1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



587 



France. Few people have succeeded in do- 

 ing more for the improvement of an estab- 

 lished branch of agriculture than this Alsa- 

 tian family. It is not too much to hope to 

 hear from Mr. B. again. 



All are familiar with the methods employ- 

 ed in evaporating the water from the juice 

 of sugar-cane in vacuum. In this way the 

 water is forced to leave the solid parts in a 

 remarkably short space of time. Some time 

 ago a foreign journal, not now within my 

 reach, suggested this principle for thicken- 

 ing green honey; and my impression is it 

 was claimed the experiment had been tried 

 with success in Europe. Probably the draw- 

 back will be the cost of machinery compared 

 with the value of the product; and perhaps 

 too much heat would be necessary. Sure it 

 is, however, that more attention must be 

 paid to this matter of ripening if extracted 

 honey is to take the place in the markets 

 that it should. 



The Literary Digest, in making a review 

 of a book of poetry written by Mad. Caw- 

 ein, speaks of him as a poet of nature, and 

 gives the following, which is the first stanza 

 of one of his poems: 



Bee-bitten in the orchard hung 

 The peach, or, fallen in the weeds. 



Lay rotting where still sucked and sung 

 The wild bee. boring to the seeds 



That to the pulpy honey clung. 



Such stuff will account for the many false 

 ideas entertained by the public concerning 

 the bee. Just think of a bee biting into a 

 peach when it can do nothing of the kind! 

 But the climax of the joke is reached when 

 we are called to watch a bee making its way 

 by boring into a rotting peach lying on the 

 ground. The whole thing is as untrue to 

 fact, and hence to nature, as any thing can 

 possibly be. It is still true of many people, 

 even in this advanced day, that they have 

 eyes, but see not. 



The Progressive Bee-keeper has a very 

 sensible editorial in reference to Gov. Folk's 

 veto of the foul-brood bill in Missouri. From 

 it I make the following extract. 



The Governor says in his message that " Any one in- 

 telligent enough to conduct a bee industry is certainly 

 better qualified to attend to them and manage his own 

 business than any State Inspector could possibly be.' 



If Governor Folk's nearest neighbor had smallpox in 

 the house, and some morning when he sat down to 

 breakfast the said neighbor should step in and say, 

 " Hf-Uo. Governor! Can I boiTow your bucksaw a little 

 while this morning?" I wonder if he could see the wis- 

 dom of a quarantine law. However, this only goes to 

 show that a man may be wise enough to be Governor of 

 a great State like Missouri, and yet be densely ignorant 

 in some things. By the same kind of reasoning we 

 might say any one who is intelligent enough to have a 

 large family is certainly better qualified to administer 

 to them in case of sickness than is a first-class physi- 

 cian. There would be fully as much horse sense in this 

 kind of assertion as there is in Governor Folk's excuse 

 for not signing the bill. 



Gov. Folk's reasoning would be just as 

 applicable if he were called on to sign a law 

 to stamp out rinderpest, anthrax, tubercu- 

 losis, and other contagious diseases peculiar 



to cattle and swine. Experience shows that 

 many men will not move, even in their own 

 interests, unless prodded by the law, It's a 

 little strange, too, that Gov. Folk was not 

 influenced by the action of other States that 

 have strict foul-brood laws. 



REPORTS WANTED OF THE NON-SWARMING 

 METHODS. 



Gleanings will be very glad to get reports 

 concerning any of the late non-swarming 

 methods that have been advocated in these 

 columns, especially the Sibbald and modified 

 Sibbald plan, and the Alexander method of 

 keeping down increase, and then producing 

 large quantities of honey. With our nearly 

 20,000 subscribers we are able to test out 

 any plan that has merit, and render a report 

 in a few weeks. 



SECTION V. BULK HONEY ; AN IMPORTANT 

 QUESTION. 



A GOOD article by Mr. Weaver, in this 

 issue, will furnish food for thought. The 

 question is, in view of stagnation in prices, 

 "Are bee-keepers making a mistake in run- 

 ning so much of their comb honey in pack- 

 ages as small as one pound?" Would it be 

 better if some of it were sold in larger pack- 

 ages to the local trade, say in five or ten 

 pound lots ? Or, to put it in another way, 

 would not the consumer buy fifty cents' or 

 a dollar's worth of honey the same as he 

 does sugar, as quick as he would a paltry 

 twenty cents' worth, providing he understood 

 he was buying the larger amount at ivhole- 

 sale, and enough to last his family a good 

 long time ? The growing scarcity of suit- 

 able section lumber may force all comb-honey 

 producers to adopt some other plan of mar- 

 keting in the future. If so, we may as well 

 begin to face the problem now. 



TOWNSEND METHOD OF PRODUCING COMB 

 honey; ITS POSSIBILITIES. 



The reader's attention is particularly 

 drawn to the article by E. D. Townsend, p. 

 594, on the production of comb and extract- 

 ed honey from the same super. The writer 

 outlines a plan whereby swarming may be 

 controlled, bait sections dispensed with, and 

 unfinished sections eliminated entirely. At 

 the end of the season the bee-keeper will 

 have a lot of finished sections, and, instead, 

 what would otherwise have been unfinished 

 sections, a lot of fine shallow extracting- 

 combs. A feature that will commend itself 

 particularly is the one whereby swarming, 

 so easily controlled in the production of 

 extracted honey, can be almost as readily 



