1898 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



391 



MR. WHITE'S ARTICLE OF FEB. 15. 



Acting with Intelligent Selfishness. 



BY W. A. H. GIIvSTRAP. 



Several points in the above article struck 

 my fancy, and here goes for a bundle of com- 

 ments. 



In the first place, Mr. White appears to be 

 honest, and wants others to be so, or at least 

 act with intelligent selfishness. He makes 

 some remarks which do not apply to the av- 

 erage California locality. 



The honey of this country is mainly put up 

 by specialists. All such ought to know when 

 honey is ripe. An acquaintance who owns 

 over 100 colonies of bees, and has main charge 

 of nearly 200 more, told me he extracted as 

 green as possible, and would be glad if he 

 could extract before any of it could be sealed. 

 I should be glad of the chance to weigh some 

 of his hone}', but I suppose it would weigh 

 well over 11 pounds to the gallon. Our dry 

 climate ripens honey very rapidly, unless the 

 weather is cool enough to granulate it in the 

 tank, or even in the hive, unless the hive is 

 very tight. Then I am convinced that it is 

 not common for bees to store honey as rapid- 

 ly here as in the East. Your bees store per- 

 haps over half as much in thirt}- days as ours 

 do in one hundred. An apiary storing three 

 pounds of alfalfa honey per day for each col- 

 ony would be a good run. I have never been 

 able to extract so much. 



Your editorial question as to the advisabili- 

 ty of getting the members of the U. S. B. K. U. 

 to pledge themselves not to put honey on the 

 market unless it is first ripened, has to meet 

 two objections, either of which would be death 

 to the proposition. 



1. The producer, who is ignorant or dishon- 

 est enough, or both, to put inferior goods on 

 the market is just the man who is not likely 

 to even want to join the Union. 



2. If he did sign the agreement he would 

 not care to keep it. 



When you get bit as thoroughly as the 

 writer once was by several bee-keepers not 

 trying to keep a written compact which they 

 made with other bee-keepers, then you will 

 know just what I mean. 



A law of national application, requiring ex- 

 tracted honey to be reasonably well ripened, 

 should do a good work. Nothing else can 

 cover the grovind, in my judgment. For the 

 California producer to sell his honey in his 

 nearest town, and run his perpetual-motion 

 machine in his apiary, would both be good 

 schemes if they would work. What honey I 

 produced last season was sold to neighbors, 

 retailed at a town 20 miles distant, shipped 

 with other honey to Chicago, and sold to a 

 dealer who sold some to a San Francisco firm, 

 and the rest to a German exporter. Of the 

 crop — over 18 tons — only a little remains for 

 experiment. We innst ship the bulk of our 

 honey somewhere or quit keeping bees. As 

 we ship to Germany, England, Scotland, and 

 I don't know where else, it becomes an ex- 

 port, and is, therefore, not governed in price 

 by U. S. tariff laws. We have been learning 



honey production better than market-making. 

 Comb honey sells better in our towns than 

 extracted, partly because it granulates less. 

 Of course, pure sage does not granulate. 

 After my bees took such a fad for starvation 

 and famine fever (which is not exactly starva- 

 tion) I quit trying to produce sage, and now 

 keep bees only in the valley. Many others 

 have done the same. 



At present I look for a failure of the moun- 

 tain honey crop this year, with half a crop in 

 the valley. This guess applies to Central Cal- 

 ifornia. Let Mr. Martin guess for the south 

 end of the State. 



I consigned several tons to Guggenheim & 

 Co., of San Francisco, while there was no mar- 

 ket here, as they were well recommended. 

 Most of the honey brought me about 2>^ to 

 nearly 2)^ cts. About the time it sold, R. A. 

 Burnett & Co. gave me \%, cts. at Chicago, 

 which was almost exactly 'i>% cts. at Hanford. 

 It was a part of the F. E. Brown honey you 

 have so often referred to. Both lots were 

 light amber, quality the same. 



Caruthers, Cal. 



[I was struck with your sentence, or clause, 

 rather, " acting with intelligent selfishness." 

 Mr. White is intelligently selfish enough to be 

 strictly honest. He can see far enough ahead 

 to know that deception, or putting out a poor 

 grade of honey, while at the start may be 

 more profitable, is in the end any thing but 

 profitable. This kind of selfishness is the es- 

 sence of real Christianity. 



As to the matter of members of the U. S. B. 

 K. U. pledging themselves to put on the mar- 

 ket extracted honey of a certain specific grav- 

 ity, I still believe if the Union were to make 

 such a requirement it would do no harm, and 

 might do a great deal of good. In the first 

 place, it would set up a standard. Certainly 

 the most representative and influential body 

 of bee-keepers in the United States ought to 

 set the pace for the rest of the bee-keepers in 

 the country who are not members. The mere 

 fact that some ignorant or dishonest persons 

 might abuse the privilege would hardly be a 

 reason for considering the scheme impractica- 

 ble. One who joins the church is supposed to 

 quit lying and stealing, swearing and cheat- 

 ing, and all other bad things. Because there 

 are some scapegoats in the church who abuse 

 their privilege is no reason why the church 

 should not set up a high standard for its 

 members. 



It was Dr. Miller, I believe, who said we 

 ought to publish the names of certain com- 

 mission houses who, though responsible and 

 honest, do not do as well bj' their customers 

 as some other houses. Perhaps the last para- 

 graph above from friend Gilstrap will satisfy 

 the doctor. I am not sure but the idea is all 

 right. In giving the bare facts above, we do 

 not impl}^ that Guggenheim & Co., of San 

 Francisco, are dishonest or irresponsible. The 

 probabilities are that they did the very best 

 that any firm could have done in their market. 

 If R. A. Burnett & Co., two thousand miles 

 away, have it in their power to net the bee- 

 keeper nearly a cent a pound more for this 

 honey, it was probably not because R. A. B. 



