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THE AMERICA2^ BEE JOURNAL. 



instance, 1 havft a grade of all Xo. 1 

 honey in my house, or a sample of it, 

 and all No. 2 honey in my shop 3 rods 

 distant. A purchaser comes along 

 and stops at the shop first. I show 

 him the No. 2 honey. He calls it fine 

 and thinks it compares favorably with 

 any honey that he has seen. I now 

 take him to the house and show him 

 the No. 1 honey, and nine chances out 

 of ten he will say he sees little differ- 

 ence in the two lots. But take some 

 of No. 1 and No. 2 and put them side 

 by side and he will say there is quite 

 a difference, " that's a tact." 



Now taking advantage of this fact, 

 and all the lessons of the past, I grade 

 my honey as follows : Every perfect 

 section of nice white honey is placed 

 in crates as No. 1. To be No 1 the 

 comb must be smoothly and evenly 

 capped over throughout its entire 

 surface, with no discoloration of the 

 comb near the bottom of the box. The 

 section itself must look new and 

 clean, while no cells of bee-bread 

 must be seen while looking through 

 the honey toward the light. No. 

 2 honey is to be the same as No. 

 1, except that in it is put all the sec- 

 tions with discolored or soiled combs 

 near the bottom of them (so discolored 

 or soiled by the bees traveling over 

 them), together with such sections as 

 show a few cells of pollen (covered 

 with honey) when held up to the light. 

 In the No. 3 grade I put all sections 

 having a tew unsealed cells at the 

 bottom of the combs, those that by 

 accident or by brace-combs have their 

 surface marred ; all such as have pol- 

 len in them to any extent, and all that 

 are badly soiled or discolored by the 

 travel of the bees. If I have any sec- 

 tions in which brood has been reared , 

 or that are one-third unsealed, they 

 are put by themselves and go as No. 

 4 or dark honey. As a rule the un- 

 sealed ones had better be extracted 

 and the combs kept over till another 

 season. ^ 



In shipping this honey I send only 

 one grade to one commission mer- 

 chant, preferring not to consign the 

 different grades to the same party, for 

 when I have done so it often happens 

 that No. 2 will sell for from 2 to 4 

 cents less per pound than No. 1, 

 while if No. 2 is sent to another party 

 he will sell it for nearly if not the 

 same price that the No. 1 is sold at. 

 Here comes in the point of comparison 

 again. I might go on and multiply 

 words by citing several instances in 

 confirmation of the correctness of the 

 above conclusions, but I think this 

 will be sufficient, so that the reader 

 will " catch on." 

 Borodino,© N. Y. 



For the American Bee JoutdaL 



Marketing Honey. 



C. W. DAYTON. 



In traveling about this country 

 from town to town selling honey, I 

 am surprised at the varying condi- 

 tions of the market. In some towns 

 I Hnd nice comb honey retailing at 

 10 to 18 cents per pound, and some- 



times extracted honey is compara- 

 tively unknown. Drive on 7 or 8 

 miles and we find the comb honey at 

 15 cents and extracted at 10 cents per 

 pound. In some towns I am enabled 

 to sell a little extracted honey only by 

 downright argument, wherein other 

 towns they will come running from all 

 directions with pans, jars and pitchers 

 as though the supply was very 

 limited. 



I have gone into towns where I 

 could not sell a pound of extracted 

 honey to the merchants, but retailed 

 it from the wagon as fast as it could 

 be weighed out. Adulteration had 

 traveled that way. At other times 

 where comb honey was a drug at 12 

 cents, and extracted a stranger and 

 not wanted at the stores, the one who 

 was with me declared that we left ex- 

 tracted honey at quite every house in 

 the town ; and the sales increased in 

 the amount taken with every trip. 

 Sometimes they quote comb honey as 

 low as 9 and 10 cents, and as 8- cent 

 extracted honey is the lowest price of 

 any I carry, the market is dull indeed. 

 Do you ask why this state of affairs 

 exists? Why, the answer is this: 

 Because there is a pack of " apicul- 

 tural nuisances" "tagging after," and 

 trying to hang on our pursuit. There 

 are those wlio are just "cranky" 

 enough to continue knocking down 

 the price of comb honey until ex- 

 tracted has no sale, and the comb 

 honey being a luxury, and nothing 

 else, it remains in the same old chan- 

 nels, and the amount taken is never 

 increased, as luxiirative appetites are 

 not fluctuated by low prices. Some- 

 times an old farmer who keeps bees 

 in his " gums " amongst the worms, 

 will bring in comb honey by the pan- 

 ful and knock the price down to 5 or 

 6 cents, and unless there is an api- 

 arist foolish enough to follow, the 

 price rises again when the farmer's 

 honey is sold out. 



The footprints of adulteration are 

 often seen ; also the effects of offering 

 a poor grade of extracted honey where 

 a good article was expected. Now 

 there is, it appears, those who have 

 knocked themselves on the head so 

 much in the sale of honey that where 

 they could have sold extracted at 8 

 cents and comb honey at 15 cents per 

 pound, they find their operations con- 

 fined to about the same amount of 

 comb honey onl^, and that at starva- 

 tion prices. In instances of this kind 

 I have several times found their local 

 markets bare of extracted honey be- 

 bause they offered comb honey so 

 cheap that the merchants did not 

 want extracted honey at any price, 

 and the bee-keepers at such towns 

 were " toting " their extracted honey 

 toother towns to play "hog" with 

 other apiarists. I would say, let 

 them exercise a little common sense 

 at home and then extend it abroad. 



Let us hold to one remunerative 

 price, and confine to convas and sell 

 at that unaltered price, and when we 

 have not the time to sell our honey 

 and care for the bees also during the 

 year, then conclude that honey is an 

 over-production, and hold the honey 

 or get out of the business. This 

 should be preferable to rushing it into 



consumption for a short time during 

 the fall, and leaving the market bare 

 the rest of the year. It may be that 

 the stomach of the consumer is a 

 good store-house for honey, but I be- 

 lieve the length of time from the 

 time it leaves the producer until it is 

 deposited in such stomach is worthy 

 of consideration also. It strikes one 

 with amazement how many stomachs 

 there are to be filled, and the amount 

 of honey required to fill them. When 

 we learn to properly administer the 

 honey, the more we fill them the 

 emptier they will become. 

 Bradford, c5 Iowa. 



Halilinianil, Ont, Convention. 



A meeting of the Haldimand Bee- 

 Keepers' Association was held at 

 Caledonia, on Monday, Aug. 23, 1886. 

 The minutes of the last meeting were 

 read and approved. 



How to prepare bees for winter was 

 then discussed. The President said 

 it was necessary to have plenty of 

 stores, plenty of bees, and a good 

 queen. When the weather begins to 

 get cold he packs them with chaff and 

 leaves them alone until spring. Be- 

 fore putting on the top story he puts 

 a couple of strips across the frames 

 so that the bees can pass from one 

 frame to another. Mr. Armstrong 

 gave his plan of wintering, which was 

 about the same as the President's. 

 He also used a double walled Jones 

 hive, and was very successful in win- 

 tering his bees. He uses a clamp for 

 single-walled hives; the clamp is 

 packed with sawdust on all sides and 

 on top of the hives, and he had not 

 lost a colony on account of cold 

 weather. He described his way of 

 making the clamp, which any one can 

 build. 



Mr. Richardson asked whether it 

 was advisable to put the bees out-of- 

 doors so as to give them a flight on a 

 warm day. Mr. Armstrong said not, 

 as long as they were quiet. 



Mr. John Kindree gave a very in- 

 teresting account of his experience 

 with bees, relating his losses through 

 not knowing how to handle them. In 

 answer to Mr. Richardson, the Presi- 

 dent said that about 25 or 30 pounds 

 of honey was sufficient to winter a 

 colony. The more they were protected 

 the less honey they would consume. 



The President said be had not had 

 much experience with bee-diarrhea, 

 but he thought if the bees, were prop- 

 erly prepared for winter, there would 

 be no diarrhea, and an ounce of pre- 

 vention was better than a pound of 

 cure. One cause of the disease was 

 too long confinement owing to cold 

 weather, and the bees being unable 

 to change their position in the hive, 

 would eat pollen, which was sure to 

 cause the disease. The remedy was 

 to keep the hive warm and dry. 



Mr. Armstrong said if colonies were 

 properly prepared for winter and the 

 hives kept warm and dry, there 

 would be no danger of diarrhea. . 



Mr. John Kindree asked when was 

 the best time to move bees, to which 

 Mr. Armstrong replied, that the 



