150 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



in the eyes of both consumer .lud retail 

 dealers. 



I still adhere to the belief that the exist- 

 ing commission houses should be ignored 

 by producers, and that comb honey should 

 be placed directly in the hands of i-etail 

 dealers to be sold by them only on commis- 

 sion—the honey to remain the property of 

 the producers until sold to consumers." 



Mr. B. is also opposed to the scattering 

 among consumers of cooking lecipes in 

 which honey is used. If asked why, his re- 

 ply would be: "I don't propose to let my 

 patrons know, or think, that honey is so 

 cheap that they can afford to use it as a sub- 

 stitute for cane sugar. What would my 

 patrons, who now pay me from 20 to 24 cents 

 per pound, think of me if I should scatter 

 such nonsense among them ? Besides, it is 

 not true that pies and cakes can be profitably 

 made with honey, at the present prices of 

 honey and sugar. Any one who has tried it 

 must know that two pounds of sugar are 

 worth as much, for sweetening purposes, as 

 three pounds of honey. It is all wrong to 

 compare honey with sugar. You might as 

 well compare butter with lard. I never ad- 

 vise my patrons to use honey for cooking 

 purposes, but as a substitute for sauces and 

 preserves. That when thus used on bread 

 or biscuit, honey usually destroys, for the 

 time being, any desire for cake, pie, etc, ; 

 that it makes a change in food, the same as 

 oysters do, and that the cost of it is of mi- 

 nor importance when such a change is de- 

 manded. Why are people willing to pay 

 two or three times as much for maple sugar 

 as for cane sugar ? Simply because of its 

 flavor. Take away from honey its peculiar 

 flavor, and I don't l)elieve people would care 

 any more for it than for a plain sugar syrup, 

 perhaps not so much." 



WHAT SHALL, BE DONE WITH THE BEES AFTER 

 A FAILURE OF THE HONEY HARVEST ? 



The discussions that we have been having 

 upon marketing are all that could be expect- 

 ed. We feel sure they have been eagerly 

 read, and not without profit by those having 

 honey for sale, but, to many of our readers, 

 we fear they have had a tantalizing sound. 

 To those who have secured no surplus, and 

 who find the hives scantily supplied with 

 stores for winter, the last two issues of the 

 Review must have seemed like hollow 

 mockery. Such being the case, we now pro- 

 pose to get ui) a number of the Review that 



Fhall fit their case exactly. We propose to 

 answer, in the next issue, the query : " What 

 shall be done with the bees after a failure in 

 the honey harvest ? " 



If the bees have enough stores for winter, 

 we doubt if their owners will find much of 

 interest in the proposed discussion, ; but, 

 unless something is done about it, we be- 

 lieve there are thousands of colonies that 

 will perish from starvation ere we again see 

 "the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra, 

 la;" and the owners of sucJi colonies will 

 soon be called upon to decide what they are 

 going to do about it. To these men, we be- 

 lieve our next issue will be of interest. 



We have had several years of poor har- 

 vests. In this state the harvest, the present 

 year, is the poorest there has been since we 

 have kept bees. All this has a tendency to 

 keep up prices. The loss of bees the com- 

 ing winter may be considerable, as many 

 bee-keepers are inclined to neglect their 

 bees, to put off examining them, and to 

 " guess " that there is a sufficiency of stores. 

 We feel sure that the bee-keeper who suc- 

 cessfully brings an apiary of first class colo- 

 nies through the coming winter, will eventu- 

 ally find that he has done so at a profit. It 

 frequently happens that a " hard winter for 

 bees " is followed by an unusually good 

 honey season, then the man who winters his 

 bees makes his profit. 



If a bee-keeper has an apiary that is lack- 

 ing in stores, and the colonies are somewhat 

 weakened in population because breeding 

 has fallen off from a scanty gathering of 

 honey, there are two courses open to him. 

 Feeding, or uniting. Which shall he do ? 

 Perhaps some will say that there is no ques- 

 tion about it with them ; that they have not 

 the money to buy feed and can't get it. We 

 dislike to hear a man say he can''t do certain 

 things. It is astonishing to see what a man 

 can do if he tvills that he will do it. If a 

 bee-keeper says I tvill feed those bees all 

 they need for winter, they will be fed. But, 

 before deciding that we ^vill adoi)t a certain 

 course, let's first be sure that such a couse is 

 advisable. 



If a man has money to buy sugar, without 

 distressing himself or family, or can get the 

 money without incurring a debt that would 

 greatly embarrass him if the bees should 

 die in the winter, or the following year 

 should furnisli no honey, then we should ad- 

 vise the purchase of sugar and the feeding of 

 it to the bees. When there are many bees 



