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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



Feb. 20, 1902 



be glad to send you some by friends who are 

 coming here in 10 or 15 days, and will soon 

 return to the '• Windy City." 



Yours truly, 

 Mesicas Mutttal Planters Company. 



Yes, we would be pleased to see the honey- 

 gathering ant. 



We wish to thank you for the samples of 

 comb and small, stingless bees. Such have 

 often been mentioned in the American Bee 

 Journal in the years gone by. We will for- 

 ward the sample to Prof. Cook, and ask him 

 to report on them. The cells seem to have no 

 bottoms, as the brood runs clear through the 

 comb, capped at both ends. Queer, isn't 

 it.' And the bees — well, they are about as 

 large as two or three ordinary pin-heads with 

 little wings i They are very interesting, in- 

 deed. 



♦ 



X^rsley Honey. — The following clipping 

 has been received at this office: 



The honey that bees gather from parsley is 

 likely to make man feel very ill indeed. 

 Probably that honey does not disagree with 

 the collector, or it may occasionally be gath- 

 ered and placed with the rest by mistake. 

 There is just the chance that it is done for 

 purposes of revenge by one member of the 

 community who considers himself aggrieved 

 and vents his spite on his fellows. 



There are not many places in which parsley 

 IS raised in large quantity, and still fewer are 

 the places where it is allowed to blossom in 

 •sufficient quantity to allow an appreciable 

 tjuantity of honey to be gathered from it. So 

 one is led to wonder how it was ever found 

 out that parslej^ honey was such an objection- 

 able thing. " There is just the chance " that 

 the whole thing is as much in the realm of 

 ■romance as the idea in the last sentence of 

 •the clipping seems to be. 



I Weekly Bud^t. ' 



The Wisconsin Convention. — It has been 

 our privilege as well as pleasure to attend 

 three or four meetings of the Wisconsin Bee- 

 Keepers' Association. Bee-keepers are pretty 

 much alike the country over, we believe. 

 Especially the ones that attend conventions. 

 They are a jolly set of people. And clean, too 

 — with but very few exceptions. We do not 

 Temember hearing an ungentlemanly word 

 •during the two days' sessions, either outside 

 or inside the convention room. Take bee- 

 keepers as a class, and we believe they aver- 

 age higher in almost every way than do those 

 jn many other pursuits. 



But we didn't start out to tell how wonder- 

 fully good all bee-keepers are. Not at all, for 

 -we have discovered several specimens that are 

 •otherwise. But the black sheep will show up 

 occasionally. We'll have to get Mr. Hutchin- 

 60n to ask Stock-Breeder Simpson to e.\plaiu 

 how it happened. Perhaps he can account 



for it. 



Pres. France is a good hustler. He knows 



Wisconsin and its bee-keepers to a dot. And 



they know him, and like him. And well they 



may. He is simply tireless in his devotion to 



Wisconsin bee-keeping. He succeeds, too. He 



gets what he goes after. And sometimes he 



gets what he doesn't go after— the presidency 



of the Association, for instance. 



Then there is Vice-President Hoffman. He 

 is a big help in a convention. Keeps the dis- 

 cussions moving. To have a Wisconsin con- 

 vention without his genial presence would 

 seem strange, indeed. So it would if Messrs. 

 Wilcox, Pierce, Gross and others remained at 

 home. 



And Miss Pickard. the secretary. But, 

 hold on ; an old married man like the writer 

 perhaps would better tread rather lightly 

 here. Suppose we simply say that she is all 

 right in every way, and just let it go at that. 

 Now, certainly, not many could find much 

 fault with that, could they? But we will say 

 that she is a thoroughly practical " bee-keep- 

 eress " — " und vergessen sie das nicht." 



Harry Lathrop, the treasurer, is almost too 

 well known to need any introduction. For 

 years he has been a contributor on bees to the 

 Wisconsin Agriculturist. He's a railroad 

 station agent, too. That seems to be a pretty 

 good business to combine with bee-keeping — 

 at least in his case. '■ Harry " produces very 

 nice comb honey, and is a good bee-keeper, of 

 course. 



Oh, yes, there is at least one really and 

 truly honest bee-keeper in Madison. Now, 

 don't go and say we said there is only one 

 honest bee-keeper there. That wouldn't be 

 true. But, listen to this : As far back as 1S7S 

 there was a Wisconsin State Bee-Keepers' As- 

 sociation. And they had '.' money to burn," 

 it seems. At any rate, when the association 

 disbanded there was S~.0O remaining in the 

 treasury. And the selfsame Sr.OO— yes, the 

 very same bills — was turned over to Pres. 

 France at the recent meeting. Think of hang- 

 ing on to S7.00 for a quarter of a century, and 

 then turning it over tothe'proper authorities! 

 Wonder why it wasn't handed in long ago? 

 And yet the convention didn't adjourn at 

 once, and all go out and " blow it in " in 

 some " joUilicating'' and questionable way. 

 No, sir, bee-keepers at conventions are all 

 straight. At least they are in Wisconsin. 

 And the samples we have seen as far away as 

 California seem to be ditto. And almost with- 

 out a single individual exception this is true 

 of every bee-keepers' convention we have ever 

 attended. 



Pres. France says the majority of the bee- 

 keepers are working toward the production of 

 extracted honey. Less swarming, less work, 

 and more honey and money. But the best 

 producers are death on the chaps that extract 

 unripe honey to put on the market. And 

 they ought to be. The bee-keeper that puts 

 unripe honey on the market ought to be- 

 well, he ought to be forced to earn an honest 

 living in some way, and not rob the consumer 

 and also damage the market for good honey. 

 There were some good papers read by Mr. 

 Hoffman, Miss Pickard, Mr. Fox and C. H. 

 Pierce. We will publish them later. It is 

 surprising how much some people know about 

 successful bee-keeping, but have to be pressed 

 or squeezed in order to get the information 

 out of them. At the convention is where they 

 can sometimes be compelled to " let out." So 

 it often happens that the quietest member 

 could, if he only would, give the most and 

 best instruction to the rest of the crowd. 



Prehaps we'd better leave the rest for the 

 secretary to tell. But the trouble is, she's in- 

 clined to be rather backward in coming for- 

 ward with a full report of the proceedings. 

 We just believe she could write out a very 



complete report of all that was said and done. 

 But will she ? We'll await her answer. 



Miss S. E. Woodcock, of Cook Co., 111., 

 when renewing her subscription for another 

 year in advance, wrote thus appreciatively of 

 the American Bee Journal : " I find it both in- 

 structive and entertaining, and enjoy it and 

 my bees immensely." 



Hon. Eugene Secor, now a memlier of the 

 Iowa Legislature, in session at Des Moines, 

 has introduced a bill on the subject of pure 

 food. This is his first experience in Iowa's 

 General Assembly, and he says that he finds 

 " the session so far very pleasant, with plenty 

 of work." 



The Apiary of A. Eraser is shown on the 

 first page this week. The following accom- 

 panied the photograph : 



I may say in connection with the picture I 

 sent, that I have been keeping bees 10 years, 

 and am satisfied with the business. Last year 

 I had a trifle better than half a crop. I would 

 like to get some of those big crops that I read 

 about people getting in Illinois, Nebraska, 

 etc. I do not mean the Western country. 



I started with one colony and have had 

 varying success. I have 151 colonies in the 

 cellar, which is 20 less than the number I put 

 away last year. 



I think the American Bee Journal is all 

 right. A. Frazer. 



Mr. R. a. Burnett, of R. A. Burnett & 

 Co., took a trip to the East recently, and on 

 Feb. 7 wrote us : 



" My trip in the East was very agreeable. I 

 visited the honey-dealers in Philadelphia, 

 New York, and Buffalo, where they seem to 

 have stock enough to carry them 'along, if 

 not some to spare." 



We understand that there is quite a good 

 deal of honey yet in the country — a number of 

 carloads of extracted. Seems to us some 

 tried to have bee-keepers believe, last fall, that 

 the crop of 1901 was very short, and advised 

 holding for higher prices. We still think our 

 advice was all right — to sell if as good prices 

 as those of 1900 could be secured. 



Mr. Wm. a. Selser, of Philadelphia, wrote 

 as follows, Feb. 6 : 



I expect to leave this week for a tour of 

 Texas, Arizona and Californiajn- the interest 

 of the pure-food law now before Congress from 

 a chemical, scientific standpoint in order to 

 get samples direct from the bees of all flows 

 of nectar that produce a dextrose action with 

 a levulose reaction, that makes some adulter- 

 ated honey hard to prove before a jury, when 

 the said honey has been adulterated by the 

 packers with inverted sucrose. I think when 

 I return I will be able to prove adulteration 

 sufficient to any jury, no matter how much it 

 has been doctored chemically. I hope to re- 

 turn in about two months. 



My dear mother passed away last week, and 

 our home is so very sad without her. 



Wm. a. Selser. 



Mr. Selser is a honey expert, and no one we 

 know of is better prepared to undertake the 

 work assigned him in the interest of pure 

 honey, 



We hid the pleasure of meeting Mr. Selser's 

 mother when attending the Philadelphia con- 

 vention 2 or 3 years ago. She was indeed a 

 lovely character, as are all good mothers. Our 

 sympathy, as well as that of all who know 

 Mr. Selser, goes out to him in his sorrow. 



