AUGUST 1, 1916 



675 



tured on page 591 of the July 15th issue, 

 and Mr. Gayer tested it also, but neither of 

 us liked it as well as the simple sandpaper- 

 covered pulley. I have also tried revolving- 

 wire brushes ; but the wire soon gets dull or 

 fills up with propolis, and has to be re- 

 newed, and the renewal of a wire brush 

 amounts to more than the renewal of the 

 sandpaper on the surface of the pulley. 



But in this article I did not start out to 

 discuss all the different methods of clean- 

 ing sections. I merely wanted to picture a 

 result very common — more common than 

 one would believe — of improper sanding of 

 sections. (I am not sure that the trouble is 

 always due to sanding. Careless scrajDing 

 might produce the same result.) I refer 

 to the cleaning of sections, especially plain 

 sections, in such a way that the dust of the 

 wood and propolis is scattered around over 

 the surface of the comb, making the cap- 

 pings look " fuzzy," and the honey itself, 

 in the occasional open cell, very much 

 sjTCckled. A magnifying-glass shows clear- 

 ly the minute particles of wood and propo- 

 lis, sometimes not so very minute either. 



Last summer Mr. Gayer showed me case 

 after case of honey, almost any section of 

 which, if one examined it closely, showed 

 this same appearance. I picked out one 

 which was bad, tho not as bad as some 

 others that I have seen since, and made a 

 photograph of it. Some may think this il- 

 lustration exaggerates the appearance of the 

 honey. As a matter of fact, while I tried 

 to exaggerate it by enlarging, and by get- 

 ting the light just right to show the dust 

 to the best advantage, the honey itself 

 looked far worse than this picture. 



If a plain section is laid down flat on 

 sandpaper, and moved back and forth in 

 order to clean the edges of the section, the 

 surface of the honey is almost sure to get 

 pretty well covered with this dust. In a 

 warm dry room the frictional electricity 

 generated no doubt helps the dust to cling 

 to the comb. To be sure, if every particle 

 of dust on a section of honey could be care- 

 fully removed and put together in a little 

 heap in a spoon it would not make a pile 

 large enough to be noticed perhaps, even if 

 it were all swallowed at once; and yet that 

 dust scattered over the cappings makes the 

 lioney look bad, if one takes the trouble to 

 look at it very closely, and that is the prin- 

 cipal reason why the practice should be 

 rvoided. With beeway sections the dust 

 feature is never quite as bad. At the same 

 time (and let me whisper this so Dr. Miller 

 will not hear it) I had the opportunity la?f 

 fall of looking at some of Dr. Miller's own 

 comb honey, and I found some dusty sec- 



it is nevor giiod practice to sliip 1 iilucd comb 

 Iioney ; aud putting bulged honey iu with good hon- 

 ey in. the same shipping-case is inexcusable. 



tions! I tried desperately hard to find a 

 section bad enough to photograph, but 

 could not, so I shall have to assume that 

 Dr. Miller knows what he is talking about, 

 for beeway sections at least. 



Summing up the whole matter, it seems 

 to me that the practice of laying plain sec- 

 tions down on sandpaper in order to clean 

 the edges should be condemned. A better 

 way is to use some sort of scraper for the 

 edges of plain sections, and no doubt even 

 of beeway sections, unless the operator is 

 careful. Of course, the edge of the beeway, 

 if badly propolized, has to be scraped any 

 way if one wants his comb honey to look 

 pre.sentable. 



FANCY AND CULTj HONEY IN THE SAME SHIP- 

 PING-CASE. 



The second illustration shows a couple 

 of sections taken from a shipment of very 



