)0URHRl3 

 • DELVoTE-Dj 



♦INTERESTS 



Tubhshedy theA l^ooY Co. 



^^^^^^;^^<««^^^^^^^Si£°PtR\tAR N® "MEDINA-OHIO' 



Vol XXXIII. 



JULY I. 1905. 



No J3 



To THE 99 PER CENT of honest bee-keepers 

 I would say, it isn't honest to sell half- ripen- 

 ed nectar for honey. To the one per cent of 

 dishonest ones, if there are so many, I would 

 say, you're cheating yourself more than any 

 one else when you extract any thing but the 

 best. 



G. M. DooLiTTLE tells of his interesting 

 experiments, page 666, in which the last 

 black bee disappeared 45 days after emerg- 

 ing. But that doesn't mean that the aver- 

 age life was 45 days, unless all the bees 

 lived exactly the same length of time. If 

 they died at different ages, the average life 

 must have been less than 45 days. 



Prof. Cook, after testing pretty much all 

 the honeys, pronounces sage ' ' pre-eminently 

 superior," page 648. The editor of Modern 

 Farmer puts Missouri honey at the top, and 

 the editor of Rural Bee-keeper calls Wiscon- 

 sin honey the best, which is only another 

 way of saying that these three men live 

 respectively in the three regions mentioned. 



That label, page 644, "White-clover 

 Honey Compound." Is that honest, when 

 only 25 per cent is honey ? Would you call 

 butter "Salt Compound" because there's 

 salt in it? [No, it is not honest; but when 

 we consider that, in that same Empire State, 

 the same goods with the same amount of 

 adulteration were formerly put out as "pure 

 honey," we can feel that a big step forward 

 has been taken in the interest of the honey 

 business. —Ed.] 



Been wearing my pants in my stockings 

 for years to keep bees from crawling up my 

 le>s, but this year I'm wearing trouser- 

 guards such as bicyclers use. Ever so much 

 nicer. [Bicycle pant-guards are getting to 

 be quite common among bee-keepers, "They 



are cheap, and can be had at any bicycle- 

 shop; and they answer almost as well as 

 pants legs tucked into the stockings. They 

 are far more dignified, especially when nice 

 company comes around desiring to see the 

 bees. — Ed.] 



At this date, June 20, white clover is 

 getting in its best licks. Had to get up at 

 4 o'clock this morning to get in the day's 

 work, so some of these Straws may be a bit 

 damp from the morning dew. [There would 

 be no objections if your Straws are daubed 

 up with propolis finger-marks, or a little 

 honey now and then. They generally are so 

 marked, and in this issue they smell of clo- 

 ver, bee-stings, etc. Editor Hill, of the 

 American Bee-keeper, once said he could 

 always tell when a certain editor had been 

 out among the bees by a certain tone that 

 appeared in the editorial writings. — Ed.] 



For forming baby nuclei, Mr. Editor, you 

 found they would desert without brood and 

 queen, page 643. I had no brood, and some- 

 times only a queen- cell, and had no deser- 

 tions. But I kept them imprisoned for three 

 days. [Possibly the confinement of three 

 days might make the bees stick to their 

 homes better; but our rule is to form a 

 nucleus with bees from another yard, and 

 confine them over night and let them out. 

 Without brood or a virgin or a cell they will 

 usually desert, and we generally find it 

 better to have brood, even with a virgin. 

 The average bee-keeper, I am satisfied, will 

 succeed better with the brood in any case. 

 We have had some failures without it,— 

 Ed.] 



White sage and black are mentioned, 

 page 648. But don't Californians say that 

 a large part of what is sold as white-sage 

 honey is gathered from the purple sage? 

 [Purple sage, if I am correct, is very rarely 

 mentioned; but button, black, and white 

 sage are the sources of all the so-called 

 white-sage honey. As I have before pointed 

 out, the name ' ' white sage ' ' refers to the 

 honey more particularly than to the particu- 

 lar species of plant bearing that name from 

 which the honey is supposed to come. The 

 honey from the black and button sage is 



