730 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 1. 



offers him 11 or 12 cents for it, and gets it at 

 his own figures, as a rule. 



Now, after years of experience I have learn- 

 ed better than to ship both fancy and No. 1 to 

 the same man, so I ship the first to one party 

 and the second to another; and the truth of 

 the matter is, the No. 1 more often sells for 

 the higher figure than does the fancy, though 

 it more often happens that both sell for the 

 same figure. 



I am a little surprised at the admission of 

 Bro. Hutchinson that " I have never practiced 

 these Washington rules for grading," for I 

 supposed the publishers quoting honey that 

 way used these same rules when grading what 

 honey they produce. I practice those rules of 

 grading, but use X's as the better terms, in- 

 stead of "Fancy," "No. 1," "No. 2," etc. 

 For that which would go in the fancy grade, 

 I use XXX; for the No. 1, I use XX, and for 

 lower grades of white honey I use X. And 

 the same grading is used on all dark or buck- 

 wheat honey. As I have before stated, these 

 X's are conveniently placed in the handholes 

 of the crates, and so, when getting the honey 

 ready to ship off, it is easily sorted without 

 comparing "faces," should it sit where face 

 comparison is not easily done. 



Regarding the last question asked by our 

 correspondent, I hardly know what to say. 

 I did not suppose any one put up honey by 

 putting both No. 1 and fancy in the same 

 crate. And I should like to shift this ques- 

 tion off for Bros. Hutchinson, Koeppen, and 

 Boardman to answer. Will they please tell 

 us how they do ? 



In a late number of the Southland Queen 

 the editor asks all who put the poorest-looking 

 sections next the glass, when crating honey, 

 to "hold up hands." But as I have seen no 

 hands up I must take it for granted that these 

 parties put the fancy on the outside and the 

 No. 1 in the middle; and if so, and they send 

 out such cases of honey as " Fancy " honey, 

 Bros. York, Hasty, and Dr. Miller will have 

 to whet their swords again for a new battle, 

 after trying to slay Doolittle, when he neither 

 did nor even recommended such a thing. 

 Just what I do do, and just what I recom- 

 mend, is an honest sorting of honey by the X 

 plan as given above, then pick the "prettiest 

 faces " out of each lot and place them on the 

 outside. I never allow a single section of XX 

 honey to go into a XXX crate, much less an 

 X section, unless it is the last two or three 

 cases in finishing up the season's work, when 

 ' ' odds and ends ' ' are put together and mark- 

 ed M, which means "a mixed lot." Were I 

 to put No. 1 and fancy together, the only 

 honest way, as I should consider it, to crate 

 such honey would be to face one side of the 

 crate with fancy honey, and the other side 

 with No. 1. And I will guarantee that nine 

 purchasers out of ten would not know which 

 side was fancy and which side was No. 1 were 

 they given only just one crate at a time to 

 look at. But did they have two to look at, 

 and the No. 1 side of one case and the fancy 

 side of the other were placed toward him, he 

 would choose the fancy case every time. Then 

 when he took it home, opened it, and set out 



the fancy and No. 1 side by side, he would 

 think he had been " cheated;" but not till he 

 did this. But he would be cheated only as to 

 looks, as the number one would be just as 

 well flavored. Will Messrs. H.'s, K.'s, and 

 B.'s conscience allow of ev'en looks cheating? 



me. 





FOREIGN MATTER IN HONEY-COMB. 



I send you with this a piece of newly made 

 comb — the roughest and altogether the worst- 

 looking comb I ever saw, made when I had 

 reason to expect the very nicest white comb if 

 any. There is no honey coming in now. Our 

 fall flow commences about the bith or 20th of 

 August. The colony that made this comb is 

 in an eight-frame hive, and is on scales. I 

 have been feeding them granulated sugar and 

 water for a little more than a week for two 

 reasons : F^irst, I wanted to know how the in- 

 crease in weight compared with the amount 

 fed. Second, I wished to test the Boardman 

 idea a little. vSo far I have fed 18 lbs. of sugar 

 — equal, perhaps, to 25 lbs. of syrup as thick 

 as honey. The gain in weight is 16 lbs. I 

 have fed in a division-board feeder, put in a 

 second hive-body, nearly filling up with dum- 

 mies, and a piece of partly wool carpet over 

 the feeder and dummies — flat cover over all. 



A day or two ago I found they had gnawed 

 a hole through the carpet, and had commenced 

 building comb. I at once took the comb from 

 them and put in another division-board so 

 they could build no more. If you examine 

 the comb with the aid of a glass you will see 

 that the bees have utilized the wool from the 

 carpet, in forming cells, something as a bird 

 uses similar material in building her nest. 



O. S. Rexford. 



Winsted, Ct., Aug. 8, 1898. 



[The sample of comb was received, and is 

 quite remarkable. The bases as well as the 

 walls are very thick and heavy — almost j^^ of 

 an inch thick instead of being the regulation 

 thickness, j^^^nj; and, as Mr. Rexford well 

 says, there is burlap scattered all the way 

 through the comb. Bees have been known to 

 to do this before, but I never saw a sample 

 where they seemed to throw in so much for- 

 foreign matter. 



It appears from the tests above given, that, 

 in feeding sugar syrup, considerable of it was 

 lost somewhere, probably in brood-rearing, be- 

 sides what the bees actually consumed. — Ed.] 



MOVING BEES IN SACKS OF BURLAP. 



In Straw No. 7, Aug. 1, you have a footnote 

 in regard to using cotton batting for calking 

 purposes when moving bees, in which you 

 say, ' ' This is a kink worth knowing. Paste 

 it in your hat." That is all right, but I can 

 show you a trick worth two of it. If you 

 have old hives full of holes, plug them up 



