246 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



Then, on top of this, came an almost to- 

 tal failure of the white honey crop. The 

 result is one of the shortest honey crops 

 that this country has experienced in a long 

 time. 



The National pure food lav/ has cut out 

 the glucose competition and largely re- 

 moved the suspicion of adulteration. 



Coupled with all of the foregoing- comes 

 a general advance in the price of nearly 

 all commodities, and bee-keepers certainly 

 ought not to be so far behind the times as 

 to neglect to take advantage of this op- 

 portunity; or, rather, to claim what is 

 rightfully theirs. I do not advise the ask- 

 ing of an exhorbitant price, even if it 

 could be obtained; and it can't, as honey 

 is a luxury (not a staple like bread, meat 

 and potatoes) and few people will pay a 

 fancy price for it. 



Under the circumstances, I think strict- 

 ly first-class, white, extracted honey 

 should bring ten cents at wholesale and 

 the same grade of comb honey at least 

 16 cents. I believe any man having any 

 of that grade of honey can secure those 

 prices between now and January if he 

 only holds on to his honey and takes the 

 proper course to secure customers. 1 am 

 already getting orders for my honey at 

 that price; but there is occasionally a re- 

 tail dealer who "balks'" at that price, say- 

 ing his trade will not allow him to pay 

 that figure. The prices at which honey 

 has been retailed in the past will not al- 

 low such a price at wholesale, but retail 

 prices must be advanced, and there never 

 was an opportunity like the present for 

 advancing them- "there is a reason." 

 Retail dealers must explain to their cus- 

 tomers that bees died largely as the re- 

 sult of the late cold spring, that the clover 

 harvest was almost a failure, and the re- 

 sult is a very short crop with the conse- 

 quent advance in price. Call attention to 

 the additional fact that the prices of 

 nearly everything are advancing — people 

 know this, and can comprehend why the 

 prices of honey should also be advanced. 

 A little careful explanation like this on 

 the part of the retailer will enable him to 



put the price of honey where it ought to 

 be under the circumstances. 



Getting the Review Out on Time— or 

 Not on Time. 



To get out a publication on time is com- 

 mendable. Its readers are thereby pleas- 

 ed. A daily paper must be out on time. 

 The sama may be said of a weekly. A 

 monthly has a little more leeway. If a 

 publisher's sole business is that of pub- 

 lishing, he can usually get out his journal 

 with a reasonable degree of promptness. 

 If he IS a publisher and something else as 

 well, if he is a publisher and bee-keeper, 

 as in the case of the Review, there will 

 come times, especially in the busy times 

 with bees, when it is impossible, or at 

 least, not advisable, to get out the paper 

 on time. To illustrate: Had I left the bees 

 in order to get out this issue promptly on 

 time, buckwheat honey would have been 

 mixed with the white raspberry honey. I 

 had to drop everything and help hustle 

 the white honey ofT the hives ere it was 

 darkened by the honey from the fields al- 

 ready whitening with the buckwheat- 

 After the white honey was extracted at 

 this one apiary, we wished to move some 

 bees from another yard to a buckwheat 

 location. They must be moved at once, 

 or the harvest would be over and passed. 

 Unless the bee-keeping was thus looked 

 after, there would be serious financial 

 loss. This explains why this issue is 

 late. Perhaps some will think that if I 

 am to keep on printing the Review, I 

 might better drop the bees. Possibly I 

 had; but here is another point: If I had 

 not been keeping bees, doing the work 

 with my own hands, do you suppose that 

 this number would possess its peculiar 

 vim, vigor and freshness ? It seems to 

 me that nothing would more peculiarly fit 

 a man to edit a bee journal as would the 

 actual work of keeping bees. It enables 

 him to see things from the bee-keeper's 

 standpoint. 



I believe that 1 better keep on running 

 these apiaries, giving my readers the 



