26 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Jan. 10, 



that no honey from any quarter of the globe surpassed in ex- 

 cellence tlio Ontario honey, while very little equaled it. Of 

 all the States and Countries exhibiting honey there, Ontario 

 came out away ahead, taking twice as many awards as tlie 

 best of ihein, and from live to ten titnes as many as the most 

 of them. While I expected much from my native Province, 

 this greatly surpassed my expectations. Ontario may be safely 

 written down as a land " flowing with milk and honey." Our 

 cheese, as well as our honey, was the best at the World's Fair. 

 Ontario has climate, as well as the flora, for producing the 

 best. The linden, the clover, the thistle, the raspberry, the 

 maple, the willow, the sumac, the buckwheat, the golden-rod, 

 and numerous otiier plants yield abundantly. 



Judging from the area within my own personal knowl- 

 edge, the output of honey in Ontario must have quadrupled 

 within the past decade, and the consumption has kept corres- 

 ponding pace, as but little is yet exported. The people gen- 

 erally are beginning to use it as an article of food ; and what 

 was in fact a luxury, and is so in reality, is fast becoming a 

 staple on our tables. This is as it should be, as pure honey is 

 not only wholesome and palatable, but more easily digested 

 than most other sweets. Its medicinal qualities also in va- 

 rious afl'ections of the throat, lungs and bowels, go far in war- 

 ranting us to follow the poet's advice to " throw physic to the 

 dogs." No argument, however, we can make use of — whether 

 physiological or economic — will be half as persuasive or potent 

 to induce the masses to eat honey, as their own palates, be- 

 cause appetite instead of reason, is yet unfortunately king 

 among men and women, with the exception of the precious 

 few. The honey is •' good to take," and superbly pleasant to 

 the palate, and that is enough for them whenever they can 

 get it ! And the price being comparatively low, and quite 

 within their reach, the consumption is bound to still further 

 increase, provided we continue in Canada to furnish a good 

 and pure article. This latter consideration is a very impor- 

 tant one in these days of food adulteration and commercial 

 frauds. Our honey must be kept pure at any cost, and any 

 and every species of adulteration (or rather attempt at adul- 

 teration) frowned down and stamped out. 



At Chicago, I was greatly astonished to find the suspicions 

 of adulteration of honey — especially extracted honey— so prev- 

 alent and wide-spread among consumers. And this suspicion 

 undoubtedly not altogether withotit substantial foundation, 

 though it must be slated in justice to the producers, to the 

 bee-keepers of the United States, that the onus of adulteration 

 rests with the dealers rather than the producers. But the 

 fact of adulteration is there, and the want of confidence is 

 there ; and tliat fact, together with superior quality, was the 

 reason why I was able to sell our Ontario exhibit of honey at 

 Chicago, after the Exposition, at prices considerably above 

 those commanded by the home product. The character and 

 quality of our honey is so good that its reputation is high both 

 at home and abroad. Let us preserve and maintain this good 

 name by taking and handling our honey in a proper manner, 

 and by watching and putting down the first sign of adultera- 

 tion. 



The proper taking and handling of honey means, in the 

 first place, allowing it to ripen in the hives before removing it, 

 or, when this is practicable, as it occasonally is, thoroughly 

 ripening it after it is removed, and in the second place, never 

 putting it on the market unripe, untidy, or unclean. 



Bee-keepers, as a rule, are intelligent, moral, neat and 

 clean, but I have seen in my lime a few slovenly ones who 

 were a disgrace to the whole fraternity. This stricture is 

 mostly applicable to those old-fashioned one-horse coveys who 

 still use the box-hive in the summer, and fire and brimstone in 

 the fall, and cut out honey, bee-bread, young bees, dead bees 

 and all, and take this apiarian mush to market in old tin-pails 

 and pans, and take what prict> they can get for it; or mash 

 the whole up, strain it, and market it in that shape. This is 

 bee-keeping willi a vengeance, and, of course, Ontario, like 

 every other country, has a few such bee-keepers. But they 

 are gradually diminishing, and must in time disappear along 

 with other anliciue excrescences. But there is another side to 

 this picture. Ontario has many first-class apiarists, and a 

 few equal to any anywhere in the world, and these are con- 

 stantly increasing in numbers. 



As to the prospects and possibilities of bee-culture in this 

 Province, the prospects are that bee-keepers will continue to 

 multiply, and the industry continue to grow, until the ground 

 in the habitable parts is pretty well occupied. This growth 

 will probably not be so much in the direction of specialism as 

 bee-keeping in conjunction with farming, gardening, fruit- 

 raising, etc. Bee-keeping, as an exclusive business, is hardly 

 safe except in the hands of a master who is favorably situated 

 as to locality for forage. The business has its ups and downs, 

 and its failures. One of tliese overtook the bee-industry the 



past season, as you no doubt know. In Ontario, as a whole, 

 there is perhaps not more than a third of an average crop, 

 while in many of the States of the Union the returns are much 

 less. From a letter now before me from a leading bee-keeper 

 in Nova Scotia, he says, "Clover yielded no honey here this 

 season." The clover seems to have been pretty badly spring 

 and winter killed the past season over a wide area on this 

 coutident, and this supplemented by the severe and wide- 

 spread drouth, left the crop of light honey very short. The 

 drouth extended so far into the fall as to also seriously affect 

 Ihe fall flow of honey, as buckwheat, which is the fall staple 

 in many parts, only yielded moderately. 



The question as to whether it would pay the bee-keeper, 

 who has land at his disposal, to sow or plant specially for 

 honey, is one much discussed and seriously considered in 

 localities where failure of the honey crop is frequent. There 

 seems to have been but little experimentation to settle the 

 matter practically, and hence the divergence of opinion on the 

 subject. My own opinion, which is founded on experience so 

 far at least as two of the honey-plants are concernea, is that 

 it pays the bee-keeper who can do so, to sow and plant three 

 honey-producers, viz.: Alsike clover, buckwheat and bass- 

 wood, or linden. I have been sowing Alsike and buckwheat 

 for many years for honey, and both have paid well. These 

 two plants hardly ever fail to yield nectar, while the white 

 clover, which, as you know, grows sponloneously, often fails. 

 Then we have the double crop from them — hay and honey 

 from one, and grain and honey from the other. While the 

 red clover often fails to produce a crop of seed, the Alsike 

 scarcely ever so fails, owing chiefly to the fact that the latter 

 seeds in the first crop, while the red seeds in the second. 

 Moreover, the Alsike seed always commands a higher price in 

 the market than the red. Of course you cannot have good 

 hay and seed both in the same season from Alsike, but some- 

 times you can have seed and a straw quality of feed simulta- 

 neously from it, in which case there is a treble crop, viz.: 

 honey, seed, feed. 



As for the linden tree, I am greatly in favor of planting 

 it for honey, and have practiced my preaching by planting 

 some 700 to SOD. They are not blooming yet, but I expect 

 to see them bloom. My advice, then, to all bee-keepers in 

 localities where the tree is not plentiful in the woodland, is 

 to plant basswood. If you do not feel like affording field land 

 for the purpose, plant along the fences and highways — but 

 plant somewhere. I planted 400 in good field land. The 

 linden is a beautiful shade-tree, is a rapid grower, and hardy ; 

 and if we cannot make axe-handles and whiflletrees out of the 

 wood, we can use it profitably in cabinet and other work. One 

 of the ways to enhance the prospects and possibilities of bee- 

 culture in Ontario, is for every bee-keeper who can, to plant 

 basswood, and he will not only be serving himself, but pos- 

 terity, as one chief cause of the severe drouths which Canada 

 with other countries is beginning to experience, is the rapid 

 disappearance of trees from our portion of the earth's surface. 



Selby, Ont. 



Bec-Kccpcrs' Enterlainnicnt — A Sfovel Sclieine. 



Preparations are being made in earnest for making the 

 convention of the Ontario Bee-Keepers' Association at Strat- 

 ford, on Jan. 22, 23 and 24, the best of ils kind yet held in 

 the Province. Besides what Messrs. Myers, Picket, Holter- 

 maun and Couse are doing, I understand Mr. Gemmill. its 

 former President, is working hard to see his pet scheme fully 

 carried out. It is the giving of a Concert or Educational En- 

 tertainment, as he calls it, and his object is to bring before 

 the public more thoroughly the benefits that accrue from the 

 use of honey as a food. He claims, if I understand him 

 rightly, that while bee literature is doing much to enlighten 

 the public on this point, that it would be well to give an En- 

 tertainment with proper inducements to get those who are not 

 honey-producers themselves to attend, so that the usefulness 

 of honey can be more thoroughly impressed on their memories. 

 The method he would advise, and intends to follow when the 

 Association meets in his own city, is about as follows : 



Instead of having a little local and instrumental music 

 during the regular sessions alone, ho believes in having a hall 

 or room for a public Concert or Educational Entertainment, 

 and one evening devoted by both bee-keepers and the public 

 to this and nothing else. That the idea is a good one I thor- 

 oughly believe, and I have learned that the citizens of Strat- 

 ford quite agree with him, the Collegiate Institute School 

 Board being so much taken with the idea from an educational 

 standpoint, that the lecture room containing a piano and 

 magic-lantern was willingly offered gratis for the occasion. 



The programme will consist of vocal and instrumental 



