1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



197 



pine trees, as well as a few olive 

 trees in the Armenian gardens, af- 

 ford them propolis and a kind of 

 droppings known as miellat (honey- 

 dew), from the pines. Long before 

 this trench-building war, bees knew 

 how to build trenches made of the 

 resin found on leaves and branches, 

 to shelter themselves against hornets 

 or other enemies who tried to enter 

 the hives. Small lizards and some- 

 times serpents, mice, snails, enter the 

 hives, or would enter but for the pro- 

 polis with which the bees entrench 

 themselves against their enemies. 

 The death-head moth (Sphinx atro- 

 pos) swarms about the hives in au- 

 tumn. If it gets into the hive easily 

 it is often too greedy, and too swol- 

 len with the honey pilfered inside, 

 and is killed by the furious bees. 

 The skeletons are sometimes found 

 by dozens at the bottom of the hives, 

 embalmed in the resinous matter. 

 Every portable fragment has already 

 been carried out before propolizing. 

 (To be Continued.) 



Packages for Extracted Honey 



By Morley Pettit 



TYPES of packages used for ex- 

 tracted honey will depend on 

 the form in which the ultimate 

 consumer wishes to receive it. While 

 capable of some education, that indi- 

 vidual is something like a bee in that 

 she (gender used advisedly), is the 

 final judge as to whether the be- 

 havior of the beekeeper is acceptable 

 or not. He who would sell honey 

 must study the consumer, and as suc- 

 cess in beekeeping depends on a 

 knowledge of bee-behavior, so the 

 successful disposal of the crop de- 

 pends on a knowledge of the prefer- 

 ences of those to whom the sale is to 

 be made. 



Consumers may be classified as 

 fastidious small buyers, and careful 

 buyers of quantities. The former are 

 mostly city dwellers, where similar 

 foods in glass containers compete; 

 they want liquid honey in glass. The 

 quantity buyers in cities also want 

 honey in liquid; but will buy in larger 

 packages of tin. In cities where the 

 sale of well liquefied honey has not 

 been pushed, granulated honey wilt 

 retail in tin or paper, or even in 

 glass to a limited extent ; but the ma- 

 jority of people, when given a choice, 

 will buy honey which has been well 

 liquefied in preference to that which 

 is in the granulated form. The latter 

 finds its largest sale among farmers 

 wdiose wives have ample kitchen fa- 

 cilities and can liquefy it when they 

 choose without much trouble. This 

 is a satisfactory arrangement while 

 supply falls so far short of demand, 

 and because granulated honey ships 

 more safely. When the need arises I 

 am sure that the careful liquefying of 

 all honey just before it goes to the 

 consumer will greatly increase the 

 demand. 



Storage Containers for Liquefying 



The usual storage containers for 



liquefying or for sale to re-filling 



concerns is the 60-pound tin, because 



of the ease with which it is handled 

 and heated. It can only be filled once 

 with any degree of satisfaction, on 

 account of leakage, rust and disease, 

 and becomes a rather expensive pack- 

 age except for home use only. The 

 alternative is a used wooden barrel. 

 When emptied of glucose, alcohol, or 

 some other materials, these can be 

 steamed out, coopered, parafined in- 

 side and used for honey. 



My personal experience with bar- 

 rels has been confined to those which 

 had previously been filled with glu- 

 cose. They cost me one dollar each a 

 couple of years ago, although I used 

 to get them for half that price. They 

 are made of white wood, iron-hooped, 

 hold 650 pounds to 700 pounds when 

 filled, and are not so hard to handle 

 as one would think. There is a 

 "knack" in handling them, and two 

 men who have it will roll them al- 

 most anywhere with a rope and some 

 planks. 



The first lot of barrels I ever filled 

 had not been coopered since they 

 were emptied and must have been 

 damp. The sun shone through the 

 windows on them, and its heat, to- 

 gether with the drawing of the honey 

 inside, dried out the staves and set 

 them to leaking at every joint. When 

 we came to team them to the station 

 there they were. To make matters 

 worse, the dripping honey smeared 

 the hoops on the under side so they 

 would not hold when driven. 



I got through with that shipment 

 with only a few dollars' loss from 

 leakage ; but it was a lesson to cooper 

 carefully every barrel before filling. 

 The hoops should be again driven 

 just before shipping. Empties should 

 be stored in a dry place several 

 months, if possible, then coopered 

 well and waxed. On no account 

 should barrels intended for honey 

 get wet. The ends of the staves swell, 

 and because the hoops prevent ex- 

 pansion, their fibre is crushed so they 

 gape open on drying in a manner 

 which no hoop driving will close. 

 They can be caulked with rushes and 

 waxed so as to hold; but it is a lot of 

 work and the result is not so satis- 

 factory as though they had been kept 

 under cover. Liquid honey can be 

 shipped quite safely in barrels, al- 

 though, of course, the risk of leakage 

 is entirely removed by granulation. 



To liquefy honey which has granu- 

 lated in barrels, the hoops and staves 

 may be knocked off and the honey 

 cut up with a piece of steel wire hav- 

 ing a handle on each end. Some re- 

 move only the head of the barrel, dig 

 out the honey with a clean spade and 

 return the head for future use. It is 

 possible to reassemble the knocked- 

 down barrel, if one has a cooper's 

 skill and tools. One would need to 

 compare methods here in view of 

 labor, cost of barrels, and the fuel 

 value of the staves and head. 



Honey in barrels can be sold only 

 to such manufacturing and re-filling 

 concerns as have facilities for hand- 

 ling them. Necessary changes in 

 equipment used for handling 60-pound 

 tins ran easily be made, and a patri- 

 otic service would be rendered by 



such firms using barreled honey in- 

 stead of tinned. 



Tin Packages for Selling 



The standard tin packages for 

 honey are: 60-lb., 30-lb! 10-lb., S-lb. 

 and 2^-lb. 



Sixty-pound tins may be square 

 and crated singly, or boxed singly or 

 doubly, or they may be round and 

 jacketed. Crates or boxes for square 

 tins can be made or repaired at 

 home, and square packages pack 

 more closely for shipping. On the 

 other hand, they jam more readily 

 and leak in transit, and the first cost 

 is slightly higher. They are seldom 

 retailed and the Ontario experience 

 is that in years of large production 

 they are the hardest package to sell. 

 probably because Ontario beekeepers 

 use them too freely. 



Thirty-pound lard pails, bucket- 

 shaped, with a slip cover, japanned 

 with a stencilled honey label, are sold 

 to a limited extent. They are a good 

 family size, and make useful pails 

 when empty; but they can be shipped 

 only granulated and are awkward to 

 crate or box. I have seen, small gro- 

 cers in Montreal dig granulated buck- 

 wheat honey from them for retail in 

 wrapping paper. 



Ten-pound, five-pound and two and 

 a half pound pails are made both 

 slip cover and lever cover, both plain 

 and lithographed. For retailing at 

 home the slip cover is a little more 

 convenient: but it is not so satisfac- 

 tory for shipping. So long as de- 

 mand exceeds supply, plain tin lever 

 cover pails may be sent direct to the 

 consumer for use at an early date. 

 Pails lithographed with the beekeep- 

 er's brand, name and address, sell 

 better, keep free from rust indefi- 

 nitely, and continue to advertise his 

 honey so long as the pail continues 

 in use, wherever it goes. Plain tin 

 pails of honey stored in unheated 

 rooms in changeable weather fail to 

 warm up quickly with a rising tem- 

 perature, and their cool surfaces 

 condense moisture; frequent wetting 

 and drying dull and soon rust the 

 tin, and lower the selling value of 

 honey which is otherwise first-class. 

 Furthermore, custom requires that 

 all tin containers of food for retail 

 be covered with an attractive camou- 

 flage. In order to compete on the 

 shelves of the high-class grocer with 

 other package goods, honey must be 

 made quite as attractive as they. 

 Uniform crates of 60 pounds capacity 

 for all the smaller sizes are standard 

 for shipping. 



By a ruling of the Ontario Bee- 

 keepers' Association, ten-pound pails 

 and smaller sizes are filled gross 

 weight, and their size, as manufac- 

 tured in the Province, corresponds. 

 Previous to the adoption of this rul- 

 ing much confusion prevailed. Some 

 sold gross weight, using pails of the 

 right size; others sold net weight 

 and required larger pails. The manu- 

 facturers had to make two sizes of 

 pails so nearly alike that mistakes in 

 ordering and in filling orders were 

 frequent. Beekeepers selling net 

 weight lost the price of the pail, or 

 asked for its return, with indifferent 

 results, or charged extra for it and 



