750 



December, 1907. 



Amc*rican IBae Journal 



outlook, due to difference of tempera- 

 ment in individuals. 



It will probably ever be while this 

 Church Dispensation lasts that the var- 

 ious articles of commerce will be bought 

 and sold on speculation. If a man has 

 goods to sell below what the market 

 value is, he is not commercially wronged 

 ly others buying it. In fact, no one 

 •could buy goods and sell them unless 

 -he could make a profit on them. 

 Prices. 



Owing to the establishment by the 

 Ontario Bee-Keepers' Association of a 

 ■committee to secure reports of honey 

 crops, to study all the conditions which 

 might affect prices, and their so far do- 

 ing their work with good judgment, we 

 have been able to be more unanimous 

 than formerly in the demand for prices 

 on our goods. 



This year our prices for first-class 

 comb honey have been higher than ever 

 before. The price has been fairly well 

 maintained ; the only cloud upon the 

 horizon as to the maintainance of these 

 prices has been the stringency of the 

 money market with the curtailment of 

 business generally and the lack of or- 

 ganization in the United States. With 

 the price of white honey in the East so 

 different from what it is in the West, 

 I can come to no other conclusion than 

 that Western bee-keepers underestimate 

 the quality of their honey, or that they 

 do not care to get the best price obtain- 

 able for their crop ; or (and this is, of 

 course, the most likely reason) they did 

 not correctly estimate the market con- 

 ditions. After paying 3 cents per pound 

 duty we have actually had some lots of 

 honey imported into Canada at loVa 

 cents per pound, laid down ; tins sup- 

 pHed free. And yet alfalfa honey 'is 

 now worth 9 to 10 cents in the United 

 States. Lack of organization is then 

 of interest to bee-keepers the world ov- 

 er. With organization, too, jo dealer 

 suffers what he loses one year by not 

 being able to buy at sacrifice prices. He 

 will gain in another when the tendency 

 of prices is the other way, and by or- 

 ganization and the reasonable regula- 

 tion of prices he can afford to do busi- 

 ness on a smaller profit, because he will 

 run less risk by depreciation in value. 



Be the price high or low, there must 

 be a legitimate difference between job- 

 ber, wholesale and retail prices, and if 

 the dealer loses in his business he is 

 more chary about his next investment. 



History of Honey Committee. 



The history of the Honey Committee 

 of the Ontario Bee-Keepers' Associa- 

 tion is this. In 1902, at the annual 

 meeting of the Ontario Bee-Keepers' 

 Association at Barrie, Ontario, the On- 

 tario Honey Exchange was organized. 

 In its report it states : 



"Its object is to establish a reliable and 

 fair market price for the product of its 

 members, the more proper distribution 

 of honey, and to establish, when ad- 

 visable, foreign and distant Canadian 

 markets." 



"The main officers of the Exchange 

 shall consist of 5 directors, elected by 

 the members of the Ontario Bee-Keep- 

 ers' Association at each annual meet- 

 ing, and to hold office for one year, and 

 shall direct all business of the E.x- 



change. They will choose a location, 

 and obtain by rental or otherwise a suit- 

 able office and ware-rooms in some 

 central city, and that shall be known as 

 headquarters." 



In short, the plan was to sell — more 

 or less co-operatively to handle the pro- 

 ducts of the bee. 



In 1903, H. G. Sibbald gave a report 

 of the Honey Exchange Committee, and 

 by it showed that at a meeting of this 

 committee at Woodstock, August 15, the 

 following prices were recommended: 

 60-pound tins, yVz cents in Toronto; 

 comb honey, $1.65 to $2 per dozen. At 

 this meeting it was moved by H. G. 

 Sibbald, seconded by J. L. Byer, "that 

 the Ontario Bee-Keepers' Association 

 appoint a committee to collect crop re- 

 ports and distribute the same to the 

 members." This was carried, and upon 

 this basis the committee has acted and 

 advised as to prices ever since, with a 

 more than full measure of success. 



This committee may have more ard- 

 uous work in the future than it has had 

 in the past. The condition of commerce, 

 the fruit crop, and home and foreign 

 honey crop, and the duty on honey, all 

 must be fully considered when regulat- 

 ing prices. It seems to me the United 

 States, perhaps under the National As- 

 sociation, might with advantage do 

 something under the above head. 



Brantford, Ontario. 



Production and Ripening of 

 Extracted Honey 



BY C. P. D.'\DANT. 



I notice in the November number of 

 The American Bee Journal an article 

 from Mr. Greiner on the ripening of 

 honey, and one from Mr. Townsend, 

 taken from the Bee-Keeper's Review, 

 on the comparison of expense in pro- 

 ducing comb and extracted honey. I 

 wish to make some remarks on these 

 subjects. 



We do not leave our honey on the 

 hives beyond the time necessary to ma- 

 ture each separate crop. That is to 

 say, the clover honey, which with us 

 is the first crop, is taken off the hives 

 just as soon as the crop is at an end, 

 and, without waiting for the next crop. 

 It is our experience that honey is very 

 promptly matured at the end of a crop, 

 and it is unnecessary to delay extract- 

 ing beyond two or three days after the 

 crop has ceased. 



If the harvest is very heavy, and we 

 run short of supers, as happened dur- 

 ing the crop of 1903, we never hesitate 

 to extract to make room, before the 

 crop ends. In that case, we remove 

 the supers which were first filled by 

 the bees, for in- such seasons we have 

 more than one super on each hive, and 

 sometimes as many as 4. The last sup- 

 ers put on will, of course, contain the 

 freshest honey, whether they are above 

 or below the others. So we may take 

 3 supers off a very populous hive and 

 leave one on, of partly sealed and 

 partly very fresh honey. The others 

 will be returned after the honey has 

 been extracted, perhaps to be filled 

 again before the end of that crop of 

 honey. In my mind, it is during those 



very heavy crops that the advantage of 

 the honey extractor, and its capacity 

 for saving labor to the bees, is most 

 apparent. 



In the season ot 1884, I remember ex- 

 tracting some 5,000 pounds of honey 

 from an apiary ot 89 colonies in 3 days. 

 At the end of the third day, we ex- 

 amined the colonies from which we had 

 extracted in the morning of the first 

 day, and found most of them with 

 honey in every cell from which the 

 honey had been removed 3 days before. 

 No amount of argument could convince 

 me that those bees could have secured 

 anywhere near half as much honey, and 

 stored it, during the same space of time, 

 if they had had to build the combs for it. 



We do not believe in honey ripened 

 after removal from the hives, by arti- 

 ficial means. But allow me to say that, 

 in this matter, one must not be too 

 dogmatic. There are a number of 

 things which may cause a different re- 

 sult. The warmth of the summer, the 

 greater or less amount of moisture in 

 the atmosphere, according to location; 

 and, above all, the condition of the hon- 

 eyitself when harvested — all these things, 

 or each of them, will have an influ- 

 ence on the more or less difficult ripen- 

 mg of honey by artificial means. As 

 good an authority as the late Chas. F. 

 Muth, was strongly in favor of arti- 

 ficial ripening. Mr. ;Muth was a prac- 

 tical bee-keeper of long experience, who 

 was also a honey-dealer, and handled 

 hundreds of barrels of honey each year. 

 He did ripen honey artificially in an 

 attic over his business house in Cincin- 

 nati, and certainly had a very good ar- 

 ticle of honey, as I found by actual 

 examination years ago. 



The body of the honey, at the time 

 of its harvest by the bees, is of very 

 much importance. I know that it has 

 been habitual to say that fresh-harvest- 

 ed honey contains something like 75 

 per cent of water. But there are times 

 when it has much less water than this 

 amount. Some grades of honey are al- 

 ways watery when harvested. Among 

 these I will mention basswood honey. 

 I have repeatedly found basswood honey 

 that fermented in the hive., in the man- 

 ner mentioned by Mr. Greiner at the 

 foot of page 720. This and other rea- 

 sons have caused me to say that the 

 sealing of the cells by the bees was not 

 always a criterion of the ripening of 

 the honey, for evidently in both my 

 experience and Mr. Greiner's, the bees 

 had sealed this honey before it was 

 sufficiently ripened, showing that they 

 are apt to make errors of judgment as 

 well as ourselves. On the other hand, 

 when the crop is at an end, especially 

 when it ends abruptly, as by frost, they 

 often leave quite a number of cells un- 

 sealed, the honey of which is as thick 

 as any sealed honey they may have ; 

 the reason they have for not sealing 

 it is very probably that they have ceased 

 to make comb and expect to use up 

 that honey before long. It is simply a 

 matter of expediency and economy with 

 them. 



That certain grades of honey are 

 very thick when harvested may be evi- 

 denced from the fact that statements 

 have repeatedly been made by some 

 bee-keepers in the Old World, that 



