization that has been inspired 

 by human wisdom falls short of this in 

 some essentials of justice and equity. 

 The moral aspect appears when, in the 

 latter part of summer, the bees swarm 

 to your fruits, and you try to follow out 

 the principle of the Golden Rule in 

 your relations with the bee-keeper. 

 You learn then how much easier it is 

 to be a bear than it is to forbear. One 

 must learn to use the memory of ser- 

 vices rendered as oil for the rusty ma- 

 chinery of patience. 



There are two worthy citizens who 

 upset the theories of the scientific men 

 — Jack Frost and Mr. Honey-Bee. Ice 

 and honey are two crops which remove 

 no fertility from the soil. A man 

 might cut ice on his neighbor's pond 

 for years, and make a fortune by doing 

 so, yet all his work would " cut no ice " 

 in the great American game of robbing 

 the soil. The pond will not be injured 

 in the least. In like manner my neigh- 

 bors' bees may take a ton of honey 

 from my fruit-trees, and it may sell at 

 a good price, yet my farm has not lost 

 five cents' worth of plant food, nor 

 would I have been a cent better off if 

 the bees had not taken an ounce of the 

 nectar, but had simply acted as dry- 

 I nurses to my baby fruits without pay 



or reward. Both frost and bee bring 

 unnumbered blessings to man, yet 

 most of us will spend more time growl- 

 ing at some little injury which they do 

 as they pass on, than we will in praise 

 and thankfulness for all the benefits 

 they heap upon us. I have known 

 fruit-growers and pomologists who, 

 when they found the bee sucking some 

 cracked and worthless old fruit, for- 

 got that the bee did more than they in 

 the making of these fruits. If they 

 were in the bee's place they would 

 probably demand 75 percent of the fin- 

 est fruit in the orchard as payment for 

 their labor. Such folks make me think 

 of the housekeeper who found fault 

 with the minister. The good man 

 came into the house of sickness with a 

 message of divine hope and love and 

 faith. He cheered the hearts of all ; 

 and yet when he went away the house- 

 keeper found fault with him because 

 he forgot to wipe his feet on the door 

 mat, and tracked some mud on her 

 kitchen floor. What a world this would 

 be if we could learn to judge others, 

 not by their little weaknesses, but by 

 their great acts of loving service ! 



If one would look for the ideal rela- 

 tions between the fruit-grower and the 

 bee-keeper he would find them inside 

 the modern cucumber-house. The 

 cucumber is " cool " way down to the 

 courtship of its flowers. Matrimonial 

 agents are required, and formerly these 

 were men who went about with long^ 

 brushes dusting the pollen upon these 

 bashful flowers. It has been found 

 that bees will do this better than the 

 men, and most cucumber-houses now 

 have their colonies of bees. Inside the 

 glass house the grower has no desire 

 to throw stones at the bee-keeper, be- 

 cause they both wear the same clothes; 

 and the man who can not get on har- 

 moniously with himself has no busi- 

 ness out of jail. I say that, well know- 

 ing that some of the darkest life trage- 

 dies in the world's history have been 

 caused by the evil side of a man's na- 

 ture obtaining mastery for the moment 

 over the good. In the orchard or fruit- 

 farm the conditions are very different. 

 Here a man inay feed the bees which 

 belong to somebody else, and he does 

 not, like the cucumber-grower, see that 

 the bees actually save him the wages 

 of a workman, which would be nearly 

 as necessary without the bees. Most 

 men do not, I think, fully understand 

 who the bee is and what he really does. 

 Let Its state his case fairly. I under- 

 stand, of course, that common facts 

 about the bee must be an old story to 

 those who are here. The greatest value 

 of such a meeting is the fact that one 

 may talk over your heads or through 

 you to the thousands who may never 

 join either society, and yet who will 

 profit by your work. 



