566 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 1. 



so difficult of detection. A good set of stand- 

 ard grading-rules would be a great bar to the 

 practice. 



GRADING-RULES FOR HONEY. 



L'P till within a few days preceding the 15th 

 of July, not a single* postal or letter had come 

 to hand indorsing or criticising the grading- 

 rules that were proposed by Walker, Miller, 

 and others in the July 1st issue. Before Mr. 

 Walker's article was received, and which is 

 published in this number, I tried my hand at 

 grading — that is, I tried to bring the matter 

 down to a focus by bringing the thoughts of 

 others into one system of grading. In the 

 first place I took the Washington grading as a 

 background, and then incorporated mainly the 

 suggestions of Dr. Miller, in our July 1st num- 

 ber, who had previously considered those put 

 forth by Messrs. Thompson, Walker, and oth- 

 ers. Here are the rules that I ' ' doctored : ' ' 



Fancy.— All sections to be well filled, combs straight, 

 and firmly attached to all four sides, the comb unsoiled 

 by travel-stain, or otherwise; all the cells sealed ex- 

 cept the row of cells next to the wood; the ovitside 

 surface of the wood well scraped of propolis. 



A No. 1. — All sections well filled, but combs uneven 

 or crooked; one-eighth part of comb surface soiled or 

 unsealed, or the entire surface slightly soiled. 



No. 1. — All sections well filled, but combs uneven or 

 crooked ; one-eighth part of comb surface soiled or un- 

 sealed, or the entire surface slightly soiled. 



No. 2.— Three-fourths of the total surface must be 

 filled and sealed. 



No. 3.— Must weigh at least half as much as a full- 

 weight section. 



In addition to this the honey is to be classified ac- 

 cording to color, using the terms white, amber, and 

 dark; that is, there will be "fancy white," "No. 1 

 dark," etc. 



The " Fancy " and " A No. 1 " correspond 

 exactly with Dr. Miller's " Fancy " and No. 1 

 on page 483, July 1st issue. I have changed 

 the designation of the second grading, putting 

 it "A No. 1." No. 1 is identically the same 

 as A No. 1, you will notice, with the exception 

 that no mention is made of the scraping of the 

 sections. The greater part of honey that is 

 put out is in sections not scraped ; and it fol- 

 lows that the greater part of all honey sold will 

 be in sections soiled or unscraped, and should 

 be designated as "No. 1." I know Dr. Miller 

 believes that most honey put out is scraped ; 

 but if he will go over the markets as I do, and 

 buy honey as our firm has done, he will note 

 that very 'little of it has been near the scrap- 

 ing-knife. 



Mr. Walker and a number of others pointed 

 out that more than two grades are necessary to 

 inchide the bulk of marketable comb honey. 

 It vrill be noted that I have already added one 

 extra grade to take in the bulk of comb honey 

 not scraped ; namely. No. 1. I now add two 

 more— the No. 2 and No. 3 that Dr. Miller pro- 

 posed some years ago, and which we repro- 

 duced on page 482, July 1st issue. Such hon- 

 ey should not be put on the market ; but as it 

 is, nevertheless, it must be designated in some 

 way or other. 



I have carefully looked over Mr. Walker's 

 revised grading-rules in this issue, and the 

 only criticism I have to offer is that they are 

 too wordy, and there are too many little con- 

 ditions and points that one would have to bear 

 in mind to grade by. The rules must be very 



simple to be operative. Really, I do not know 

 which woidd be the better rules to abide by — • 

 those above given, those proposed by Mr. 

 Walker in this issue, page 551, or some other. 

 The editor of the Revieiv believes that the 

 Washington rtiles — those we have been using 

 right along during the two past years — were 

 all right — good enough for anybody — that we 

 mustn't expect to suit every one. 



ERR.'^TIC SWARMING FOR 1897; THE SPRAY- 

 PUMP A NECESSITY. 



Judging from the letters that have come in, 

 and from our own experience, swarming this 

 year seemed to be a little more erratic than usu- 

 al. In our own vicinity, for instance, the bees 

 have seemed determined to go off wathout first 

 alighting; and it has been only by the most 

 vigorous use of the spray -pump that we have 

 been able to hold them. One swarm actually 

 left us. It seems they flew high into the air, 

 went over the factory buildings, clear out of 

 the reach of spray-pumps and every thing else, 

 and didn't even say, " By your leave." One 

 other swarm I was jvist able to reach with the 

 spray. They were fast making off when I wet 

 down the wings of the leaders, changed their 

 covirse, and finally, by vigorous dousing, in- 

 duced them to alight. Heretofore we have 

 been in no great hurry to take care of swarms 

 when the}' came out, because we knew they 

 would alight before going awa}'. 



I noted in Straws for July 1st, that Dr. Miller 

 asks why we do not clip, and save all this non- 

 sense. As we make quite a business of selling 

 queens, we find that our customers do not all 

 want their queens' wings clipped. When a 

 man sends off a distance to get a queen he 

 likes to show his beauty to his friends, and, of 

 course, wants her to look perfect — not one- 

 sided. We are obliged, therefore, to put up 

 with the nonsense. 



A change of mind. 



The foregoing was prepared for our last 

 issue, but it was crowded out at the last. I 

 just want to say that I have changed my mind. 

 The care of swarms devolves upon your humble 

 servant, Sundays and at the noon hour. I may 

 be mistaken, but it seems as if those pesky 

 bees selected their times to swarm when I am 

 on the watch. So far as I am concerned, I have 

 about concluded that, in the future, ovir cus- 

 tomers will have to take " one-sided " queens 

 or go somewhere else. I have chased and 

 squirted, climbed trees, and puffed and fumed, 

 till I am tired. We have alread}- begim the 

 process of clipping our queens' wings; and if 

 our customers do not like it^well, they can 

 just go elsewhere. 



Our tested and high-priced queens are, as a 

 rule, in big colonies that can produce honey. 

 I used to feel that a colony could spare its 

 queen in the height of the honey-flow, and 

 then there would be no danger of swarming; 

 but, as I have shown in last issue, p. 531, a 

 queenless colony sulks too much. I am won- 

 dering whether a queen-rearing apiar}-, a comb- 

 honey apiar}-, and an extracted-honey apiar>' 

 can be combined all together all at once. The 

 echo in my owm mind says, " Nit." 



