THE bEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



277 



conceivable manner, and boiled them 

 under difTerenl conditions, and in no case 

 had he succeeded in i;ettin}< any growth 

 from a culture that had been boiled fifteen 

 minutes. "When doctors disagree, who 

 shall decide ?" It appears to n\e that 

 some factor in this problem has evaded 

 us. Mr. Whitcomb called attention to 

 the influence of altitude in this matter, 

 which is, of course, an important factor, 

 but not, I think, the one that is mislead- 

 ing us. 



THK PROSKCrXIOX OF ADULTERATOKS. 

 The United States Bee-Keepers' I'nion 

 has been trying its hand at the prosecu- 

 ting of adulterators of honev in Chicago. 

 It has lost its first suit through what seems 

 like the unfairness of the justice before 

 whom the suit was brought — he taking 

 advantage of a technicality. The law 

 says that the seller of adulterated pro- 

 ducts must u.se reasonable diligence in 

 striving to know if the goods that he sells 

 are pure. It seems that this man did 

 not use any diligence, or make any effort 

 to detennine whether the honey that he 

 sold was pure or not, yet, his plea of ig- 

 norance cleared him; the justice ruling 

 that the mixer was to blame instead of 

 the dealer. This suit, however, has not 

 been without its moral influence; as some 

 of the dealers and manufacturers in Chi- 

 cago are now taking pains to have their 

 mixtures properly labeled. 



tf^p^r***'*^ 



bj:k-kki;i'Kk's kxch.\nce.s. 

 In his paper at the Philadelphia con- 

 vention, C. A. Hatch of Richland Center, 

 Wisconsin, took the ground that Ex- 

 changes fail because they attempt too 

 much. He would advise nominal fees 

 and very few rules. The best Exchange 

 to which he ever belonged had no con- 

 stitution and no formally elected officers. 

 It consisted of simply half a dozen neigh- 

 bors who clubbed together to do their 

 buying and selling. J. Webster Johnson, 

 of Tempe, Arizona, took much the same 



grounds. He said that an ICxchange us- 

 ually has too man}- objects. It is better 

 to start with only two objects, viz., that 

 of buying cans and selling honey. I sup- 

 pose that where Mr. Johnson lives the 

 production of extracted honey is greater 

 than that of comb honey. In other lo- 

 calities the buying of sections might be 

 put in place of buying cans. It seems to 

 me that the word "supplies" might be 

 put in place of the word "cans" that Mr. 

 Johnson uses. 



»^»^»»»»^««» 



HoNEV ought not to be classed by us 

 as a luxury, said Mi. E. T. Abbott at the 

 Philadelphia convention; its use should 

 be urged as a necessity. Dr. Miller dif- 

 fered—thought people liked to think that 

 they were getting a luxury cheaply. As 

 a rule, I think that people buy honey be- 

 cause they want it, and that they care 

 very little whether it is called a luxury or 

 a necessity. It is possible, however, that 

 some people would buy it who do not now 

 use it, if they could be convinced of its 

 healthfulness — they might then look up- 

 on it as a necessity. To accomplish this 

 is the work of honev leaflets. 



•m^)i''m>^'^f^^ 



AMOUNT OF HONEY PRODUCED IN THE 

 UNITED STATES. 

 vSome two or three years ago E. R. 

 Root attempted to form .something of an 

 idea how much honey is jiroduced in this 

 country by asking each manufacturer of 

 sections to tell how many sections he had 

 made. Thinking that some advertising 

 scheme was on foot, in which belittling 

 comparisons would be drawn, one or two 

 firms declined to give the number of sec- 

 tions they had made. Later, when they 

 fuUv understood the matter, they furnish- 

 ed the figures. The average number of 

 .sections used each year, for the last three 

 years, is somewhere between 50,000,000 

 and 60,000,000. It is thought that a fair 

 estimate of the number of pounds of hon- 

 ey stored in them would be at least 

 5o,oofj,ooo pounds each year. Consider- 

 ing that extracted honey is produced 

 almost exclusively in the South, it is 



