^ •DELVoTELb' 



•AND Honey 



•AHD HOME. 



•INTERESTS 



'ubhshedyTHfAll^ool' Co. 

 PERYtAR ^@ "Medina- Ohio- 



Vol. XXV. 



OCT. I, 1897. 



No. 19. 



The plan given by W. H. Eagerty, p. 666, 

 for sowing sweet clover, is the best I've ever 

 seen, especially having the seed tramped in by 

 horses. 



Whew ! but haven't we had a hot Septem- 

 ber — at least the first half? [Yes; and three 

 days afterward there was a fall of 50 degrees 

 in the temperature. — Ed.] 



Scottish heather, we are told on p. 663, 

 abounds in New Jersey. Is there no mistake 

 about this ? Never heard before that it grew 

 anywhere in this country. 



Any opexixg for ventilation that comes 

 close to the sections hinders greatly their 

 sealing at that point; but it has seemed rather 

 an advantage for extracted honey. 



Bro. a. I. Root, tell that high-pressure- 

 gardening man who got 200 bushels of pickles 

 from an acre to come to Marengo and learn 

 how to raise pickles. John Boyle got 236 

 bushels from three-fourths of an acre. 



McIntvre is right, p. 670, that stirring 

 honey hastens granulation — one reason, prob- 

 ably, why extracted granulates sooner than 

 comb. The Germans sometimes put honey 

 through a sort of churning process to hasten 

 granulation. 



Referring to p. 671, I don't think I'd 

 want to put a few cases of hone}- loose in a 

 car, but I think that's what Mr. Niver said 

 the railroads recommended ; and when I dis- 

 tinctly asked Capt. Hetherington about it, I 

 think he agreed to the same thing. 



Northern Illinois had a good honey 

 year. At a bee-keepers' convention at I'ree- 

 port, 843 colonies were reported as yielding 

 an average of 60 pounds each, nearly half of 

 it being comb honey. [If you have told us, 

 doctor, I have not seen whether you had a 

 good honey year. — PvD.] 



How quickly bees notice any change in 

 appearance at a time when forage is scarce ! 

 Set a hive in a new place, or put an extra 

 story on it, and promptly the robbers will 

 interview it to find if there are weak places. 



At the same time, a weakling not half so able 

 to protect itself wall be left untouched .so long 

 as there is no change in outside appearance. 



Nowadays the bees are almost as good as a 

 weather-cock. When the wind is from the 

 north, a cloud of bees hovers about the south 

 screen-door of the hone3'-room all day lon^. 

 When the wind is from the south, not a bee is 

 seen at the south door; but they're frantically 

 trying to force an entrance at the north door. 



J. A. Buchanan's plan of handling "only 

 such grades of honey as will not candy, or are 

 very slow to do so," is an excellent one for 

 him ; but what are those fellows to do who 

 produce only alfalfa ? Somewhere, somehow, 

 the problem of candied honey must be met, 

 and happy is that bee-keeper whose customers 

 are trained to cope with it. 



A prevailing vice among preachers is 

 using a story for illustration and leaving the 

 story half finished. I read aloud p. 679, my 

 audience giving best attention ; but when I 

 got through they insisted on my telling them 

 whether that man ever got his buckwheat 

 circular. I told them I didn't know, and now 

 there's coldness in the family. 



J. A. Johnston, p. 6S2, is right to a certain 

 degree. It isn't easy to kill out sweet clover 

 in fence-corners and on roadsides. But then, 

 it isn't an}' easier to kill out other weeds in 

 the same places ; and where the ground is 

 plowed, sweet clover is no more troublesome 

 than other weeds. Give sweet clover fits where 

 it deserves it, but please be fair. 



Very seldom are the diflSculties of grading 

 shown up as well as they are on p. 673, and 

 I doubt whether any set of grading-rules that 

 can be relied on to buy and sell by can ever 

 be fornmlated without a number of distinct 

 specifications and the use of a good deal of 

 language. [I do not like to give up the idea 

 of getting a satisfactor}' set of grading-rules, 

 but Mr. Calvert, our honey-man, has come 

 pretty near knocking the notion all out of my 

 head.— Ed.] 



W. H. Eagerty, p. 66(), advises me to 

 spread section stuff on grass in shade rather 

 than pour water on the grooves. But, friend 

 E., I can't afford to wait till grass grows; and, 

 besides, I wet a whole boxful before taking 

 them out of the box, taking a very few min- 



