188R 



GLEANINGS IK BEE CL'LTUKE. 



'■He 



every man should have an equal cli:uu;f wiili his 

 neighbor in the strugfrlo for existence. 



1 hiive liei)t bees loi- three years inihetownof 

 Denison. The loealitj- is I'lU- better than the open 

 eountry, for the streets and commons are covered 

 ■with white clover, and nearly every lot is white 

 with fruit-blossoms until late in tlie spring-. I was 

 first in the field, l)ut T do not think myself any more 

 entitled to these privileg'es than Mr. S., who last 

 spring brought three times as many colonies into 

 towTi as 1 have, and located them less than two 

 blocks away. 1 believe he has as much moral 

 right in the territory as 1 have; and I further be- 

 lieve that any law that would exclude him from 

 keeping bees in the town, or that would convey to 

 me the right of territory, would l)e iioth wrong and 

 unconstitutional. 



Next spring my hees will be sent to my farm, 

 four miles from town. Wliat justice would there 

 be in a law that gave me control, not only of my 

 own farm, but also of that of Mr. lirown, my near- 

 est neighbor? Jf he keeps a few colonies only, they 

 will not interfere with my busin<>ss; and if he keeps 

 many colonies they will be unprofitable to him un- 

 less he .ioins with me in the cultivation of crops 

 that will furnish flowers for the bees. I certainly 

 should resent any law that would sell to him any 

 rights whatever in regard to my farm. 



I belie\'e the good doctor is joking about this 

 whole matter of bee-legislation. He has baited his 

 hook for" suckers," and caught one at the first cast, 

 much to his edification, no doubt. If he is really in 

 earnest, and proposes by such laws to keep out the 

 small producers who regularly knock the bottom 

 out of the local markets every year, I should be 

 slow to fall in with his project, for these " small 

 producers " are, many of them, the boys on the 

 farms. They take this means of earning a few 

 dollars in the fall when a little money is so much' 

 longed for by the average farmer - boy. I have 

 been thei-e, and know just how it is with the boys. 

 Kvery year the papers ai-e full of advice in regai-d 

 to keeping the boys on the farm. Let us help keep 

 them there by making bee-keepers of them. But 

 whether they be boys, girls, men. or women, who 

 swamj) the markets with small lots of honey, let us 

 doom- best toward teaching them to obtain their 

 honey in marketable shape, and prices will be safe. 

 The dealers, too, are much to blame for this fre- 

 quent demoralization of the local markets. They 

 do not guage prices according to (juality, as they do 

 when buying buttei- and other farm produce; but if 

 section honey is selling at 20 cts., they pay farmers 

 15 cts. for it in pails, whether the quality be good, 

 bad, or inditterent. Tn such a market, clean new 

 comb honey in pails ought to be worth at least IS 

 cts.; black and soiled comb, anywhere along the 

 scale to zero. 



Not long since, my grocer, who knows nothing 

 about bees, lifted from a jar on his counter a piece 

 of comb that had evidently been the home of half a 

 dozen generations of baby-bees, with the remark 

 that he rather liked comb honey that was " some- 

 what discolored." AVith a dull knife I cut cross- 

 wise of the cells and showed him the cocoons of the 

 young bees. He was utterly astonished to learn 

 what the silky material was, and now he not only 

 refuses to eat such honey but also to buy It. Let 

 us take the local dealers in hand. Z. T. Hawk. 

 Denison, Iowa, Nov. 32. 18f6. 



Friend 11.. after the article from friend 



Miller had gone to print, some thoughts oc- 

 curred to nie in the line of what you have 

 been saying. The real solution of the mat- 

 ter seems, after all, to lie in educating the 

 boys and girls, the small farmers, the gro- 

 cerymen. and everybody else, up to the stan- 

 dai-d of modern bee culture ; and even then 

 there is much 'further to be done. When 

 some neighborhood gets to be overstocked 

 with liee-keepers and bees (just as it is in 

 your own case), we want the Christian spirit 

 that actuated father'Abraham when he said 

 to Lot. "If thou wilt take the left hand, 

 then I will go to the right ; or if thou depart 

 to the riglit hand, then I will go to the 

 left.'" It won't pay for bee-keepers to crowd 

 together in one spot ; and. indeed, it is far 

 from being necessary, for in almost every 

 township and county there are large tracts 

 where there are not bees enough kept to 

 gather a tenth part of the honey that goes to 

 waste every year. 



FRIEND FRADENBURG'S CHEAP 

 COMB HONEY. 



low UK MAXAC.es to SKt,L I'l'. 



WAS never successful in getting nice section 

 honey in my locality, so I got an extractor and 

 I. thought I would raise all extracted honey; 

 but I have found it a drag to dispose of it. 

 The people nearly all seem to want their hon- 

 ey in the comb; l)ut, as Mrs. Chaddock has it in 

 Gleanings, page «8T, they don't want to buy 

 boards. I have for some time thought of telling 

 how 1 have found a plan to sell them the comh 

 honey, and without the boards; but reading her 

 article jnst now made me jump for my writing- 

 material, and so here it goes. 



First, to get the comb hone.\' that will be nice and 

 white, that can be sold cheap, fill an upper story 

 of a hive with nice new brood-frames; exclude the 

 queen from them, but let the workers fill them 

 full, and they are pretty. 



HOW TO SELI< THE.M. 



1 make a case that will hold ten or twelve brood- 

 frames, with one side glass, but have the case about 

 4 inches deeper than the frames. Next I have a tin 

 tray made that will just fit in this case, and slide 

 down to the bottom, 3'4 inches high, with a fly-tight 

 lid, and handles on each end on the outside, to lift 

 it with when it is done. Next I laid a layer of comb- 

 honey that I cut out of unfinished sections in the 

 tin tray, and poured extracted honey over Ihem 

 to merely cover them; then 1 hung in the brood- 

 frames of comb honey to fill the case, put in a 

 case-knife and a galvanized-iron spoon, and took 

 the case over and set it on the store counter, 

 with the glass side in front. In a very short 

 time, word was sent over that they wanted 

 more. The first case was made two years ago, and 

 the cry has only been "more, more," and never a 

 word of complaint. This season I fixed up two 

 such cases, and put in about 100 lbs. in each, and 

 set them in a buggy, and drove over all the stones I 

 didn't miss, 12 miles, to Uhrichsville, to test its ship- 

 ping possibilities, and not a cell was broken. Of 

 course, I fastened the combs so they could not 

 shake or flop around much. The merchants there 

 are equally well pleased with the arrangement. Do 

 you get the idea'/ The merchant can lift out a 



