1004 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



797 



ing in, j'ou bee-men must stick together 

 better than the Masons." You see, there- 

 fore, dear readers, it paj's to "stick to- 

 g-ether," and it pa3-s to deluge these offend- 

 ing editors with letters. Coming in one at 

 a time or dozens at a time or from hundreds 

 at a time, thej^ keep that functionary in a 

 state of nervous excitement until he is glad 

 lo stop the "howl" by publishing a correc- 

 tion. Here is the extract: 



RUSH TO DEFEND BUSY I,ITTI,E BEE. 



STATEMENT THAT HONEY-COMB IS MADE FROM PE 

 TROLEUM PRODUCTS RAISES BREEZE. 



Many I,etters are Received. United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture Writes The Gazette that 

 Nothing has so far Supplanted the Bee in Pro- 

 ducing Honey that is Fit to Eat. 



The busy bee has many defenders. They won't 

 stand for any statements that the bee is to be put out 

 of business by any unprincipled manufacturer who 

 says he is able to make artificial honeycomb or arti- 

 ficial comb honey. This defense of the bee is the re- 

 sult of an article printed in The Sunday Gazette, July 

 24, in which it was stated that honey comb is made 

 from the refuse of petroleum. 



Hardly had the paper been printed before letters of 

 protest reached The Gazette. They were from owners 

 of bees and manufacturers of bee-supplies. All voiced 

 the s-ame statement, that the bee and its owners had 

 been grossly libeled. And eventually your Uncle 

 Samuel got busy, and the following letter was re- 

 ceived from Frank Benton, M. S., Agricultural Investi- 

 gator, in charge of Apiculture, Bureau of Entomology, 

 Department of Agriculture : 

 To the Editor of The Gazette: 



i?<?ar 5zV.-— Artificial honey-comb is not made from 

 oil, petroleum, paiaffiue, wax, nor auy other sub- 

 ?tance ; and it is absolutely impossible to duplicate 

 natural honeycomb in such a manner as to deceive 

 any person who chooses to compare any attempt at ar- 

 tificial prcduclion with the natural product. Even 

 were it possible, the cost of manufacture would ex- 

 ceed many times the price which could be obtained for 

 the finished product. In fact, the cheapest manner to 

 obtain an article which may be sold as honey-comb 

 would be to employ a large number of colonies of bees 

 lo gather it from the boundless resources of nature, 

 not one-tenth of which in the present state of the in- 

 dustry is utilized. To fill combs, whether artificial or 

 natural, with any substance, perhaps slightly flavored 

 to give a honey taste, would not produce an artificial 

 product ready for use. The finished article must be 

 sealed with wax, or some similar material, which is 

 not by any means the slightest difficulty in the way of 

 ihe skillful imitation of nature's product. 



As a general comment on the question of whether 

 such a thing as is here described does occur or not, al- 

 low me to state that, for some '20 years past, one of the 

 leading firms engaged in the manufacture of apiarian 

 supplies, having in connection with its establishment 

 also a large apiary — toward 1000 colonies of bees— to 

 supply the calls for genuine honey which it receives, 

 and being also a large purchaser direct from the bee- 

 keepers, has offered to forfeit 81000 cash to any person 

 able to bring forward a single pound of comb honey 

 produced artificially which was sufficiently perfect to 

 deceive even a superficial observer. This firm is 

 wholly trustworthy, and able to carry out the offer in 

 question when the conditions are fulfilled. During 

 all this score of years no person has ever claimed the 

 forfeit, yet the offer has been published far and wide. 

 The basis for stories regarding adulteration of comb 

 honey which have from time to time gone the rounds 

 of the paper-, lies probably in the fact that comb 

 foundation is made from beeswax, and used both in 

 securing the building of large combs in the brood 

 apartment of the bee-hive, and also in the sections for 

 the securing of surplus honey. This is merely a sheet 

 of wax rolled out until very thin, and then impressed 

 with the hexagonal outline of the bees' ceils. On this 

 middle wall which stands as the basis of the cells, the 

 cells themselves are erected by the bees. The comb 

 foundation which is used in the surplus receptacles — 

 the little pound sections commonly seen on the mar- 



ket — is so very thin that little or no objection has ex- 

 isted to its use. Furthermore, it should be said, to the 

 very great credit of American manufacturers of comb 

 foundation, that, quite in contradistinction to many of 

 those in Europe, they haveadhered very strictly to the 

 use of nothing but pure beeswax, most carefully clar- 

 ified, and handled in a very clean manner. Of this I 

 am certain from the fact that I have been a user of 

 these artificial foundations ever since their manufac- 

 ture was placed on a commercial basis 30 years ago, 

 and have frequently visited leading factories where 

 they are made. 



That glucose is sometimes used as an adulterant for 

 liquid honey is well known. This work is almost 

 wholly that of dealers in and manipulators of honey — 

 shrewd merchants in cities — not the producers of hon- 

 ey themselves. Bee-keepers are the most strenuous 

 advocates of a pure-food law which shall oblige the 

 branding of all goods as to their exact contents. 

 They desire this for the suppression of adulteration, 

 and in order that their own honest products should 

 not meet with unfair competition. 



To imply that bee-keepers purchase and use the 

 combs which it is alleged are made from the waste 

 products of oil is not only impeaching their honesty, 

 but likewise their intelligence, since they can have 

 the wax produced by their bees from nectar, which 

 the bees gather more cheaply than it would be possi- 

 ble for bee-keepers to obtain any artificial product 

 and secure its filling with sweet substances that might 

 pass with a portion of the public for honey. 



The above is as good a retraction as I 

 have seen. In our next issue I hope to show 

 that in another instance, at least, where 

 the subscribers of bee papers were asked to 

 send in their protest, it was not without its 

 effect. Courteous letters sent in to the pub- 

 lishers by the hundreds have a tremendous 

 effect. While it is true that these retrac- 

 tions do not undo all the evil created by the 

 first article, yet ihey go a long way toward 

 it. 



Bee-keepers should not forget the date 

 of the next National convention at St. Lou- 

 is, Sept. 27 — 30. In connection with the 

 nomination of officers there is an important 

 announcement under the head of "Conven- 

 tion Notices " on page 821, this issue. 



MINIATURE QUEEN-MATING NUCLEI; ESSEN- 

 TIALS TO success; SOME MISCONCEP- 

 TIONS CORRECTED. 



In view of the fact that Dr. Miller in 

 Straws, in this issue, has possibly misun- 

 derstood the editorial on this subject on 

 page 743, it seems proper that I should go 

 over this ground a little more carefully in 

 order that honey-producers, not necessarily 

 queen-breeders, may not make a mistake 

 and declare the small nuclei a failure. 



It should be clearly understood that 

 miniature nuclei of 100 or 200 bees are not 

 to be used for rearing cells. While they 

 may be used for hatching ripe cells, as a 

 general thing they are not to receive virgins 

 before they are four or five days old. The 

 purpose of these nuclei is simply for mating 

 queens — this much and no more. The cells 

 should always be reared in strong colonies, 

 generally two-story, under the swarming or 

 superseding impulse brought about by 

 light feeding every day if honey is not com- 

 ing in. Right here we follow the teaching 

 of Doolittle. In our queen-rearing work the 

 virgin hatches out into a strong colony and is 

 fed for the next two or three days of her ex- 



