760 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



December 1 



GEORGE W. YORK. EDITOR. 



PUBLISHT WEEKLY BY 



lis Michigan Street, CHICAGO, ILL. 



[Entered at the Post-Offlce at Chicago as Second-Class Mail Matter.] 



UNITED STATES BEE-KEEPERS' UNION 



Organized to advance the pursuit of Apiculture: to promote the interests of bee 

 keepers; to protect its members ; to prevent the adulteration of honey; and 

 to prosecute the dishonest honey-commiflsion men. 



Mlemberslklp Fee—^l.OO per JLnnum. 



BXECUTIVE COMMITTEE-Pres.. George W. York; Vice-Pres., W. Z. Hutchinson: 

 Secretary, Dr. A. B. Mason, Station B. Toledo, Ohio. 



B04RD c^ DlRECTOHS-B. R. Root: E. Whitcomb; E. T. Abbott: C. P. Dadant: 



W.Z.Hutchinson; Dr. C. C. Miller. 



General Manager and Treasurer— Eugene Secor, Forest City, Iowa. 



VOL. 38. DECEMBER 1, 1898. NO. 48. 



Rule, recommended by the Joint action of the American Philological Asso- 

 ciation and the Philological Society of England:-Change "d" or "ed" flnal 

 to t when so pronounced, except when the "e" affects a preceding sound 



There is No Occasion for Jealousy among 

 the bee-journals, .says the editor of the Bee-Keepers' Review. 

 The appetite grows by what It feeds upon, and the man who 

 takes and reads a good bee-journal gets so much benefit from 

 it that he is inclined to subscribe for another. Mr. Hutchin- 

 son then adds : 



"Withholding deserved praise of a contemporary has 



never helpt any journal in the race for fame and fortuue 



Keep your journal bright, fresh, clean, newsy, helpful, and 

 up-to-date— put some life into it, and it will live and prosper, 

 tho there are complimentary notices of other journals in every 

 Issue." 



And Editor Hutchinson's practice conforms to his preach- 

 ing in this line, as witness the following item in the same 

 Issue : 



"The American Bee Journal is giving a most excellently 

 reported account of the Omaha convention. I think it is as 

 good a report of a convention as I have ever read. If you are 

 not a subscriber to the Journal, better take advantage of the 

 offer on the first page of the Review and get this report." 



Xliose Comb Honey Stories that appeared In 

 the New York Evening Post, and which were corrected by 

 Mr. Secor (see page 728), will not likely re-appear in that 

 paper very soon. Mr. Secor has since received the following 

 nice letter of explanation from the editor of the department 

 in the Post, called " Home Thoughts," in which appeared the 

 errors referred to : 



Brooklyn, N. Y., Nov. 12, 1S98. 

 Mr. Eugene Secor, Esq., Forest City, Iowa.— 



My Dear Sir : — As a writer of a paragraph concerning the 

 adulteration of honey, your letter to the Evening Post has 

 been referred to me. I made this statement on the strength 



of an article on food adulteration duly signed and accredited 

 which came under my notice. I did it conscientiously, be- 

 cause as a mother of four children I felt a regret to learn 

 of this presumable fact. Your letter, however, is authorita- 

 tive, and I have taken pleasure in making a retracting para- 

 graph, as you will see per enclosed, embodying the main fact 

 of your statement. I shall consider it a favor if you have any 

 little pamphlet that relates to the production of honey which 

 you could send me for my own reading. I agree with you as 

 to the value of honey as food for children, and on my table It 

 appears very often Very truly yours, 



Mrs. Margaret H. Welch. 



Here Is the " retracting paragraph " which Mrs. Welch 

 bad publisht in a later Issue of the Evening Post : 



A statement which is going the rounds of the press, and 

 which was commented on recently in this department, to the 

 effect that even comb honey was not above suspicion of adul- 

 teration, is contradicted by those who are In a position to 

 know. In the statement referred to, it was alleged that the 

 cells were Imitated In parafBne. 



" When," says an expert, " the delicate texture and frag- 

 ile nature of honey-comb, as made by bees, are realized, it will 

 be easy to understand that it is a mechanical impossibility to 

 make an article in imitation of it that cannot be readily de- 

 tected. The limit of mechanical ingenuity up to the present 

 time seems to have been reacht when the septum, or base of 

 cells, is made of wax on which the bees will construct cells 

 and complete the comb. This is called ' foundation ' by the 

 trade, and it Is made so thin that it can scarcely be detected 

 from the natural septum made by the bees. Paraffine, how- 

 ever, is never used for this purpose, because this wax melts at 

 a lower temperature than beeswax. The heat of the colony 

 will melt it, and therefore ruin not only the ' foundation,' but 

 the product as well. It is also impracticable to assert that 

 glucose syrup is fed to bees and by them stored in the comb. 

 Bees will not touch glucose syrup unless starving, and then, 

 of course, they are not in proper condition to store honey." 



This opinion is from an authority, and may reassure the 

 housekeeper that when she buys honey in the comb she may 

 reasonably expect to get something gathered from flo*ers by 

 bees. Honey, it is well known, possesses nutritive and me- 

 dicinal qualities, and it is the opinion of this same expert that 

 if more honey and less cane sugar and candy were eaten by 

 children, there would be fewer Intestinal and kidney diseases. 



Mrs. Welch has done well In the foregoing. We are very 

 glad we suggested that General Manager Secor write the 

 Evening Post in this case. Now let others who find untruth- 

 ful statements about honey, just send a markt copy of the 

 paper containing them to Mr. Secor, when he will do as he 

 did in this Instance — call for a retraction, and explain matters 

 to those writers and publishers who have been misled by cur- 

 rent errors regarding honey. It will go far toward killing 

 many of the falsehoods that are "on the go " through the pub- 

 lic press of to-day. 



'*~»-~*^ 



Pure Food Law for Illinois. Prof. Daven- 

 port, Dean of the University of Illinois at Champaign, has sent 

 letters to the Illinois State Bee-Keepers' Association, asking 

 them to join in a call for a conference at the University, 

 about Dec. 13, to ask the next legislature for a pure food law 

 In this State. This Is an important matter, and the State 

 Bee-Keepers' Association ought to be represented. No doubt 

 the Executive Committee will see to it. 



Southern Honey and Feeding Glucose. — 



Editor E. R. Root, in Gleanings for Nov. 15, makes the fol- 

 lowing corrections in the proceedings of the Omaha conven- 

 tion as reported In this journal : 



The stenographic report of the Omaha convention pro- 

 ceedings is unusually full and accurate. I have read nearly 

 all of it, and see very few if any corrections to make. I note, 

 however, in the American Bee Journal (page 660), In the re- 

 port of this convention, where I speak of the adulteration of 

 honey and the dlGScuIty of feeding bees clear glucose, the re- 

 porter makes me say this : " We are trying every year to 

 feed pure glucose to bees. I learned this summer that you 

 could dilute it down with water, and they would take it pro- 

 vided there was nothing else that was coming in." What I 

 meant to say, and what I probably did say, was that we tried 



