<J43 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 1. 



queens come the nearest, and yet we do not 

 guarantee that even these shall produce the 

 golden Italians. 



We have just been advised of the successful 

 mailing of a select tested queen from our ofifice 

 to Jamaica. She was sent in a large Benton 

 cage, and was on the road 18 days. The cus- 

 tomer says she arrived in excellent condition, 

 and was successfully introduced. Score anoth- 

 er one for the Benton cage. 



One of our advertisers, Mr. A. A. Byard. 

 West Chestertield. N. H., writes: Take out my 

 ad., as it is getting late in the season. It has 

 paid, for itself; and almost every one who sent 

 for the goods mentioned (ii.KANiNGs."' As we 

 have, in times gon('. by. given instances of un- 

 proti table advertising in our columns. It may be 

 admissible to give this as a sample of the other 

 side. This is only one of several otliers we 

 have received, of a similar import. 



Now is the time to infuse new blood among 

 your Ijees if you intend todo it at all. Untested 

 queens are now the cheapest they will ever be 

 in the year, and most apiaries are or very soon- 

 will be doing little or nothing in tbe way of 

 getting stores. The time to requeen is during 

 the month of August, when brood-rearing is not 

 necessary, and, in a good many cases, undesira- 

 ble. Look over our advertising columns, and 

 order the queens you want. 



As an illustration of the extent to which 

 honey is now being used by bakers, we make 

 the following exti'act from a private letter just 

 received from the United States Baking Co., 

 MansHeld, O.: 



Mr. A. I. /foot. -—We liave been bujiiig honey from 

 Tutt, of St. Louis, a very fine article, -Atbli and 6 cts. 

 per lb. We just bought from him yesteiday 93 bar- 

 rels at bK cts., said to be equal to the last lot we 

 boug-ht ot him at 6 cts. ; if so, it is a very good pur- 

 chase. Youi'S i-espectfully, 



United States Baking Co. 

 (Crawford-Taylor branch). 



Mansfield, O., July 29, 1891. 



How do you like the new design on the front 

 of the cover? This was ordered ab)ut a year 

 ago, but we told our engravers to do tlieir level 

 best, without I'egar'd to time or cost. The rep- 

 resentations of clover, and bees on the wing, 

 are unusually accurate. You see the idea. The 

 little gleaners are gathering the sweets from 

 far and near. The goldenrods are also excel- 

 lent, and the whole design represents a handful 

 of clovers. gold(uirods. and other bee-plants 

 that have been gleaned on the way. The en- 

 gravers seem to have held in mind distinctly 

 the idea of a gleaner, or, better, a Gi-kanixgs in 

 Bee Culture, and it is no little gratification 

 to us that they have succeeded in combining so 

 well not only beauty but the etei'nal fitness of 

 things. 



PARAFFINE for candy - HOLES OF QUEEN 

 CAGES. 



We are just lining all the candy-holes of our 

 Benton cages with paralline. The idea of this 

 is to prevent the candy, or moisture in the 

 candy, from soaking into the end or grain of 

 the wood, thus causing the candy to dry up and 

 become hard. After the cages are filled with 

 candy, the candy itself is covered with paratlfine 

 paper. All this seals the candy up practically 

 air-tight, with the exception of the feed-hole; 

 and the candy around this is kept fresh by the 

 bees eating out their daily rations. The use of 

 paraffine in this way in keeping the candy soft 

 is old, but we believe there is something in it. 

 Recently a customer returned the cage in 



which the queen had died. Upon examination 

 we found that most of the honey had soaked 

 into the wood, leaving the candy as hard as a 

 brick. This and other returned cages has de- 

 cided us in favor of parathne lining. With an 

 ordinary five-cent brush, and a little vat of 

 melted paraffine, one person can paraffine about 

 five hundred cages in half a day. We shall 

 watch the results narrowly now for the next few 

 weeks, and report later for the benefit of our 

 readers. 



THE OLD comb-honey CANARD BROKE LOOSE 

 AGAIN. 



The old sensational falsehood about artificial 

 comb honey is breaking loose again. To show 

 how stale it is, we reproduce it. 



ARTIFICIAL HONEY. 



Artificial honey, wliich is much more common in 

 the market than consumers know, is made of potato 

 stai'ch and oil of vitriol. Some rasli ojitimists think 

 that they are sure of getting tlie genuine judduct of 

 bees and flowers by i>urchasliig honey in the comb. 

 They do not know that the exquisite white comb 

 that pleases them is often made of paraffine wax.— 

 Heiald of Health. 



That old twaddle about "■ potato starch " and 

 "oil of vitriol," and " rash optimists," is more 

 than stale. Our thousand dollars Is open to 

 any one who will prove that comb honey can be 

 successfully manufactured of potato starch and 

 oil of vitriol so that rash optimists or anybody 

 else can not detect the ditrerence. This offer 

 was made some five years ago, and we see no 

 use of recalling it. for nobody has ever yet 

 written to us about it. The item has been ap- 

 pearing again in a number of local papers. It 

 has probably got into the " boiler-plate" mat- 

 ter which is sold for so much a yard to country 

 papers, and now it will go the rounds for a 

 while. This appeared originally in the Herald 

 of Health a number of years ago, and every 

 once in a while it bobs up. Our subscribers can 

 do more to get their local papers to refute it 

 than we can, and we trust they will seize their 

 opportunity without delay. We will furnish 

 plenty of our rewai'd cards to help substantiate 

 your statements. 



HOW TO CLARIFY BLACK AND DIRTY WAX 

 •WITH SULPHURIC ACED. 



We have been experimenting for the past 

 few days in rendering wax with sulphuric acid. 

 Although we knew the Dadants and one or two 

 others were using it with excellent results in 

 clarifying old dark wax. somehow or other " we 

 hadn't got around to it." For several months 

 back we have been saving up our old inky 

 pieces of wax, and. besides this, the scrapings 

 from the floor, and other odd accumulations 

 from broken bits of comb. This week we pro- 

 cured some sulphuric acid and proceeded to 

 clarify first the dirty scrapings from the floor, 

 putting them into a copper boiler holding about 

 half a barrel. We first put in about two pails 

 of water, and then about three ounces of sul- 

 phuric acid, and afterward the scrapings. 

 We next let on steam, until the wax began to 

 come to the top. We first dipped off the clear 

 wax floating on the suiface. and poured it 

 through a cheese-cloth bag. We next scooped 

 out the residue, including the dirt, dumped it 

 into the cheese-cloth bag. put it into our wax- 

 press, and squeezed it under a gentle and in- 

 creasing pressure. The wax,, as it oozed out, 

 ran into the vat, which, upon cooling, proved to 

 be nice yellow wax. On former occasions, the 

 same treatment without sulphuric acid, would 

 give us wax about as black as ink — or, at least, 

 of a very dirty and muddy coloi'. The action of 

 the acid is to carbonize, or. in other words, burn 

 the organic mattei', and this frees the wax that 

 is mingled with it, and allows it to separate 



