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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



ing to the rules laid down in the books, 

 may have 100 colonies in the end of 

 three years. Five hundred is as many 

 as can be handled on a single ranch. A 

 colony has been known to yield 1,000 

 pounds of honey, worth 5 cents a pound, 

 in a single season ; but 200 pounds is 

 the customary average, and in very dry 

 seasons the colony will not yield as much 

 as that. Something is realized by the 

 sale of beeswax. 



Our present California bee is a hybrid. 

 The bees which were brought here in 

 1855 were of the Italian breed, and 

 since then Sicilian and other breeds 

 have been introduced. But they found 

 a wild bee here and crossed breeds, ap- 

 parently to the advantage of the insect. 

 Efforts are now being made to introduce 

 other varieties, especially an Indian bee, 

 which is said to be large, and a great 

 producer. Queen-bees from Cyprus and 

 Northern Africa are in demand at $5 

 apiece and upward. We shall probably 

 have some of them here. 



Southern bee-keepers complain that 

 the agricultural department of the 

 University has not paid sufficient atten- 

 tion to the subject of bee-culture. In 

 the University of Michigan there is a 

 professor of bee-culture, and in Germany 

 teachers of the industry travel through 

 the country at the Government expense, 

 teaching the peasantry how to keep bees 

 and to improve the quality of the honey. 



Most of the honey sent from Califor- 

 nia is shipped in 5-gallon cans, which 

 contain each about 60 pounds of ex- 

 tracted honey. This is drawn off by 

 the grocers, and sold in jars and bottles. 

 Mr. Brooks seems to commend the prac- 

 tice. He is probably not aware that in 

 the East, and especially in the central 

 cities of St. Louis and Chicago, this 

 liquid honey is constantly adulterated 

 with glucose and sold as California sage 

 honey. 



If the market will not take our honey 

 in the comb, or it will not keep in that 

 form, it would be better for the Southern 

 bee-keepers to put up their extracted 

 honey in jars of their own, with their 

 own label on them. Good honey would 

 soon establish a reputation for itself, 

 and consumers would insist on the pro- 

 duct which they had tested, and with 

 which they were familiar. Our middle- 

 men in the wine trade have pretty 

 nearly ruined the wine industry by ship- 

 ping in wood and selling to parties who 

 used our pure wine as the basis of an 

 adulteration. The bee-keepers should 

 take warning by their example. It 

 would be easy for a large producer to 

 have special glass jars made for him 



stamped with his name. If he had a 

 good article of honey, the jars would 

 command a steady sale. 



The suggestion in the last paragraph 

 of the foregoing is a most excellent one 

 — that of each producer putting up his 

 honey in jars of his own, and then label 

 them with his own labels. This would 

 not be a difficult matter, and besides in 

 the end it would contribute very much 

 to a steady demand for the honey so 

 labeled, if such honey is first-class in 

 every respect. 



We do not see why producers should 

 not have particular " brands " of honey, 

 as have the manufacturers of flour and 

 some other productions. A bee-keeper's 

 name should always be the best guar- 

 anty, and doubtless is, except in cases 

 where a large shipment of honey has 

 been re-canned, or re-bottled, or sub- 

 divided in some way. An individual 

 "trade-mark" is almost a necessity in 

 these days of adulteration and fraudu- 

 lent practices in almost every depart- 

 ment of the commercial world. 



Stray - Strawer and Stray- 

 Strawingv — These terrible, jaw- 

 breaking "names" applied to Dr. 

 Miller, are causing just lots of fun now- 

 a-days. The Canadian Bee Journal now 

 comes to our rescue in one way, but in 

 another direction it points out a typo- 

 graphical error made in our printing 

 s-t-a-w-ing for strawing. Here is what 

 our Canadian brother-editor says in his 

 paper for Nov. 15th, after quoting what 

 Dr. Miller said in his " Stray Straws " 

 about our having called him a "Stray- 

 Strawer:" 



He didn't do anything of the kind. 

 We know better. He called you " the 

 Stray-Staging Doctor." But what's the 

 odds, so long as he didn't call you too 

 late for dinner. He might have called 

 you the stray-sawing, or the sway-staw- 

 ing, or the stay-strawing, or the sway- 

 stawing, or the straw-swaying, or the 

 say-strawing, or the stray-sawing. The 

 fact is, he knew you had strayed into the 

 pastime to stay and straw ; and he got 

 it out the best way he could ; and we 

 don't care a straw if he did. 



