1907 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1315 



ly all yellow this way; and, except foi* bleach- 

 ing, I should not have a dozen cases of white 

 honey. With the aid of a bleaching-room I 

 am able to make my crop much more attrac- 

 tive than would otherwise be possible. 



And now I don't know but I have got my 

 foot in it. Can anyone tell if the use of sul- 

 phur in bleaching or for destroying the eggs 

 -and larv£e of the wax-moth will injure the 

 combs for food by absorbing sulphur dioxid? 



Hold a minute, Mr. Doolittle. I want to 

 talk with you. You say when the honey-flow 

 is on, two bees occupy as much space as three 

 or four did before. Do you mean that they 

 are as large as three or four bees at other 

 times, or that they cluster further apart, and 

 thus take up more room? 



Another thing,'you say that, if you just fill 

 the empty space above a colony of bees with 

 empty comb they will not swarm. That's 

 just what I did two years ago, but evidently 

 this yard of bees had never read Quinby, and 

 did not understand the proper thing to do; 

 for almost every hive swarmed, or tried to. 

 Some colonies did not even stop to store any 

 honey in the empty combs. 



THE QUESTION OF HONEY-LABELS. 



I have watched with no small amount of 

 interest the discussions as to labeling bottled 

 honey, and have admired the interest the ed- 

 itor of Gleanings has taken in the matter, 

 and his efforts to have the rulings of the De- 

 partment such as will not embarrass either 

 bee-keepers or those who make a specialty 

 of packing honey. With many others I have 

 hoped the use of the phrase "2>w< w^j fty" 

 might be allowable, as it seems to fill the bill 

 more perfectly than any other; and I doubt 

 very much if any court in the United States 

 would hold the user of such a label as mis- 

 leading. The Standard Dictionary says, one 

 use of the phrase "to put up" is "to pack 

 away or preserve; hoard; as, to put up fruit." 

 There is no reference as to whether the fruit 

 put up is one's own produce or produced by 

 another person. 



Mr. F. L. Dunlap says, in letter of Aug. 7, 

 "I do not see on what grounds it would be 

 possible for the bee-keepers who bottle their 

 own honey, sell it under their own label with 

 their own names attached, and then, when 

 their own supply of honey is exhausted, buy 

 from other producers, and bottle the product 

 thus obtained, to sell it under the identical 

 label that they used in the first case where 

 they were the actual producers of the hon- 

 ey. Now, it seems to me this is making a 

 mountain where none exists; and it seems, 

 further, that it would "be possible" to do 

 this very thing; but, of course, much will de- 

 pend on the label. If I label my honey as 

 '■'■'produced by J. E. Crane,''' then it would be 

 misleading to buy my neighbor's honey and 

 put it up under the same label. If I use a 

 label that could be true of both lots of hon- 

 ey, as "bottled by," or "put up by," then it 



would seem to be possible to put up both 

 lots under a common label. And it would 

 seem, further, that, if I can not use a label 

 that will be common to my own produce and 

 my neighbor's, neither can I buy of two dif- 

 ferent producers and label it the same, al- 

 though different from my label. 



But Mr. Dunlap goes on to say, "In other 

 words, the phrase 'put up by' is not suffi- 

 ciently explicit to be of much significance to 

 the ordinary consumer." This may be true. 

 If so it would naturally follow that it could 

 not be very misleading. Mr. Dunlap says, 

 further, with regard to this phrase, "It does 

 not differentiate between the actual producer 

 and the one who is not,]which differentiation 

 is necessary." Well, it looks to me from my 

 view-point as though, if this phrase did not 

 differentiate between the actual producer 

 and the one who is not, then it could with 

 equal propriety be used on both. "Which 

 diff erentation is necessary. " Why ? pray tell . 

 I have been producing honey for more than 

 forty years, and yet can see no good reason 

 why the honey I produce can not be sold in 

 common with other'honey of the same grade 

 or quality under a common label. "There 

 may be something in the law that makes this 

 ruling necessary, that I do not know about. 

 I wish it could be explained so I could un- 

 derstand it. Let us see how such a ruling 

 will work. Here is a man who does a large 

 bottling business. He is also a honey-pro- 

 ducer. He had a crop last year of 10,000 lbs. ; 

 but to supply his trade he buys 150,000 lbs. 

 moi-e of, say, fifty different producers, of the 

 same grade as his own. Now, according to 

 this ruling he can sell all of the product of 

 these fifty producers under a common label; 

 but his own he must sell under a separate 

 label. Why? 



To differentiate, I suppose, although the 

 honey was all of the same grade. 



Now, as I look at it, it would seem as 

 though altogether too much stress is laid on 

 the point of who is the producer. As a mat- 

 ter of fact, as all bee-keepers know, the qual- 

 ity of honey depends much more on the 

 flowers the bees work on than who owns the 

 bees; and it would seem to an old-fashioned 

 bee-keeper that it would be of vastly more 

 importance to label our honey so as to indi- 

 cate to some extent the flowers it was gath- 

 ered from, rather than who run it into bot- 

 tles. 



To illustrate, many persons are very fond 

 of clover honey, but care nothing for that 

 gathered from basswood or buckwheat. Some 

 years clover may yield abundantly with but 

 little basswood, while the following year the 

 order may be reversed. If the producer la- 

 bels his honey the same both years as pro- 

 duced by himself, many consumers will be 

 misled into expecting the same kind of hon- 

 ey, although he has complied perfectly with 

 the pure-food law. On the other hand, if 

 the producer uses a label common to his own 

 and other producers' honey, when his own 

 proves of inferior quality he can buy where 

 the season has been niore propitious, and 

 furnish his customers with the same grade 



