1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1249 



The middle of September has been char- 

 acterized by a peculiar hot spell of weather. 

 The hot wave has extended throughout the 

 South as well as the North. 



Secretary of Agriculture Wilson re- 

 cently said that one man owned 30,000,000 

 acres of timber lands in the Western States. 

 This largely explains the present high price 

 of lumber. 



By the peremptory order of R. M. Wash- 

 burn, Dairy and Food Commissioner of Mis- 

 souri, oleomargarine has been barred out of 

 that State. We are hopeful he will soon get 

 to work and bar out glucose for the same 

 reasons that oleo has been prohibited. 



Swiss bee-keepers' convention took place 

 this year at St. Gallen, a beautiful Swiss 

 city, around which are quite a number of 

 bee-keepers. Switzerland is now well to the 

 front, as betits the native land of Huber, the 

 prince of bee-naturalists. 



The American Orocer, following up a Los 

 Angeles report, says California honey— the 

 best in the land — will be conspicuous by its 

 absence this season. If any person doubts 

 this statement let him read the San Francis- 

 co honey-market reports or any other reli- 

 aljle reports. 



A RECENT trip of the editor down to the 

 Jamestown Exposition has shown an unusu- 

 al amount of goldenrod in bloom along the 

 route. The frequent rains have made them 

 unusually vigorous. So much goldenrod a3 

 well as other bloom this season ought to 

 give the bees a nice stimulus for winter. 

 Indeed, we already have reports of some 

 nice fall flows. 



We have received the May, June, and July 

 numbers of the new Italian bee journal, 

 V Avvenire Apicolo, published at Rome, Ita- 

 ly, by Professor Josty. It is considerably 

 larger than Gleanings, and has 16 pages of 

 reading-matter well printed on excellent pa- 

 per, and bound with red cover pages. It is 

 a very ambitious journal, and we hope it 

 will succeed. Italy already possesses two 

 bee journals; but Rome, once the mistress of 

 the world, surely ought to be able to sustain 

 a good one. w. k. m. 



In connection with the Uncompahgre irri- 

 gation project in Colorado, already referred 

 to in this journal, we note that there will be 

 six beet-sugar factories started on this proj- 

 ect alone, each one costing not less than a 



million dollars, or $6,000,000 in all. The es- 

 timated total cost of the whole project is 

 about $5,200,000, so that the beet-sugar fac- 

 tories alone exceed the entire cost of the proj- 

 ect. This will give an onlooker some con- 

 ception of the beneficent effects of Uncle 

 Sam's policy in reclaiming the arid lands, 

 for beets will form only a fraction of the 

 crops raised. There will certainly be quite 

 a number of bee-keepers on this same project, 

 and fruit-growers by hundreds. w. k. m. 



The Chilean government has just authoriz- 

 ed and subsidized the construction of a rail- 

 way the entire length of that country from 

 the Peruvian border southward to a point 

 far south of the city of Valparaiso. The to- 

 tal length of the line will be 2000 miles, run- 

 ning through a country very similar to Cali- 

 fornia, and probably as good for bees. At 

 the present time Chile is a heavy exporter of 

 honey and beeswax; but the new railway will 

 serve to increase greatly the production. A 

 recent letter to Gleanings from a Florida 

 correspondent visiting Rio Janeiro stated as 

 a fact that one steamer — the one previous to 

 his — brought 2000 barrels of honey through 

 the Straits of Magellan en route to the Eu- 

 ropean markets. Beeswax in large amounts 

 is also shipped. w. k. m. 



The national irrigation congress at Sacra- 

 mento cordially endorsed President Roose- 

 velt's policy with respect to public lands, ir- 

 rigation, and national forests. We are glad 

 to see this, as there has been some strong ad- 

 verse criticism of his policy in the West, 

 more particularly in Idaho. Whatever oth- 

 ers may think, we think bee-keepers all over 

 the country will agree with the irrigation 

 congress, as the government policy seems 

 certainly the very best from the bee-keeper's 

 standpoint. Forest reserves where no tires 

 are allowed ought to be in most sections an 

 excellent range for bees, and certainly the 

 great irrigation projects give the bee-keeper 

 a chance to keep bees under the very best 

 conditions imaginable. We are done with 

 the era of reckless spoliations of our natural 

 resources to suit a few individual promoters. 

 This is the age of home-building, w. K. M. 



the food chemists of GERMANY ON SU- 

 GAR HONEY. 



Very recently the Food Chemists of the 

 German Empire held their sixth annual con- 

 vention at Frank fort-on-the Main. Profes- 

 sor von Raumer, of the University of Er- 

 langen, gave a lecture on honey, laying par- 

 ticular emphasis on the different methods of 

 its adulteration and the special means adopt- 

 ed for detecting the same. Prof. Raumer is 

 an expert in this line of research. 



In this same connection the German and 

 Austrian Bee keepers' Association at its meet- 

 ing held in the same city was unanimously 

 of the opinion that the feeding of bees with 

 saccharine substances for the purpose of in- 

 creasing the production of honey, and not 

 from necessity, should be considered a clear 



