622 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



the cars at East Berlin, Pa. I have too much for 

 my home market. Extracted I do not care to sell, 

 as I can jret about as much for it as for comb in 

 home market. We had the best white-clover crop 

 that we have had for years, and the prospects are 

 good for red clover and fall flowers. 

 Mulberry. Pa., July 21, 1888. L. W. Lighty. 



I^EP0i^i^^ Digc0U^;^6iN6. 



DISCOUKAGINO FKOM MRS. AXTEIjl^. 



«S no one has written us for our report of hon- 

 ey crop, I will send it you. A. What is new 

 comb honey or extracted honey selling at in 

 your vicinity? There is none on the market, 

 and not enough in hives to keep up brood- 

 rearing. We shall have to feed some during this 

 month at our home apiary. At Timber apiary, bees 

 in full colonies are getting a good living, nuclei 

 hardly enough to live upon. We are sowing buck- 

 wheat, and shall hope to have a good crop of fall 

 honey from buckwheat and smartweed and other 

 fall flowers. We generally get as much in fall as 

 spring. It seems a mystery that bees do not get a 

 living. Mrs. L. C. Axtei^l. 



Roseville, 111., July 13. 1888. 



"ZERO. ZERO, ZERO," SO REPORTS A PROMINENT 

 BEE-MAN. 



Mr. R(»(f. — Had I been called upon to give the 

 honey statisti<!s of this locality I should have res- 

 ponded about as follows: a, zero; b. zero; c. zero; 

 d. zero; e. zero. There is that much humor some- 

 times in the most serious of facts. No honey is to 

 be found at any price. I have had .5 swarms from 

 46 colonies; but in spite of that, bees have been al- 

 most in a starving condition all this season. The 

 cold cloudy weather prevented any ingathering 

 from fruit-bloom; and white clover, although there 

 is a regular turf of it, has scarcely blossomed at 

 all. So this query, "Has the season with you been 

 good, average, poor, or bad," may well be answered 

 with a "zero," for I have literally had no honey 

 season at all. Why clover has not blossomed, I 

 wish some one would tell me. Geo. F. Bobbins. 



Mechanicsburg, 111., July 33, 188K. 



PROF. WILEY PUBLICLY CORRECTS 

 HIS FALSE STATEMENTS. 



GREAT IS TRUTH, AND WILL, PREVAIL. 



E are very glad to notice, even though 

 at this late day, that Prof. Wiley 

 has deemed it incumbent on him- 

 self to acknowledge his false teach- 

 ing, through tlie agricultural press. 

 The following is from the Rural New-York- 

 er of July i28 : 



ARTIFICIAL COMB HONEY. 



Some years ago, in an article in the Popular 8ci- 

 ence Monthly, June, 1881, p. 3.54, in speaking of the 

 uses of glucose, 1 employed the following sentence: 



"In commercial honey, which is entirely free 

 from bee mediation, the comb is made of paraffine, 

 and filled with pure glucose by appropriate ma- 

 chinery." 



In the article in question I do not give my au- 

 thority for the above, and since that time this 

 statement has been declared false, and I have been 

 published, in at least one journal ostensibly de- 

 voted to the interests of honey-producers, as a 

 "willful and malicious liar." Usually I take no no- 

 tice of attacks made upon me in language which 

 excludes the possibility of its author t)eing a gen- 



tleman; but in this case I depart from my usual 

 custom at the request of a friend who has been for 

 30 years editorially connected with the agricultural 

 press of this country. 



The statement in question was made on the au- 

 thority of Dr. E. J. Hallock, an eminent chemist, 

 whom, unfortunately, science lost by death several 

 years ago. Dr. Hallock was at that time a resident 

 of Boston, and editor of the Boston Journal of 

 Chemistry. Neither Dr. Hallock nor myself believ- 

 ed at that time that such artificial comb could be 

 made commercially successful, although honey 

 made in that way could be sold at an enormous 

 profit if the comb could be made to sufficiently 

 counterfeit the genuine article. It is possible that 

 Dr. Hallock may have been misinformed in respect 

 to this matter, but 1 can not say that he was. 

 Moreover, the statement is of such a nHture that I 

 did not anticipate that any one would seriously 

 suppose that comb honey is in danger of being re- 

 placed by the spurious article. I make this state- 

 ment for the benefit of those who may have been 

 deceived by the malicious slanders which have 

 been circulated concerning me. 



The adulteration of honey is practiced to a most 

 alarming extent in this country, and every bee- 

 keeper will join me in my labors to detect and re- 

 move this fraud. To my personal and scientific 

 friends I have no need to speak. 1 address this 

 note to those who may have been led, without a 

 knowledge of the facts, to believe that I purposely 

 sought to pervert the truth. W. H. Wiley. 



While our good friend Newman, of the 

 A. B. /., may not have used just the lan- 

 guage that some of us would have used in 

 obliging Prof. Wiley to take some notice of 

 the consequences of his foolish statement, 

 we of the bee-keeping fraternity certainly 

 owe him a vote of thanks for having at 

 length driven the professor into a corner, as 

 it were, and for having literally made him re- 

 call his foolish statement. With all the ex- 

 planations that can possibly be made, I 

 think the world at large are pretty well sat- 

 isfied that no professor or scientist has any 

 right to make such statements, jokingly or 

 otherwise ; and I believe that the conse- 

 quences of this piece of folly will damage 

 Prof. Wiley's reputation in spite of all the 

 explanations and apologies he can possibly 

 make. Even yet he is too poorly posted to 

 undertake to write in regard to the adul- 

 teration of honey. For instance, the ex- 

 pression in his last paragraph : 



The adulteration of honey is practiced to a most 

 alarming extent in this country. 



I think this can not be said to be literally 

 true. If it were, the public will be excusa- 

 ble in being suspicious of every bit of honey 

 seen on the market. The more Prof. Wiley 

 and others of his class insist that the honey 

 on our markets is spurious, the more will 

 they injure themselves; and I am glad in- 

 deed to say that we have now an article 

 from Prof. Cook, indorsing the statement I 

 recently made, that our chemists and mi- 

 croscopists are making a blunder. They 

 have pronounced absolutely pure honey, 

 gathered by the bees, spurious; and they 

 have, by their folly, or by their want of wis- 

 dom in making such assertions before they 

 were sure they were right, weakened the 

 faith of the people in their wisdom and 

 skill to such an exteut that it may take 

 them years to regain the confidence they 

 have lost. Pretended science is almost as 

 bad as pretended honey. May (Jod help us 

 to get at the exact truth, not only in regard 

 to the honesty of honey-producers, but also 

 in regard to the honesty and skill of some of 

 our professors and scientists. 



