1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



19 



ey was sent, and that Burnett & Co. had set- 

 tled for it exactly as they agreed, and within 

 the time specified. 



Chas. McCulloch & Co., of AU^any, seem to 

 give excellent satisfaction. 



We never had but one complaint against 

 them, and that was settled to tlie satisfaction 

 of their customer, although we thought the 

 customer wholly in the wrong. 



Well, now, really I must stop. There are 

 other good firms; but if I keep on mentioning, 

 until I cover the whole list, some will feel 

 slighted. 



WHAT I CAI,L WEIvL-RIPENED HONEY. 



I BELIEVE I am beginning to enjoy extract- 

 ed honey more than I ever did before. The 

 kind we have now at our house is white moun- 

 tain sage. It is very thick to start on ; but 

 we pour it ovit into pitchers, and let it stand a 

 month or so in a dry room before using. At 

 the end of that time it becomes so thick that 

 it will hardly pour out; and when the pitcher 

 is inverted, the honey rolls out in one great 

 stream, and piles up in the dish like a coil of 

 rope. Then comes the fun of cutting off the 

 stream. The size of the rope keeps getting 

 smaller and smaller, after the pitcher is right- 

 ed, until the filament is less than the size of a 

 common hair. This is cut off with a spoon ; 

 but the honey in the dish is so thick that, 

 when the dish is inverted, it will take a little 

 time for it to run out. On dijipin r the spoon 

 into its beautiful crystalline surface, it will 

 dent clear down to the bottom of the dish be- 

 fore the honey will fold over the spoon. About 

 this time, or when the spoon is sufficiently 

 well covered, it finds its way to my mouth, but 

 not till the spoon has been twisted over and 

 over to break off the filament. The honey is 

 so wax}' that it requires almost chewing in or- 

 der to get it in concition to swallow, remind- 

 ing one very nmch of maple syrup boiled down 

 and dropped on to snow. Well, this is what 

 /call well-ripened honey; and any one who 

 has eaten it, when reduced to the consistency 

 I have described, feels very loath to eat any 

 thing else in the way of extracted honey that 

 is not as thick. 



If you have any one at your house who does 

 not like honey, set some of the kind I have 

 been describing before him. 



I do not claim that mountain sage is the 

 only honey that will taste good when so treat- 

 ed. Any honey, if of good flavor, when al- 

 lowed to stand in an open vessel in a dry room, 

 will become thick and waxy if given time 

 enough. 



HONEY AS FOOD. 



Extracts are continually being made from 

 Dr. Miller's honey-leaflet. I have already re- 

 ferred to the fact that two large dailies — one 

 in Columbus and one in Cleveland — had given 

 two long write-ups of honey and its uses as 

 food; and now that great daily, the Chicago 

 Record^ has a half-column article, almost the 

 whole of which is taken from the leaflet. If 

 these public servants will only keep on copying 

 from it, no one cares about any credit. We 

 bee-keepers want the world generally to know 



that honey is the most wholesome form of 

 sweet known. One thing that all the dailies 

 have published so far is the following : 



The .silly .stories .seen from time to time in the papens 

 about artificial combs being filled with gliico.se, and 

 deftly .sealed over with a hot iron, have not the slight- 

 est foundation in fact. For years there has been a 

 standing offer by one who.se financial responsibilitv is 

 unquestioned, o* SIOOO for a single pound of comb hon- 

 ey made without the intervention of bees. The offer 

 remains untaken, and will probably always remain 

 so, for the highest art of man can never compass such 

 delicate workmanship as the skill of the bee accom- 

 plishes. 



The fact of having thus chased up the comb- 

 honey canard will be most salutary indeed. 



As I have before said, we are doing all we 

 possibly can to get these honey leaflets scat- 

 tered over the United States. We are putting 



them in all shipments, in letters, in catalogs 



in fact, in any thing and every thing that will 

 carry the truth about honey around the world. 

 I have already spoken two or three times about 

 the advisability of bee-keepers visiting their 

 local editors, and asking them to make ex- 

 tracts from the honey leaflet. If you give 

 them a sample of nice honey at the same time, 

 they will be very sure to give you a write-up! 

 Keep the ball rolling. 



PRECEPT UPON PRECEPT ; HANGING ON TO 

 THE OTHER FELLOW'S COAT-TAILS. 



Some great man has said that it is not the 

 one who says a great thing for the first time, 

 but the one who says it and keeps saying it 

 first, last, and all the time, who is the real ben- 

 efactor. I believe there is much of truth in it. 

 Frotn my own experience I know that a valu- 

 able idea may l>e put in print by a writer in 

 one of our bee journals ; but unle.ss some one 

 keeps harping on it till some are disgusted 

 and some see the point, the great idea will 

 die, with no one to do it reverence. 



Sometimes, I acknowledge, I am slow to 

 catch hold of some good idea that stime one 

 else ahead of me may have conceived first ; 

 but after I have really "sensed it," as Saman- 

 tlia Allen would say, then I can't keep still. 

 If I continually harp on a thing until it is 

 worn threadbare, it is not because I have a de- 

 sire to be called a real benefactor, but because 

 I can not help it. Perhaps one or two illus- 

 trations will serve to show what I mean. 



The non-burr- comb thick top- bar was advo- 

 cated by only one or two bee-keepers. Dr. 

 Miller, among the first, began to "sense " its 

 real value. After a while I'caught on to Dr. 

 Miller's coat-tails, and we two kept whirling 

 around the trutti until now nearly all the fra- 

 ternity has joined hands (coat-tails). 



Self-spacing, at one time, seemed to be ad- 

 vocated by only a few bee-keepers. I became 

 seized with the great value of the principle, 

 and began to harp about it until I know some 

 of my good friends began to believe I could 

 not talk about any thing else, and I almost 

 thought so myself. While fixed distances are 

 not used universally by bee-keepers, they have 

 made great strides, and the time may come 

 when unspaced frames will almost be things 

 of the past. 



Well, now, here comes along the plain fence 

 and section. Only a very few bee-keepers 



