AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



435 



per pound. The consumption was less 

 than a half ton 6 years ago. 



This increase has occurred in the face 

 of a decreasing population. The growers 

 find that the extensive use of fruit 

 in towns is popularizing it in the coun- 

 try, and that a rapidly increasing 

 country trade requires more extensive 

 planting. It will be just so in the 

 future in the production of honey, and 

 when farmers keep bees, and it becomes 

 general for the consumption to be from 

 100 to 1,000 pounds of honey per 

 family, there will be as great, if not a 

 greater, demand for honey, than there 

 is now. 



So, if in looking around for a diversity 

 in their farm work, they conclude to 

 take up the smoker and put on the veil, 

 we think there is no reason for alarm. 

 The farmer owns the pasture, and he 

 certainly has the first right to fill it with 

 occupants. If the agriculturist is tired 

 of the sorghum field, and an inferior 

 sweet, and concludes that he will quit 

 lugging heavy cane and skimming the 

 molasses pan, and takes up the veil and 

 smoker, he is going to sow forage crops 

 for the new kind of stock he places on 

 his premises, and this will result in a 

 better bee-pasturage, which will be a 

 big advantage to the specialist. So the 

 specialist, with superior knowledge and 

 defter skill, will have the advantage, 

 and we think that if viewed in the 

 proper light, it will be an advantage to 

 everybody in any way connected with 

 apiculture to have bees occupy the 

 same place on the farms as poultry does 



now. W. M. BOMBERGER. 



Messrs. Eugene Secor and E. Kretch- 

 mer were appointed as a committee to 

 confer with the Legislature, asking for 

 an appropriation to pay the preliminary 

 expenses of an exhibit of bees and honey 

 at the World's Fair at Chicago, in 1893. 



The following officers were elected for 

 the ensuing year : 



President, Eugene Secor, Forest City, 

 Iowa. 



Vice-President, C. D. Levering, Wiota, 

 Iowa. 



Secretary, J. W. Bittenbender, Knox- 

 ville, Iowa. 



Treasurer, Joseph Nysewander, Des 

 Moines, Iowa. 



Knoxville, Iowa. 



Preserving Empty Comlis. 



WM. CAMM. 



The Great Interest which is 

 felt in sea-coast defense gives a peculiar 

 timeliness to the illustrations of great 

 guns at Sandy Hook, contained in Frank 

 Leslie's Illustrated Neivspaper. 



Among the earliest books on bee- 

 keeping that fell into my hands was 

 Quinby's Mysteries. The author gave 

 one but little hope of saving empty 

 combs from the wax-moth by enclosing 

 them in tight receptacles. Indeed, I 

 think the writer said he had sealed up 

 comb in air-tight vessels, and yet had 

 them infested with moth. The impres- 

 sion left upon ray mind was that the 

 price of spare comb was like the price of 

 liberty, eternal vigilance. For years I 

 sulphured my spare combs occasionally, 

 and hung them where the air was so free 

 about them that, except in hot weather, 

 it could not rise in temperature to the 

 hatching point; so that any eggs laid 

 upon them remained inert. 



In 1887 I had combs remain without 

 any swarms upon them, and as I was 

 looking for a new location, and was 

 expecting to break up my apiary, I left 

 them in empty hives, merely seeing that 

 the entrances were well closed. The 

 next year was a worse one ; and I moved 

 to where I had no honey-house or any 

 conveniences for bee-keeping. More 

 bees had died during the Winter, and 

 they continued to starve out during the 

 Summer of 1888. 



The prospect was so bad on account 

 of drouth that Spring, that I paid little 

 attention to my empty combs until the 

 rains set in about the middle of May. I 

 supposed from the little I had acci- 

 dentally seen that my combs were all 

 destroyed, but when I came to overhaul- 

 ing my hives, to have them ready for 

 swarms, what was my surprise to find 

 comb in hives, two stories high, that had 

 been tenantless for two years, quite 

 intact, and with the exception of some 

 mold, ready for bees to put honey in. 

 Fully half my combs, kept in this care- 

 less, slip-shod manner were so little 

 damaged by moth and mold, that bees 

 filled them up in a day or two after they 

 were put upon them. 



Many hives were telescopes, and (for 

 some reason that I cannot satisfactorily 

 explain) most of the combs in these hives 

 were wholly destroyed by moth, or so 

 moldy that bees cut them out, but in 

 some permanent double-walled hives two 

 stories high, they were as nicely pre- 

 served as one could wish. The single- 

 walled hives did the best, though no 

 better made or cared for than the others. 

 Some of the telescope hives, that had 

 the entrance in the cap only fastened 



