1904 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



121 



is from September 1st to December 1st. 

 There is more honey sold in these three 

 months thafi atl the other nine months of the 

 year put toi^ether: in fact, he says the call 

 is during- these three months almost exclu- 

 sively. He has been trying- for years to 

 have the producers of comb honey (which is 

 produced generalljun June and early July) 

 get their honey crated up and sent to the 

 market bj' the last of August ; but he sa3's 

 they hold it back trying to force the market 

 by not revealing how much of a crop they 

 have, and then, in the beginning of winter, 

 when it is so hard to ship comb honey, write 

 in that they ha%'e a lot they would like to 

 have disposed of. Mr. Selser has made a 

 specialty of this for ten years, and could 

 tell almost to the week when grocers would 

 want comb honey. 



WAKK UP. 



So he wrote our subscriber, in reply to 

 his letter asking if he had been, like Rip 

 Van Winkle, asleep for a long time, and 

 where he had been with his honey for the 

 last three months, telling him that, had he 

 known of his lot of honey sixty days earlier, 

 he could have got a customer at once, and 

 he would have had his c ish for it long ago ; 

 but as it was, he could find no customers at 

 this time of the year. He received the fol- 

 lowing reply: 



Yours to hand. You say you are very sorry that I 

 have just wakened up to the fact that I had some hon- 

 ey to Sell or offer J^ow, from the tone of jour letter 

 you prohably think I am s ime 'old plug of a hayseed ' 

 who didn't know any other way to sell honey than 

 through the middleman ; but in that you are some- 

 what mistaken. You say if I had written you sixty 

 days sooner I would have had my honey sold without 

 any trouble, just as if vou were the only man in Amer 

 ica who could dispose of my honey, and that now I 

 would probably have to eat my own crop to get rid of 

 it. I soon expect to make a trip to sell myexiraced 

 honey in glas-^ cans and tumblers in three diffeient 

 Stntts. so do not worry. I will probably get rid of 

 that honey without eating it up. X. Y. Z. 



We believe Mr. Selser is right, for it is in 

 line with our experience. We have tried to 

 emphasize this matter, and impress on the 

 producers of honey that they should get 

 their honey in shape to ship as early in the 

 summer as possible. We have found but 

 one year in the last ten where honey has 

 brought as much after the first of the year 

 as before, and the biggest prices are gener- 

 ally realized in the early fall. The trouble 

 is, our bee-men are very busy with their 

 other farmwork; they put off getting their 

 honey in shape until all outside work is 

 done. Could they " wake up," as Mr. Sel- 

 ser says, to the fact that it is highly essen- 

 tial to their pocketbook to get their honey 

 in shape for market at once, or as soon as 

 it is gathered, they would realize better 

 prices. 



best for producing extracted honey. No 

 hive, he thinks, is suited to the economical 

 production of extracted honey that contains 

 closed end frames ; that we can not aii'ord to 

 use the same spacing for the supers, owing 

 totheridiculously thincomb leftafter uncap- 

 ping ; that *'the proof of the folly of using 

 closed-end frames for extracting-supers is 

 found in the fact that no extensive producer 

 of extracted honey is using them." 



This may possibly be true when applied 

 to the strictly closed-end frame; but the 

 half-closed end, or Hoffman, is used by 

 ver} many extensive bee-keepers for extract- 

 ing. Some of them use these frames spaced 

 close together (l^s), and others put them 

 from 1'2 to \)i inches from center to center. 

 I call to mind one of the mostext'=>nsive bee- 

 keepers in the United States, who uses 

 Hoffman frames for extracting, and will 

 use nothing else — Mr. William Rohrig, of 

 Tempe, Ariz. Last year his crop of honey 

 reached the enormous aggregate of 72,000 

 lbs. 1 once heard Mr. Rohrig debate this 

 very question — that the Hoffman frame 

 could be spaced as wide as the loose frame, 

 because he could use it at any time in the 

 brood-nest after extracting. There is no 

 greater mistake th^n to suppose that such 

 frames can not be spaced wide. In Cuba 

 (and honey is extracted there very exten- 

 sively — in fact, that is the main product) 

 ten Hoffman frames are used to any other, 

 among modern bee-keepers. 



It would be interesting to know, if it is 

 re illy a fact, that there are no extensive 

 producers of extracted honey in the United 

 States using closed end frames. Capt. 

 Hetherington, for many years the most ex- 

 tensive beekeeper in the world, used such 

 frames very largely; and he produced, if I 

 mistake not, both comb and extracted honey. 



HOFFMAN AND CLOSED END FRAMES FOR 

 EXTRACTING. 



Mr. E. F. Atwatrr, of Boise, Idaho, 

 writes a very interesting and readable ar- 

 ticle in the January issue of the Bee-/:eep- 

 ers^ Review. Among other things he gives 

 it as his opinion that hanging frames are 



BLACK AND FOUL BROOD IN NEW YORK; A 

 REPORT FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF 

 AGRICULTUKK of the EMPIRE STATE; 

 SOME SURPRISING DEVELOP- 

 MENTS. 



On page 586, July 1, last year, appear- 

 ed a statement, by N. A. Moore and Mr. 

 G. F. White, bacteriologists of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture of New York, showing 

 that probably the black brood, or New York 

 bee-disease, was nothing more nor less than 

 the old foul brood, recognized by Cheshire 

 and Cheyne as Bacillus atvei. They had 

 examined numerous specimens of brood sent 

 in by the inspectors purporting to be black 

 brood, that contained the familiar microbe 

 of Bacillus alvei. As the report offered by 

 the two bacteriologists above named differ- 

 ed so diametrically from the report of Dr. 

 W. R Howard, of Fort Worth, Texas, it 

 seemed there might be a mistake somewhere. 

 I stated at the time that the black brood 

 I had examined in New York, and speci- 

 mens that had been sent from that State to 

 me, differed in a number of important re- 

 spects from the foul brood I had seen in 

 Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan — certainly 



