1898 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



217 



granted equal rank and honor with other organized indus" 

 tries. They were able to correct some false impressions, and 

 to place the industry of honey-production on an equal footing 

 with other rural occupations before the promoters of Pure 

 Food legislation. Eugene Secor, 



Delegate to the Xational Pure Food and Dtmj Congress. 

 Forest City, Iowa, March 29, 1898. 



We give nearly all our editorial space this week to the 

 above subject, because we believe it is an exceedingly impor- 

 tant one. We trust that bee-keepers will at once act upon 

 the suggestion made by Mr. Secor, so that their Congressmen 

 may be prepared to vote intelligently when the Brosius Bill 

 comes before them for action. 



Judging from the reports made by Messrs. Abbott and 

 Secor, we blieve that it was one of the wisest things possible 

 for the United States Bee-Keepers' Union to send its delegates 

 to the Pure Food Congress. They did their work well, and as 

 Mr. Secor says in his last paragraph, " placed the industry of 

 honey-production on an equal footing with other rural occu- 

 pations before the promoters of Pure Food legislalioa." 



Paul 'Whitebread and His Apiary. Mr. 



Whitebread, whose apiary is shown on the first page this 

 week, writes us as follows about himself and his apiary : 



I was born Oct. 31, 1869, in Luzerne Co., Pa., where I 

 have ever since had my home. In 1892 I became interested 

 in bees and bought a colony in a box-hive at a public sale. 

 The next spring I sent to Ohio for a colony of Italians in an 

 8frame dovetailed hive, then I subscribed for a bee-paper 

 and bought all the best bee-books I could find, and increast 

 my bees by artificial and natural swarming. I never lost a 

 swarm by absconding (going to the woods at swarming, or any 

 other time), but I had heavy winter losses till I filled the upper 

 stories with chaff, and laid something across the top of the 

 frames for the bees to pass from one comb to another. 



Last spring (1897) I started with 45 colonies, and in- 

 creast by natural swarming to 65. I got 1,100 pounds of 

 comb honey. I produce no extracted. 



A few years ago but very few bees were kept around here, 

 but now there are lots of them, and nearly all Italians or 

 hybrids, and in improved hives. I have tried the different 

 races of bees, and have settled on the 3-banded leather-col- 

 ored Italians ; and in hives I find the 8-frame dovetail with 

 Hoffman frames my choice, but I was thinking the hive and 

 frames might be a little deeper, so I built 16 hives 2J-4 inches 

 deeper than the regular dovetail, and had them filled with 

 swarms. They winter bees most excellently, and I have had 

 some in use now two seasons, and I could find no difference in 

 the amount of honey gathered per colony between the stan- 

 dard and the deep frames. 



I have in my apiary 65 colonies — 45 in regular dovetailed 

 hives, 16 in deeper hives, but same width and length as the 

 regular dovetail, two in hives with frames 13x9, one Ameri- 

 can, and one box-hive. The hives stand in rows 6 feet apart, 

 aad 3 feet apart in the rows. All the hives face the south, 

 and are on stands 4 to 6 inches high. 



On the corner of the hive with the cover off, is my " smoke 

 engine ;" and the frame I hold in my hands is a Hoffman. It 

 was rather cold, and the bees were clustered on the center of 

 the combs when the photographer came, it being Nov. 17, 

 1897, almost too late to open a hive. 



They were nearly all packt for winter, with chaff in the 

 upper story or super. (Myself you can see in the picture, but 

 my wife you cannot, for I have none.) 



Paul Whitebread. 



Perhaps by the time Mr. W. has another picture of his 

 apiary taken, he will have it a little more complete, showing 

 his wife, who, no doubt, whether or not she is a good baker, 

 will over after be sure of having good " White bread " in her 

 house. 



A Convention in "Wisconsin.— Mr. N. E. 



France, the hustling State Inspector of apiaries for Wiscon- 

 sin, expects to hold a meeting of bee-keepers at Ft. Atkinson, 

 April 11. He has already promises of an attandance of 60. 

 This will be a fine opportunity for bee-keepers in Jefferson 

 Co., Wis., to meet Inspector B^ance, and also to have a good 

 bee-convention. Go if you can, and help in the meeting. 



To Preserve Combs of Pollen, take them when they are 

 fresh from the hive; with a dredging-box, powder them with 

 fine sugar, lightly knock off the superfluous sugar, and then 

 put them away in a suitably dry place. — Noerdl. Bztg. 



Selling Honey — Producing honey is one thing, and sell- 

 ing it another, in the judgment of Friedemann Greiner (Glean- 

 ings, page 169), and he thinks it might be well if New York 

 bee-men had something like a honey-exchange, with some one 

 like S. A. Niver for salesman. 



Slant of Cells. — E. R. Jones says in Southland Queen, 

 that in transferring brood-combs it doesn't matter which side 

 up the combs are that were used for brood-rearing when first 

 built, but those first used for storing honey are built with an 

 upward slant, and are better right side up. 



The Holtermann Hive-Cover, as described in Canadian 

 Bee Journal, is one which telescopes half an inch, has two 

 end-pieces, two side-pieces, a bottom-board, galvanized iron 

 top, with packing of ashes, sand or loam between the boards 

 and iron. Claims to be cheap — doesn't say how cheap — water- 

 tight, and a good protection against heat and cold. Surely 

 aiming in the right direction. 



A Longing for Better Spelling crops out in a foot-note 

 in Gleanings. The editor says : " I wish both precedent and 

 custom would permit us to spell by the phonetic method ; that 

 we might even go as far as Bro. York, in the American Bee 

 Journal ; but as we do so much printing for other parties, 

 our printers and proof-readers would be In a snarl of confu- 

 sion if we attempted to carry on the two systems — can't do it." 



Score One for Full Sheets. — American Bee-Keeper quotes 

 J. A. Green at the Chicago couvontion, on the use of comb 

 foundation in section honey : "If you have a small strip in 

 the top the consumer can tell it ; if not, nine times out of ten 

 he can't detect it ;" and adds that if there is a difference in 

 the foundation and natural septum, to associate the two in 

 one section is to invite the attention of the consumer to the 

 contrast. 



Breeding from Good Stock. — Of late considerable has 

 been said about breeding to improve stock. The editor of 

 Gleanings has seemed just a wee bit inclined to throw cold 

 water on some phases of it, but the editor of American Bee- 

 Keeper says, "Too much cannot be said regarding the im- 

 provement of our stock." J. B. Case gives a strong illustra- 

 tion of gain in amount of crops, simply by rearing queens 

 from colonies that gave largest yields. 



Cause of Low Honey Prices. — Ed Jolley, in American 

 Bee-Keeper, thinks one reason for low price of honey is the 

 fact that producers rush off the crop to commission-men, and 

 they being overloaded, each one tries to put the price a little 

 lower than others to give their shippers first chance, and this 

 honest effort results in low prices for all. Another factor is 

 competition with sugar and syrups. Thinks unity among 

 producers and thorough organization the desideratum. 



Working Up the Honey-Trade— J. H. Martin is backt 

 up by the editor of Review In saying the permanent results of 

 honey exhibitions at fairs are by no means as great as gen- 

 erally supposed. People see so much of everything and look 

 so fast that few permanent customers are made. Much more 

 efficacious are exhibitions for a day or more at groceries, ex- 

 plaining to customers and distributing honey-leaflets. The 

 California Exchange has been doing a good thing by keeping 

 two hustling agents on the road to drum up trade. • 



Effects of Different Honey-Flows.— In Gleanings, R. C. 

 Aikin gives some of the results of his observations from scale- 

 colonies. He thinks something lil<e a third of the ingathered 

 nectar is lost in evaporation. With a daily average of 1}^ 

 pounds, even strong colonies could scarcely be induced to do 

 anything in sections, the tendency being to lengthen the cells 



