1S!17 



(U,i:anix(;s in rick crLTURK. 



551 



comb iiiuU-r llu' oUur halt' of the super where 

 there were hottoin-liars -'4 iiieh wiile, and yet 

 the combs were ])uiU clear down to them. In 

 case of the narrow bars, the bees had extended 

 the combs clear past them, and attached them 

 si>lidlv to the top-bars of the fraines below. — 

 Kp.] ■ 



GRADING HONEY. 



Defects of the Washington Grading, Chicago Grad- 

 ing, and the Gradings Recently Pro- 

 posed in Gleanings. 



BV B. W.\LKER. 



Frit'ud Hnii'sf: — I see from the last issue of 

 Gle.\nings that the matter of grading honey 

 is once more up for discussion, with a view of 

 reaching a speedy solution. Fearing that un- 

 due weight has been given to the changes I 

 have proposed, as you have in your final com- 

 ments stated so kindly and yet so emphatical- 

 ly, and believing that no set of rules ought to 

 be adopted that would fail of receiving our 

 approval, and as both you and Dr. Miller 

 seemed inclined to favor, in the main, the 

 proposed changes, and as I must say that nei- 

 ther set of rules as modified would be sanc- 

 tioned by me, and realizing that it is very 

 important that no serious mistake bs made at 

 this time, I am impelled to ask another hear- 

 ing. 



Yes, I have a confession to make and an 

 explanation to offer ; and at the risk of being 

 regarded as fickle-minded, not to say dishon- 

 est, I propose, with your permission, to make 

 the one and oiTer the other at this time. 



No, Ernest, the rules you have published as 

 "Walker's Amended Washington Rules " do 

 not now nor have the}' at any time fully set 

 forth my views or exemplified my practice in 

 grading honey. Do you ask why I offer them, 

 then ? I will tell you. I have been very de- 

 .sirous to see some change, at least, made for 

 the better in the rules already in force ; and 

 in proposing the suggested alterations, like an 

 old-party politician preparing his platform, 

 rather than a "■ dyed-in-the-zvooV" third-party 

 man of thirty years' standing, who has never 

 once allowed expediency to stand in the way 

 of principle in matters political, I weakly al- 

 lowed niN'self to offer snch changes as I con- 

 sidered wovild stand at least some show of 

 heing aflopted. Still, bear in mind what 

 friend Hutchinson had to say of the Washing- 

 ton rules, and the weight you had given his 

 views at the time ; and not forgetting that, at 

 the time of the adoption of the original rules 

 for grading at the Chicago convention, the 

 requirements of which were far more exacting 

 than the Washington rules, when, as a mem- 

 ber of the committee for preparing these rules, 

 I was not even allowed to read to the conven- 

 tion those I had drawn up for its consideration, 

 and recalling, too, that when, a little later on, 

 the rules prepared by friend Baldridge were 

 rushed through the convention (my vote being 

 the only dissenting one), I had the temerity 

 to ask how manv members of the convention 



had ever really raised, graded, and marketed 

 five thousand ])ounds of comb honey, I was 

 ])rom])tly called down by the chairman of the 

 committee on rules for grading in these terms : 

 "We don't propose to have this convention 

 run by one man ; and I will have you to un- 

 derstand that we know how to grade honey, 

 even if we don't know how to raise it." * 



Realizing, too, that the alterations I should 

 ])ropose were to run the gauntlet of Dr. Mil- 

 ler's criticism, who, as chairman of this same 

 convention, failed to recognize the request to 

 have my proposed rules even read.f I natural- 

 ly felt reluctant to propose changes which 

 would in all probability fail of adoption at 

 this time. Believing now there is a real de- 

 termination to adopt something practical, I 

 wi.sh, with your pennis.sion, to state more fully 

 what my views and practice really are. 



Right at the outset I wi.sh to say that I agree 

 most heartily with Miss Wilson in the view 

 that the words ' ' the comb unsoiled b}' travel- 

 stain or otherwise " should be stricken out of 

 the description of the fancy grade. In fact, I 

 have not for many years past allowed a slight 

 soiling of the comb surface only to exclude a 

 section from the fancy grade ; but at the same 

 time I have uniformly kept such sections by 

 themselves, and put the snow-white combs in 

 a separate grade, which I have termed ' ' Extra 

 Fancy. ' ' 



When snow-white combs, because of some 

 slight defect, had to be excluded from the 

 " Extra Fancy " grade, I have made a prac- 

 tice of keeping such sections in separate cases. 

 Such cases also, in crating for shipment, and 

 in distributing on the market, have fjeen 

 grouped together, so that the contrast in the 

 color of the cappings would not attract atten- 

 tion. 



I have found, by long experience in many 

 different markets, that the important thing is 

 to keep the snow-white combs separate froin 

 the slightly soiled ones, although not one gro- 

 cer in a hundred or one consumer among ten 

 thousand wall ever object to the latter as not 

 being fancy. Right here I will affirm that not 

 one among all of the exhibits of hone}- at the 

 last World's Fair — yes, I will go further, and 

 say not one case in these exhibits that were 

 the admiration of thou.sands, and that finally 

 were awarded medals, but was open to criti- 

 cism in this matter of slightly soiled combs, if 

 perfect in other respects ; and really that ex- 

 hibit which received the highest praise of all, 

 doufjtless on account of the faultless filling, 

 sealing, and fastening, was most deficient of 

 all in the eyes of the expert in this one partic- 

 ular — " slightly soiled combs. " As I had oc- 

 casion to handle over section by section while 

 grading thousands of pounds taken from dif- 

 ferent State exhibits, and was obliged to make 

 in every instance four different grades, very 

 little of "which found a place in the extra-fancy 



* I afterward had the pleasure (with his consent) of 

 grading this man's Woiid's Fair exhibit, which he 

 often referred to as the finest on the ground, into five 

 grades according to my ideas of grading. 



t It is no more than fair that I should state here that 

 the doctor soon afterward wrote me that the slight 

 was not an intentional one. 



