168 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



March 13, 1902. 



out to the village and small-town grocers, broken comb 

 gets to be out of the question, and uneven and crooked 

 sections also do not meet with favor. I find many cus- 

 tomers coming to my honey-house for 15, 25 and 50 or more 

 cents' worth of comb honey, and the customer cares not 

 whether one section weighs a pound and a half and its 

 neighbor only a half or three-fourths of a pound— just so 

 long as I can give them the money's worth in good and 

 fairly nice honey to eat. 



In my practice I use separators, planning to have my 

 section honey straight, smooth and even, such as can be 

 retailed by the piece at 10, I2j4, IS or 20 cents each. In 

 a large crop, however, there is now and then a cull section 

 caused by a defective foundation or starter, or one with a 

 brace against the separator that causes a break in the 

 capping— some that meet with accidents in one wav or 

 another, and some that I buy from the farmers and from care- 

 less apiarists. I sell my nice, smooth honey to go to city and 

 fancy markets, but retail the off-grades from the honey- 

 house, weighing out by the pound. 



Selling by weight from the average grocery is not prac- 

 tical in these days. There is a growing custom to sell 

 almost every thing put up in regular packages, each pack- 

 age alike and the same weight. We find coffee, tea, baking- 

 powders, flavors, meats, flour of every kind, in fact, almost 

 every thing, sold in regular packages packed by the pro- 

 ducer or manufacturer. I have heard that there are some 

 places where butter is cut off in big chunks and weighed 

 out, but in this part of the country and all up-to-date places, 

 selling by the piece or package is verv largely practiced! 

 and the bee-man must come up to demand or custom 

 else he is out-of-date, and cannot satisfactorily sell his 

 product. Even potatoes in this country sell often "by the 

 sack." 



Honey must surely come to be sold as other things are' 

 be put up in packages of even weight, and sold by the 

 package at retail. It follows, then, that whether we prefer 

 It or not, we must use separators in our supers, or some 

 other device or method used that will obtain uniformitv in 

 weight of sections. I almost see some one or more writers 

 hustling into print with arguments to prove my position wrong, 

 saying it is possible to produce a fancy, even-weight sec- 

 tion without separators. It is possible, but not probable 

 Possible when you have full sheets of foundation, thin sec- 

 tions (say VA inches), strong colonies, warm weather, rapid 

 flows and skilled apiarists who know how to get the greatest 

 number of these factors working harmoniously together. I 

 say It is possible, but not probable— not probable with even 

 the fair-to-good practical apiarist, and not always possible 

 with the expert. Whenever the apiarist can make or supply 

 all the deficiencies or defects caused by natural causes, then, 

 and only then, can he produce a fair average finished product 

 year by year. 



A practical farmer knows that first and foremost he 

 must have a good soil, and that it must be put in or4er, 

 moist, mellow, and in fine condition to receive the seed' 

 No matter how good naturally the soil may be, it must be 

 prepared. After the soil is ready to receive the seed, then 

 comes the choice of good seed to put into the soil. It is a 

 familiar thing to most farmers to have observed or exper- 

 ienced the loss of .a crop from a fine, well-prepared field 

 only because the seed was defective. So may the apiarist 

 have the finest stock obtainable, but a miserable failure of 

 hives and supers. Farmer bee-keepers and careless and 

 impractical apiarists will buy the best hives on the market, 

 then proceed to use them like a farmer putting poor seed 

 into good ground, or good seed into hard, untilled ground. 

 A. good hive wrongly handled makes the possessor worse 

 off than a poor hive well handled. 



The value of a hive is in proportion as it enables the 

 apiarist to apply methods, to produce results in short cuts, 

 saving labor, obtaining control of bees, and thereby turning 

 their habits and instincts to further our ends, and facili- 

 tating the best finished product. Do not be deceived into 

 thinking that a "patent hive" of itself will get you more 

 and better honey. It is method—an intelligent manage- 

 ment and application of principles — that gets results. The 

 hive is but the medium by which we bring about results 

 — it is the vehicle. I do not believe we have yet the per- 

 fect hive, the one that best enables us to practice to the 

 best advantage the knowledge we have attained to in scien- 

 tific apiculture. I will confess (parenthetically) that I am 

 striving to perfect a hive that will best enable me to apply 

 my present knowledge of the scientific principles of apicuf- 

 ture, but, if I have not that scientific knowledge, or having 



it will not apply it, my fine, improved hive is worse than 

 useless. Bees, of themselves, and following instinct and 

 nature, will be just as healthy, gather just as much honey, and 

 be better off (they and their owner), dwelling in plain 

 box-hives without a frame in them. Remember that the 

 hive is but the vehicle by which the apiarist is able to apply 

 HIS KNOWLEDGE. Larimer Co.. Colo. 



The Afterthought. ^ 



Tbe "Old Reliable" seen through New and Unreliable Qlasses, 

 By E. E. HASTY, Sta. B Rural, Toledo, O. 



BEES AND SOUND FRUIT. 



The Canadian experiments to prove that bees do not 

 injure sound fruit seem pretty satisfactory. By starting very 

 hungry bees to work on sound fruit dipped in honey, and 

 also on similar fruit with little holes punched in it, right 

 alongside, the conditions seem to be made sufficiently allur- 

 ing and natural. And when they wreck the perforated fruit, 

 and polish off the dipped fruit without making any holes in 

 it, it's pretty plain that they at least don't know how to do 

 anything more. It matters comparatively little to the fruit- 

 man whether they don't know how or are physically incapable. 

 Still, this does not entirely obliterate previous testimony that 

 they do sometimes learn the trick of forming a hot, seeth- 

 ing, miniature swarm on a bunch of grapes until they either 

 burst the berries or pry them loose at the stem. I have 

 grapes of many varieties, and only once in twenty-odd years 

 do I remember to have seen something that looked a little 

 like this. By rubbing long enough in one place a single bee 

 could wear a hole and there is some testimony on record to 

 the effect that they sometimes learn the trick of doing this. 

 Page 73- f . I 1 -a 



ELECTING OFFICERS OF THE NATIONAL. 



Say, combine the two methods of electing officers. Begin 

 the ballot at the annual meeting, where the desirability or non- 

 desirability of changes can be talked over. Report the vote as 

 far as it has gone. Then (after it is seen just how the cat is 

 jumping) allow a sufficient time for the votes of absent mem- 

 bers to be sent in. Or, would that lead to spite-work, to 

 defeat just the ones that ought to be elected? I premise 

 that the Scylla and the Charybdis of the thing are, that one 

 method elects by a disgracefully lean minority, and the othet" 

 method gives the voters no chance to concentrate on any- 

 body else than the man already in the office. Page 83. 



THE WHIMSICAL HONEY-EATER. 



Yes, the man who cultivates a whim that he can't eat 

 genuine honey, but can eat imitation honey all right — he's 

 a tough proposition. What Edison, what Whitney, will in- 

 vent a method that can reach and evangelize him? Page 88. 



SUGAR-MAPLE AFTER FRUIT-BLOOM — RATTLE-HEAD BEES. 



Why is this thus? North Carolina reports sugar-maple 

 blooming after fruit-bloom. Here it is the other way. Page 

 92. 



Rattle-heads indeed were those bees that took up their 

 quarters in a five-gallon oil-can. Page 93. 



CARBON BISULPHID. 



Carbon bisulphid is a live topic on account of the pres- 

 ent probability that it will displace sulphur in the important 

 work of killing off our vermin and things. We greatly need 

 the best, whatever it is. Very heavy, both as a fluid and as 

 a vapor. Four cups of it weigh as much as five of water : but it 

 only takes two — say bushels — of the vapor to balance five of 

 air. One result is that with care it can be poured from one 

 bushel to another. This is a practical matter, for we need 

 to remember the difficulty of getting it equally distributed 

 in the top of a closet or the top of a stack of hives. Water 

 don't run up hill. Fortunately, heavy vapor, although it 

 doesn't love to run up hill, will eventually mix with the air 

 and then go up to some extent. Page 99. 



