1148 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 15 



convention he had attended— not alone as a 

 chemist, but he believed he had been brought 

 nearer to nature, where man gets his best 

 enjoyment. Every food chemist should be- 

 come acquainted with the industry connect- 

 ed with any food on the market. Unless he 

 did he could not correctly interpret his own 

 analysis. If some of the food commissioners 

 and chemists had attended some of our na- 

 tional meetings they never would have made 

 the statements they have made, founded as 

 they have been on error. He desired to 

 speak to the convention about adulteration 

 which did not exist; of the crimes commit- 

 ted by food commissioners and chemists in 

 the name and pay of the people. He illus- 

 trated the statement by referring to incidents 

 and facts which came under his observation. 

 First in England the beHef was so widely 

 spread that calves' brains were used to adul- 

 terate milk that tests to detect the frauds 

 were given in all the early text-books on 

 chemistry. Chalk in milk and sand in sugar 

 were other supposed adulterants, and were 

 harped about by the editor of the comic mag- 

 azines. All the old food laws contained a 

 long list of impossible things found in candy, 

 vinegar, and sugars; and every once in a 

 while a newspaper breaks out about deaths 

 produced by eating poisoned candy. Then 

 there is a widespread falsehood about the 

 wholesale adulteration of honey produced by 

 bees feeding on glucose; and the still worse 

 fraud of the alleged cheating of the bees en- 

 tirely and manufacturing honey, comb and 

 all. One commissioner after another would 

 contribute a sensational mass of nonsense to 

 his local press, and the canard would travel 

 from ocean to ocean. While a food com- 

 missioner was not expected to be a food 

 scientist, he would very often put his foot 

 into it. 



In answer to a question as to the cause of 

 these mistakes, he thought first it was a de- 

 sire for publicity; second, to alarm the pub- 

 lic to such an extent that it would demand 

 more of those fool food commissioners. 



GROCERS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COMB-HONEY 



LIES. 



At one of the discussions the fact was 

 brought out clearly that many of the grocers, 

 for the sake of publicity, and to shock their 

 hearers, would tell the old, old story about 

 manufactured comb honey, even going so 

 far as to show samples of dark-looking combs 

 that were manufactured, which they would 

 sell cheap, while the better-looking article 

 was genuine bees' honey from clover and 

 basswood. Some would reverse the order, 

 and say that the beautiful white combs were 

 manufactured, while the dark ones, soiled 

 and dirty, were the genuine product of the 

 bees. It was generally thought that bee- 

 keepers should be looking after the local gro- 

 cers, and give them a dose of facts. 



THE NATIONAL BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 

 NOT INCORPORATED. 



During one of the sessions when there was 

 talk about the Association beginning a dam- 



age suit against some of the papers and maga- 

 zines that will not retract when they have 

 published the usual comb-honey lie, the point 

 was made that no such action could be be- 

 gun by the Association, owing to the simple 

 fact that it was not incorporated. Mr. 

 France, the General Manager, referring to 

 this, stated that, when he wrote to one of 

 the publications, intimating that an action 

 might be begun, received from the offender 

 a letter, asking him if the Association he 

 represented was incorporated. He was ob- 

 hged to confess it was not; and the result 

 was that no retraction was made, for the 

 purveyor of the lie knew perfectly well that 

 the National could not be recognized by the 

 courts. The matter was referred to a com- 

 mittee, and probably it will come before the 

 Board of Directors. 



RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE GENERAL MAN- 

 AGER. 



One of the busiest men at the National 

 convention was General Manager France. 

 He looked worn and tired, and certainly he 

 was. He had been working almost night and 

 day, attending bee institutes, performing the 

 duties of a foul-brood inspector of his State, 

 and looking after the interests of the Na- 

 tional. The duties of the Association were 

 getting to be so arduous that he hardly had 

 time to be at home with his family. His 

 father, now past 80, was not able to super- 

 intend the work at home, and the two little 

 boys, present at the convention, had the 

 whole care of the house, between 400 and 

 500 colonies of bees, and 20 acres of fruit 

 land inside of the city, on which he pays $60 

 taxes. The result of all this was that he 

 had had no time in which to prepare a for- 

 mal report, and he therefore begged the in- 

 dulgence of the convention in giving the re- 

 port offhand. 



He felt that the Association was now on 

 a living basis; that, while it had only just be- 

 gun, there was a grand future before it. 

 The insurance part of the Association, as he 

 put it, gave him a great deal of anxiety and 

 careful study. Hours when he should have 

 been at rest he spent with attorneys who 

 have been kind enough to give him their ad- 

 vice gratuitously because he really felt there 

 were no funds which he could use for this 

 purpose without a vote of the Directors. 



There had been a good deal of trouble be- 

 tween bee-keepers and their neighbors, not 

 because of the bees, but through their differ- 

 ent affairs; and finally the bees were brought 

 in connection with it, with the result that 

 their owners got into a quarrel, then step off 

 and say, " I belong to the National Bee-keep- 

 ers' Association, have got inte trouble— you 

 help me out. ' ' He was sorry that such con- 

 ditions had come about, for he hoped that 

 the day had dawned when we would, to use 

 his own words, " discontinue that, and allow 

 the Association to develop in these new phases 

 of fighting adulterated honey, and creat- 

 ting a greater uniformity of market among 

 bee-keepers over all the world. There are 

 things of world-wide interest we ought to be 



