AMERICAN BEE jOURNAL 



Jan. 5, 1899. 



PUBLISHT WEEKLY BY 



George W. York & Company, 



116 Michigan St., diicago. III. 



ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. ?%^ SAMPLE COPY FREE. 



[Entered at the Posl-Office at Chicago as Second-Class Mail Matter.) 



United Slates Bee -Keepers' Union. 



Organized to advance the pursuit of Apiculture ; tu promote the interests 

 of bee-keepers ; to protect its members ; to prevent the adulteration of 

 honey ; and to prosecute the dishonest honey-commission men. 



Afeznt>ez's7iip I^ee^Sl^OO jyer A.nnuTn, 



Executive CoMMiTTEE^Pres.. E. Whitcomb: Vice-Pres., C. A. Hatch; 



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

 Board of Directors— E. R. Root: E. Whitcomb; E. T. Abbott; C. P." 



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

 Gen'l Manager and Treasurer— Eug-ene Secor, Forest City. Iowa. 



VOL. 3Q. JANUARY 5, 1899. 



NO. 1. 



NuTK -The Anit-ricail IJi'i- Ji.uriial ad.ipl- 111.- Ortlidu'iapliy ..1 I In- f.illuw- 

 inj,' Rule, recomnientk-d by tlie joint action of the .-Vinerican Philolog- 

 ical Association and the Philological Society of Entrland: — Change 

 '*d'' or "ed" tinal to "t" when so pi'onounced, except when the "e" af- 

 fects a precedingr sound. 



1899 is the way it is written now. Fast is the 20th cen- 

 turj' approaching. Another j'ear, and the American Bee 

 Journal will be in the last year of" its fourth decade and sec- 

 ond score of years. Forty years is quite a ripe age for a 

 paper to attain unto, and particularly a Aft'-paper. It is rare 

 that a periodical is older than its editor. But the American 

 Bee Journal is such a rarity. But its age doesn't seem to 

 weaken it much — it is not infirm if it is old. Of course, 

 .sometimes appearances are deceptive ; but hardly, we hope, 

 in this instance. 



Dangerous Drugs as Cures for Bee=Stings are earn- 

 estly inveighed against by Somnambulist in the Progres- 

 sive Bee-Keeper. " Never, »ifz/f/- resort to the use of toxic 

 drugs " for so small a thing as a bee-sting. Whiskey is 

 sometimes recommended for bee-stings, but that is not so 

 dangerous as drugs, for its character is known, while the 

 others silently but surely fasten upon the victim without 

 his knowledge until it is too late. 



Bee.Chat is the name of a British bee-paper that has 

 been publisht quarterly, but now comes out as a monthly. 

 It is edited and publisht by one of England's best-known 

 practical bee-keepers, S. Simmins, the author of that prac- 

 tical work, " A Modern Bee-Farm." Long life to the 

 chatty Bee-Chat. 



Shipping Beeswax.— We have handled quite a large 

 quantity '>f beeswax during the past four or five years, and 

 we have often wondered wliy so many ship it in heavv boxes 



when sacks made of almost any material except paper are 

 so much lighter and more easily handled. And then, there 

 is no need of paying heavy freight or express charges on a 

 clumsy box, weighing perhaps 10 pounds, and holding say 

 20 pounds of wax, when a sack not over a pound in weight 

 would answer better in every way. 



We once received seyeral hundred pounds of beeswax 

 from Utah, all in burlap sacks (the sacks weighing, we pre- 

 sume, about six pounds), when, had the shipment been put 

 in heavy boxes, it would have weighed SO to 100 pounds 

 more. The freight charges on that lot of beeswax were 

 about $3 a hundred pounds. It would have been rather ex- 

 pensive to ship boxes at that rate, when the sacks were 

 better in every way. But many do not think of these ap- 

 parently little things which go far toward making the dif- 

 ference between success and failure. 



A Roll of Honor is talkt of by A. I. Root, composed of 

 all who have taken Gleanings for 25 years, or since its first 

 nuinber, in 1873. That is a first-rate idea. We hope it will 

 be a long roll. Suppose we, too, begin such a "roll," and 

 compare it with Mr. Root's, just for fun, you know. Let us 

 call for all who have takea the American Bee Journal for 25 

 years or over. Please mention the exact number of years, 

 when writing us, and we will print a "Roll of Honor" 

 sometime in February — next month. Just drop us a card 

 any time during this month, and let us see how near our 

 " roll " comes to being as large as Mr. Root's. 



How to Read a Bee=Paper is described by Mr. Harry 

 S. Howe, of New York, in the last Bee-Keepers' Review. 

 The plan he now wisely follows in reading is this : 



1. Re-read the articles that seem of especial value. 



2. Discuss them with any bee-keeper who gets in range. 

 .?. Test a few of the best ideas on a small scale at first. 

 4. Lastly, read all the advertising matter in each paper. 



Mr. Howe, the past season, read four of the bee-papers 

 publisht in the United States, and said that when any two 

 chanced to come together, he was like the boy who sat down 

 between two pies— it didn't make much difference where he 

 began. , 



The Spaniard is soon to- become enlightened in bee- 

 keeping, along with many otherexcellent things he is learn- 

 ing about, these days. Gleanings reports that the book. 

 " Langstroth on the Honey-Bee," has been ordered trans- 

 lated into the Spanish language, by the Minister of Agri- 

 culture, of Mexico. 



New Yorl< State's Honey Crop in 1889, according to 

 the census of that year.was4.281.9b-i pounds. Probably last 

 year it was nearly 6,000,000 pounds, which shows that New 

 York is a great State in more ways than in area and popu- 

 lation. Take it year after year, it is probably the best 

 honey State in the Union. 



Sending Comb Honey to Harket. — Since we have 

 been trying to do something in the line of wholesale honey 

 dealing, we have been getting some experience. We used 

 to have very little sympathy with the honey commission 

 firms, thinking that almost invariably the honey-producer 

 was the much-abused man. Lately we have been thinking 

 that some of them deserve being abused, especially some of 

 the comb-honey shippers. 



The trouble is, that every bee-keeper seems to think 

 that nobody ever produced so fine honey as his — no matter 

 if the combs are twisted around three ways in each section, 

 and are all travel-stained and bulged besides. 



Then, again, some do not seem to know the difference 

 between white comb honey and amber— unless the amber is 



