1888 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



758 



will during tlie lieiglit of the honey-fiow. 

 Besides tliis, most colonies will make a little 

 spirt in brood-rearing, no matter how you 

 feed them. If this is what you want in 

 order to have young bees for winter, it may 

 be all right ; but my opinion is that we are 

 just as often successful in wintering where 

 the bees do not get " steam up '' at all (if I 

 may be pardoned for using the expression), 

 during the month of October or later. I am 

 not lenlly satisfied that we need any brood- 

 rearing in October or November either, for 

 successful wintering. In summing up, then, 

 tlie reply to your query is, that I would not 

 do any thing of the sort, as you propose. If 

 you are getting fal! honey from autumn 

 flowers, however, so that the bees are al- 

 ready filled with honey, and secreting wax 

 to some extent, it would make quite a differ- 

 ence. But even in that case, I should pre- 

 fer making them store their surplus honey 

 in sections rather than to disturb tlie sealed 

 stores which they have in the brood-nest. 



SELLING HONEY ON COMMISSION. 



H. R. WRIGHT, ALBANY, N. Y. 



R. ROOT:— I sent Mr. H. R. Wrigbt, of Al- 

 bany, N. Y., a few hundred pounds of 

 honey in comb, safely put up— one-third 

 white, one-third with sections commenced 

 with white and filled in with amber honey, 

 and the other third was clear bucliwheat honey; 

 and, too, I sent a man to help handle it, and it was 

 got to Mr. Wright in fine condition; and when re- 

 turns were made it came to 7 cts. per pound, out of 

 which was taken express charges and commission, 

 saying nothing about the expense of the man, his 

 railroad fare to and from Albany, and expenses 

 there, nearly two days. I could have sold my hon- 

 ey at home for 5 cts. per pound, and made money. 

 It was the first time I had ever tried a commission 

 merchant, and I thought it would be nice to get my 

 money all in a pile, but the fun was all taken out 

 of me, and I shall never send another pound of 

 honey to be sold on commission. Greeny No. 2. 

 Patten's Mills, N. Y., Sept. 16, 1888. 



Friend G., it does seem as if 7 cts. a pound 

 for comb honey was a pretty small price, 

 during this year of scarcity ; but I am afraid 

 you are a little severe on bur friend Wright. 

 You admit that your honey was mixed, and 

 I believe that the general experience is that 

 mixed honey is hard to dispose of at a good 

 price. The clear buckwheat honey, how- 

 ever, it seems to me, ought to have sold for 

 more than 7 cts. a pound. Did you not in- 

 struct Mr. Wright to sell it at once, and 

 make quick returns ? Another thing, if 

 you did not want him to let it go at so low a 

 price as 7 cts., your commission man should 

 have been limited in price when the honey 

 was consigned to liim ; and I am sure, my 

 good friend, that you went to much more 

 expense than was necessary. At the last 

 national convention, the decision was almost 

 unanimous that honey can be sent safer by 

 freight than by express, to say nothing of 

 the enormous expense of shipping by ex- 

 press. I should never think of sending a 

 man along to help handle the honey, unless 



I had something like several tons. As Al- 

 bany is not very far away from you, this 

 would make a difference. There is one ad- 

 vantage, it is true, in sending a man ; and 

 that is, you know just exactly how the hon- 

 ey stood transportation. You have not told 

 us what size of section you used. It surely 

 could not have been the small ten-cent sec- 

 tions which Mr. AV right so strongly recom- 

 mends. In regard to sending honey to be 

 sold on commission, I feel quite certain that 

 a great many bee-keepers get a good deal 

 better prices by selling at home than from 

 commission merchants, as you state it ; but 

 they do not often get their money in a lump. 



RAMBLE NO. 7. 



THE CI,AM-SHEI.L, APIARY. 



T|p SHORT ramble fiom my own yard, and I am 

 qH^ again sun-ounded hy the busy hum of ^pis 



J^K' mellifica— this time in the apiary of Mr. Rob- 

 ■^■^■^ ert Bump. This brother bee-keeper is work- 

 ing on toward W years of age, and is afflicted 

 with an inflamed ankle, and I gladly answer his call 

 of distress, and am here to do work that he can not 

 attend to. The request that came to the Raral)ler 

 was to remove surplus boxes and to extract honey. 



"this don't look like a good bee season." 

 Mr. B. has a home apiary of 160 swarms in a yard in 

 the rear of his house, upon ground sloping gently to 

 the south, and shaded with fruit-trees and grape- 

 vines. The hives are nearly all the old-fashioned 

 box hives, or what was introduced into this part of 

 the country many years ago as the Clark hive; di- 

 mensions, 10 X 13, and 14 inches deep. Mr. B. makes 

 these hives yet, and does not take the bee-journals, 

 averring that nothing new can be learned in them. 

 The first thing I noticed as peculiar was a clam- 

 shell on the cover of each hive. Now, if you ever 

 noticed it, a half clam-shell has considerable cling 

 to it when placed upon a board hollow side down; 

 and if placed upon different portions of the hive it 

 signifies different conditions inside the hive. I 

 found if there was no clam-shell there were no 

 crates on the hive, etc. I should spy, that clam- 

 shells are a great improvement over Bro. Doolit- 

 tle's tacks and pebliles. The clean white inside 

 can also be written on with a pencil. Let us have 

 the clam-shells instead of slates. 



I removed from the hives Sr-i fifteen-pound ci-ates, 

 not all completely filled with honey, and extracted 

 about 100 lbs. of honey in a home-made extractor 

 that worked finely except the wire cloth for sup- 



