612 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 1 



honey which suits theni. I have paid 60 cts. 

 for Narbonne honey and 50 cts. for heather, 

 neither of them superior in any respect to 

 much of our honey. With the well-to-do 

 New Yorkers I do not think the price cuts 

 much of a figure. The principal reason why 

 they do not buy honey is chieHy because no 

 one asks them to. As a rule, also, the grocers 

 are wholly ignorant on the subject of honey, 

 and hence are poor honey-sellers. A man 

 who fully understands honey, and who gives 

 a "square deal," can sell at European prices 

 right in New York to-day, and it seems to be 

 true of other cities, though I don't know. 

 What the New Yorkers need is a honey show 

 or fair, to show them. — W. K. M.] 



Children often get hold of part of the 

 truth, and then go wrong with it. Sometimes 

 editors do the same. Ye editor speaks, page 

 558, of my scheme "of two men carrying out 

 one colony with a rope." Bless your heart, 

 Mr. Editor, I have no such scheme for two 

 men. It's a good scheme for two women, or 

 for one woman and part of a man. When 

 my assistant looked at those two men carry- 

 ing bees on p. 557 she said, " Two men have 

 used precisely the same device here for many 

 years, carrying bees both in and out." But 

 I don't always have two men. Last fall Philo 

 carried them in alone; and this spring he 

 carried them out alone; as said on p. 536, it 

 took him live hours to carry out the 166, 

 placing them at an average distance of seven 

 or eight rods from the cellar. ( But he could 

 not have done it with merely hand-holes or 

 short cleats. ) On the whole, I suspect it cost 

 me less than to have had two men. With 

 the barrow arrangement the time of two men 

 is taken in setting the hives on the barrow 

 and then lifting the hives off the barrow. 

 Philo just picked up each hive, went along 

 with it, then put it down, and that's all there 

 was to it. I doubt if two men with a barrow 

 could have done it in half the time. [But 

 two men can carry more than two hives at 

 once — enough more, surely, to make up for 

 the loss of time in handling hives twice — Ed.] 



Your logic, Mr. Editor, p. 539, is a little 

 off color. "A literary paper could wield a 

 mighty influence because of the magnitude 

 of its iield;" but the chosen field of Glean- 

 ings is comparatively small; so, because it 

 has no great influence it is under no obliga- 

 tion to use upon the right side what influence 

 it has. Even if that sort of logic would pass 

 muster, there's another side to it. Take a 

 literary magazine with five times as many 

 readers as Gleanings, and you are likely to 

 say it has five times as much influence. 

 Wrong. The readers of Gleanings ai*e a 

 special class, with a special interest in Glean- 

 ings, and specially affected by any thing it 

 does. If each reader is influenced five times 

 as much by a better spelling in Gleanings, as 

 he would be by the same spelling in a literary 

 magazine, will not the influence of Glean- 

 ings be just as much as that of a literary 

 magazine with five times as many readers? 

 Please convey to W. S. Wingate my thanks 

 for his encouraging figures. [You are as- 



suming that Gleanings would have five 

 times the influence with its clientage as the 

 other papers with their larger class of read- 

 ers. To adopt your own language, "Your 

 logic is a little off color." No, we don't 

 think Gleanings has any more influence 

 j)er capita reader than a journal like the 

 Ladies' Home Journal. — Ed.] 



"Besides," said I, p. 566, "it costs more 

 for two shallow stories than for a single deep 

 one," and you reply, Mr. Editor, "Ihey are 

 listed at the same price in the supply cata- 

 logs." Do you mean by that that I was mis- 

 taken, and that two shallow stories cost the 

 same as a single deep one? [We mean ex- 

 actly what we said in our footnote in the 

 former issue; viz.,thepriceof twoshallowhive- 

 bodies supplied with shallow extracting- 

 frames and division-board is just one-half, 

 as a rule, the price of a single body with 

 frames and division-board of the same capa- 

 city. In catalogs having a scale of prices 

 from one to twenty-five or fifty, we find that 

 there is a little variation, and in not every 

 case does the price figure exactly one-half. 

 It does, however, figure just one-half, as a 

 rule, as, for instance, quoting from one cata- 

 log, the price of ten shallow bodies with 

 shallow extracting-frames and division-board 

 is $4 in the eight-frame size, while ten bodies 

 of equal capacity with frames and division- 

 board, eight-frame size, are $8. In a jobbing 

 way the cost of the latter body with frames 

 and division- board is exactly double the cost 

 of the two shallow bodies in the ten-frame 

 size, while in the eight-frame size the cost of 

 the single body is one cent more than the 

 two shallow. It would not, of course, be 

 fair to compare prices on two shallow hives 

 that had more comb surface than a single L. 

 hive. — Ed.] 



It will be very important this year to stim- 

 ulate colonies by feeding moderately and 

 giving them good warm homes. The winter- 

 cases that may have been on should be left 

 on until settled warm weather comes on. 



As showing how things are working in the 

 honey market, a bee-keeper who called on 

 us the other day stated he had an order to 

 be delivered next fall for 200 cases of comb 

 honey at 16 cts. per section (4X5), or about 

 18 cts. per lb. 



The British Bee-keepers' Association has 

 elected the Master of the Wax Chandlers' 

 Company as its president. The "Master" at 

 present is Mr. H. C. Todd; but he is elected 

 for only two years. In future the "Master," 



