1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



355 



rectly you are not able to control the tem- 

 perature—it rises and falls. On the up 

 grade the bees are stirred to activi- 

 ty, with the result that they overload their 

 intestines. You aver that a cleansing flight 

 would be a good thing if you could be sure 

 there were no bad after-effects. If the bees 

 were returned the same day, after a good 

 flight, on a safe-flying day, I do not see how 

 there could be any bad effects. —Ed.] 



^J^eighbor^Jieldj 

 By 



'mvc 



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Mr. G. A. Deadman. of Brussels, Ont., 

 wishes to make the following corrections in 

 regard to what he said concerning the little 

 tin honey-boxes. The first mistake was due 

 entirely to Mr. Deadman's manner of inter- 

 lining "1 Dozen" with a leadpencil ; but 

 the other error was ours. He says : 



In my note on page 315, you have me say regrarding- 

 the de luxe tin boxes for comb honey, "Make them to 

 hold not more than 11 oz. It should be one dozen; and 

 a little further on it should be, "one to hold six sections 

 would help to sell them in this quantity," not six dozen 

 as you have it. These errors make the article unintel- 

 ligible. Possibly fault of my typewriter. 



In the American Bee Journal for March 

 23, Mr. E. E. Hasty has the following in 

 regard to every man making his own hives 

 and those of his neighbors. It is very sel- 

 dom that any thing is put more plainly, and, 

 withal, more pleasantly, than this: 



Ah, dear Boss, don't you forget to remember that this 

 whole nation (except the culprits) is tender and excited 

 on the subject of trusts. If you ever seem to favor 

 their side but a little there will instanter be lots of bees 

 around your bonnet, if not in it. If you were a guest in 

 the Russian royal family you would not argue very 

 much in favor of the bomb-throwers— and you are in a 

 somewhat similar fix now. The cabinet-maker has 

 already "dressed you down " for saying that hives must 

 be made with more accurate measurements than cab- 

 inet-makers and carpenters use— and here comes your 

 friend and mentor to dress you some more for the logic 

 in your first paragraph. If a man makes his own hives 

 with profit it most decidedly doesn't follow that he can 

 make for others with still more profit. He makes his 

 own hives with his own hands; but if he wishes to 

 enlarge in that line the vexatious question of hired help 

 comes in and knocks every thing endwise. 



While the Avfierican Bee Journal is always 

 a welcome visitor at our desk, the visit of 

 the editor himself, Mr. G. W. York, is a 

 double cause of congratulation at the Home 

 of the Honey-bees. He reached here on the 

 25th of March, returning the same day. I 

 wish all bee-keepers could know Mr. York. 

 He is a man of strong personality, endowed 

 by nature with a peculiar faculty for mak- 

 ing friends and yet retaining the respect of 

 an opponent. He is enthusiastically on the 

 side of all that counts for what is best; is a 

 radical temperance advocate, and, in short, 

 such a man as is greatly needed in a city 



like Chicago. Mr. York is an Ohio boy by 

 birth, having been born in Stark Co. in 1862. 

 Bee-keepers visiting him in Chicago will re- 

 ceive a very friendly welcome. 



A friend in an eastern city offers me some 

 very gi>od suggestions in regard lo the gen- 

 eral belief that comb honey is adulterated. 

 He says, in substance, that the general pub- 

 lic mean one thing by comb honey while we 

 mean another. The common conception of 

 comb honey is what bee-keepers would term 

 chunk or broken honey, generally kept in 

 pans, the honey running loose among the 

 combs. It is hard to see why this could not 

 be mixed with glucose as well as if the 

 comb were absent. But bee-keepers re- 

 strict their idea of comb honey to that in 

 sections. Newspapers are rapidly admitting 

 that honey in unbroken combs is necessarily 

 genuine. Instead of calling the mashed-up 

 stuff " honey in the comb" he would call it 

 "comb in the honey." This is well worth 

 thinking about. 



The oldest records we have of the use of 

 honey as food come from Palestine, the land 

 of the Bib.e. It was a staple article when 

 Joseph was sold into Egypt, and references 

 to it in the Bible are numerous. Even to- 

 day the sales of honey are noticeably great- 

 er in our large cities during Hebrew holi- 

 days, as the chosen people use large quanti- 

 ties of it. Its keeping quahties suggest the 

 manna of old, and many other ideas com- 

 bine to make it an object of special regard 

 to devout Jews. The following lines, copied 

 from the British Bee Journal, may prove to 

 be interesting in this connection, although 

 the matter first appeared in a French jour- 

 nal, the Bee-keepers' Bulletin of the Somme, 

 to put it in English. It will be noticed that 

 the Arabs have made no improvement in 

 the handling of bees since the year 1. Our 

 older readers will remember Mr. Balden- 

 sperger as a voluminous writer for Glean- 

 ings. 



Up to 1875, htes were in a wild state in Palestine, as 

 swarms settled in cavities of rocks and hollow trees. 

 The natives used to look for them and destroy them for 

 the honey, which has always been a staple article of 

 food among the Arabs. A few of the more intelligent 

 had hives in the form of cylinders made of clay fine cut 

 straw, and the bees in these were destroyed to obtain 

 the honey. Things changed in 1875, when a European 

 family (the Baldenspergers, of Alsace) commenced bee- 

 keeping in movable-comb hives. Many of the natives 

 have adopted this system, but have not yet obtained as 

 good results as the Europeans, either in quantity or in 

 quality. 



Some time ago a correspondent of Glean- 

 ings expressed a desire to know how to de- 

 tect adulteration in beeswax. As the let- 

 ter in question was on business matters, and 

 not designed for publication, no answer was 

 given in print to this particular request. 

 Thinking that he and many others may still 

 be interested in this matter, I copy a few 

 lines from the British Bee Journal, which 

 seem to cover the ground very well. 



a small piece of wax placed in the mouth and chewed 

 should not adhere to the teeth, or become pasty, but 



