Dec. 15 1911 



747 



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Louis Scholl, New Braunfels, Texas 



HONEY VS. OTHER SWEETS. 



One good argument in favor of honey as a 

 food, which is not of ten emi^hasized enough, 

 is that it goes further than other sweets, 

 especially when compared with preserves or 

 jellies. Has it ever occurred to you to ask 

 the housewife to place upon the table two 

 tumblers of the same size, one filled with 

 honey and the other with preserves or jellies 

 of any kind, and then notice how much 

 further the honey goes? Or have you ever 

 asked some one to observe how many more 

 pieces of bread can be spread from a tumbler 

 of honey than preserves or jelly? This ap- 

 plies to the many syrups on the market al- 

 so. Almost all that the writer has had oc- 

 casion to try require a larger quantity with 

 a certain amount of bread to give it com- 

 paratively the same "amount of taste" 

 than is required with honey. The result is 

 that, in the end, the honey, while apparent- 

 ly the dearer in price at first, is cheaper in 

 the long run. 



But there is still another item of far great- 

 er importance than the price in favor of 

 honey, and that is its healthfulness as com- 

 pared with other sweets, especially with the 

 adulterated stuff that is palmed off in this 

 age in such a wholesale way. Of these, the 

 many brands of syrups are the worst, and 

 there are numerous makes of preserves and 

 jellies that are almost as bad. Yet Ihey are 

 used the country over, to the detriment of 

 the health of the people, when, instead of 

 ttiese, good healthful honey might be used. 

 It is hoped that the time will come when 

 this gospel of the truth about honey will be 

 scattered far and wide over the land so that 

 consumers may have their eyes opened and 

 be educated to the use of something better 

 than the stuff put out by "trusts" who 

 think of nothing else than the shekels that 

 they may be able to .shell out of the pockets 

 of the people. What care they about the 

 health of the public? The bee-keeper, at 

 least, looks at it in a different light, even if 

 he also is after the money in return for his 

 labors. But of him it may be said that he 

 earns the money by producing a product 

 which may be eaten safely. 



"keeping more bees." 

 There is more in the advice, "keep more 

 bees," than is evident at first. Actual ex- 

 perience in carrying out this advice will 

 testify to the extent of the vah'e of keeping 

 more bees. The writer followed this prin- 

 ciple long before the late W. Z. Hutchinson 

 made it his motto. It was brought about 

 by a natural desire to increase the bee bus- 

 iness as fast as experience permitted; and 

 the consequence was the establishment of 

 more apiaries every year, an increased out- 

 put of the apiary products, and with it that 

 advertisement that follows in the wake of 

 extensive dealings of any well-established 



business — a reputation that brings with it a 

 larger demand for its products year after 

 year. To meet this demand was the chief 

 reason for keeping more bees, although the 

 desire to number the colonies by so many 

 hundreds, and later by so many thousands, 

 lent its quota of influence in the increase. 



But aside from the great advantages that 

 are obtained in extensive bee-keeping, which 

 enable the promoters to accomplish more 

 with little more outlay of expense and labor, 

 there is another side to the matter that has 

 never come to the notice of the writer as 

 forcibly as this year. This is the possibility 

 of making at least a fair living during a 

 very dry or unfavorable year with a large 

 number of apiaries scattered far and wide, 

 while the little fellows with only one or two 

 apiaries in one locality go to the wall with 

 a crop failure. We have seen just such an 

 occurrence several times during our twenty 

 years of bee-keeping; and we have apiaries 

 ourselves almost every year that do not give 

 us a crop of honey; and if all our yards were 

 located similarly, disastrous results might 

 have followed. We are saved from this dan- 

 ger, however, in that our apiaries are scat- 

 tered so that we get some honey somewhere, 

 and that is an advantage that is worth a 

 great deal more in bee-keeping than might 

 be imagined. We have been questioned 

 several times regarding the enormous ex- 

 pense of managing apiaries scattered 

 so extensively, and the advisability of 

 concentrating them more in one locality, 

 showing that the questioners did not think 

 about the very reason why our apiaries are 

 so scattered or the great advantages that are 

 derived from this system. It is true that 

 the running expenses are somewhat greater 

 with such an arrangement; but, on the oth- 

 er hand, the advantages overbalance this 

 item enormously. 



The advantage we have found this year 

 in keeping more bees is that, while the aver- 

 age yield per colony was only about half of 

 what we generally obtain, resulting in a 

 total of just about half a crop, the large 

 number of colonies kept made up to a cer- 

 tain extent for this shortage in bringing the 

 entire output up to 67,000 lbs. Thus the 

 keeping of more bees brought us very fair 

 returns, while a lesser number would have 

 made very little more than enough to cover 

 the running expenses. The additional cost 

 of keeping a few hundred colonies more is 

 comparatively small when colonies are 

 numbered by hundreds. It pays to scatter 

 apiaries far and wide. 



An Apple-tree that Bore Both Apples and Honey. 



I started the last of June this year to take a 

 swarm of bees out of an old apple-tree. The swarm 

 had been there about two years. The result of ray 

 effort is three hives of bees doing very well— two In 

 ten-frame hives and one In an eight-frame hive. 



Somerville, Mass., Sept. 9. Wm, Parker. 



