18!: 8. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



181 



something else io besides honey, and they don't want it. 

 There sits In this room a gentleman who represents one of the 

 largest wholesale dry goods houses in Chicago, and he knows 

 that a weeif of explanation cannot wipe it out. This ray of 

 distrust is the idea that honey can be got without the aid of 

 the bee at all, or it may be that you do half the work ; and I 

 have stood for an hour and explained to four or five men, who 

 asl<t me, "Did you make this?" or, "Where did they make 

 it ?" or, " What did they make it out of ?" or, " How did they 

 cap them over ?" aud, " What do they put in It ?" I tell you 

 it is a damage to you as bee-keepers to use anything more 

 than the merest bottom, aside from the question of economy 

 to you as bee-keepers in your hives. It is the distrust the 

 people have of anything the bee doesn't make. They know 

 that, man is awfully smart. They have confidence that the 

 bee is as disingenuous as she was thousands of years ago : and 

 if you leave the bee alone it will treat you nicely. I would 

 like to have Mr. Everett speak to you. 



Mr. Everett— This is my first experience in a bee-conven- 

 tion. I haven't nearly as many bees as a lot of you people 

 here, probably. I went into bee-keeping as an amusement, 

 really. I had them when I was a boy, and when I located in 

 Odk Park I sent over to Michigan and got a couple of colonies 

 of tjees. I had 80 this summer. And I used the foundation 

 suih as the gentleman has exhibited to you here. I found it 

 to work perfectly satisfactorily. And I believe, as he says, 

 that anything beyond this foundation would be a detriment, 

 altho I must say this, that I have never had any experience 

 with what you term the drawn foundation. I have used the 

 latent that I could get, in all the honey that I have produced, 

 and I do not find any trouble whatever in disposing of it. As 

 Mr. Moore says, the people are suspicious. I had a grocery- 

 man tell me the other day that a person broughtback a section 

 of lioney that I had sold to him, with six or eight cases, and 

 said it was not genuine honey. But the person didn't know 

 wti,it he was talking about. It was from this thin foundation. 

 I airi not able to give you any light on this question, because 

 a'l I know is what I have pickt up in my own bee-yard. 



Mr. Stone — I have had men by the score that were hand- 

 iitie comb honey tell me that they were selling that for manu- 

 factured honey, and when I would look at it I would tell them 

 ,iust the facts in the case, and what I believed about it. And 

 ih"re were samples sent from a neighboring city where a lady 

 I had known all my life lived, and she said she- sent them to 

 Springfield to have me see them ; she said if Mr. Stone said 

 th.it was manufactured honey she would believe. Her hus- 

 band Lad bought it of a groceryman for manufactured honey. 

 Tiiere were two good samples of white clover honey and 

 Spanish-needle honey ; and I showed them the card of Mr. 

 R'Ot, which he publishes, offering a reward of a thous'vnd 

 dollars. They said they would go back to their groceryman 

 an I enlighten him. I hope that nobody will ever send any out 

 tn .Springfield, and that they will never enlighten the people 

 there in regard to the raised cell. I don't want it around. It 

 gel-; just to the point where Mr. Moore speaks of, it gets it so 

 that people say if they can do that much they can do more, 

 thty can fill it, and they can cap it. I hope it will never go 

 any farther. 



Pres. Miller — I want to just say this, as Mr. Waitcomb 

 said awhile ago, he always felt like doing something for the 

 under dog in the fight. Now, there is nobody on the other 

 side at all. 



Mr. Wheeler — Here is one. 



Pres. Miller — I want to say that I do believe we ought to 

 be entirely fair, at least. When foundation was introduced 

 there was objection made to it in the first place, but that has 

 died away, and everybody has said it is all right to use foun- 

 dation, and not many object to filling the section all full of 

 foundation, and using it altogether, and yet if you go just a 

 little beyond that tlien there is something terrible about it, 

 and if all of this talk gets to the public no heavier blow has 

 been made to the sale of comb honey than has been made just 

 by the objections of bee-keepers themselves. It is not the 

 public that is objecting to this ; it is the bee-keepers. It is 

 said, "Up to a certain point it is all right." Now, if that is 

 true, if the public will commence objecting at a certain point, 

 won't they object just a little before that, to that same mate- 

 rial being put in ? If it is to bad material they object, won't 

 they object before that? Now, why is it, if it is a right thing 

 to put in that sheet of foundation, that it Is so much worse 

 when you increase the amount of material that you put in by 

 5U per cent., or 100 per cent.? It is the same material ex- 

 actly. If it is good in one case, why isn't it In the other? 

 Some have called attention to the yellow part that is there, 

 and state that with ordinary foundation that would be white. 

 My bees don't make it white, and some of you know your bees 

 doii'i make white septum out of yellow foundation, and I be- 



lieve if any of you watch closely you will see it Is left yellow. 

 But your attention is very closely called to this sample. You 

 will see flaws you haven't seen before. You are looking for 

 something wrong about it. Now, as the final outcome of this, 

 I believe if bee-keepers keep quiet, aud don't bring up objec- 

 tions that don't exist, that no harm will ever come from it. I 

 want to say candidly to you, that I doubt very much if many 

 of you will ever use a pound of it. I don't believe, in the first 

 place, you can afford to. In the second place, it will not 

 always be found to be an advantage for you as bee-keepers. I 

 will say to you that in my own case I did not see any advan- 

 tage in using it, and as it is more expensive, I am not likely 

 to use it. Now, don't let us raise suspicions in the mind of 

 the public ourselves, where there is no cause for it. If you 

 quietly try this, and find it is not profitable, you are not going 

 to use it, and there is no use in your saying that this is such a 

 bad thing, when you are all the time using a part of the same 

 thing, and the most important part, too. You say, " If it 

 can be made as thin." They have made the walls of it as thin 

 as the natural product. That is all I am going to say ; and 

 you can go on now and fight it. 



Mr. Baxter — I beg to differ with you radically. I know 

 that bee-keepers are nolf finding fault with it, but the public 

 is. With my own experience all over the country — and I go 

 around a great deal — when I take up a piece of this founda- 

 tion, I tell them I am using only this much. You see that 

 doesn't look like the natural comb at all ; there isn't a parti- 

 cle of resemblance. "Well, I don't like it. It tastes bad 

 when I bite into it. I want the natural comb honey; but if 

 you haven't got that I will take this." But when I show them 

 the other they say, " If you can come that near to the comb 

 you can make a natural comb." That is the difference be- 

 tween this and the natural comb, while there isn't so much 

 between the other. When you go to using things like that 

 you can take one and say, that is all right, I use that. But 

 they shake their heads and don't believe you. I do object 

 most emphatically to the other, not because I think that it is 

 not a good thing, but because I believe that it will arouse the 

 suspicions of the public a great deal more than this ever did, 

 or anything else that the bee-keepers could use. 



Pres. Miller — Let's have a report from the others who 

 have tried it. 



Mr. Wheeler — I believe I tried 18 sections of the drawn 

 foundation, filling with full sheets, and I had a little different 

 experience than these gentlemen about the bees working on it. 

 I think there will be a little misapprehension in regard to 

 that. My bees went to work, and they seemed to begin at the 

 bottom, and sort of fixt the comb over. They didn't put honey 

 right into it. The honey-Uow was all right, but they left it 

 for a few hours or for a day or two empty. I would take that 

 out, and the edges would be kind of whitened over, and no 

 honey there. It wasn't like the comb, if I had put a section 

 with partly drawn comb in it. They would have begun to put 

 honey in it as soon as it was put in. That led me to think 

 that they flxt it over, and within six hours from the time I 

 put in one lot of sections the bees were whitening it and work- 

 ing on it. And the foundation put in at the same time they 

 hadn't toucht. After those sections were filled we all ate of 

 it, and I let my neighbors taste of it by the side of the honey 

 built on the old-fashioned foundation, and I could not detect 

 one particle of difference, nor could any one else. I used Mr. 

 Root's extra-thin foundation, the Weed process, and I would 

 like to show you the two foundations side by side today. I 

 have 18 of those sections nicely filled, and from the outside 

 appearance you cannot detect a particle of difference. I be- 

 lieve it would be impossible for you to. I think 15 or 20 peo- 

 ple tried it. This year I could not see that it was very much 

 advantage. It seemed as if this year the bees would commence 

 promptly on the old foundation that I had on the hives for 

 four or five years, while in other years, in a poor houey-flow, 

 they would not have toucht it. So it was hard to tell whether 

 this was an advantage or not this year, because they began 

 and workt on that right along, filled the super up with bees, 

 and I couldn't see that they workt on the old-fashioned pro- 

 cess any less quickly, but these sections started were finisht 

 sooner. 



(Continued next weeli.) 



Bees'wax 'Wanted. — Until further notice we will 

 pay li6 cents cas/i for all the good yellow beeswax delivered 

 to us. We accept only that which Is absoutely pure. If you 

 want cash, and want it nt once, send us your beeswax now. 

 Be sure to put your own name and address on each package, 

 when shipping. Then mark it very plainly — George W. York 

 &, Co., 118 Michigan St., Chicago, ill. 



