,v:V lOO THIRD ANNUAL REPORT ■. 



cago, I thought I would try a new thing for this neighbor- 

 hood. I got up a box of regular length and height of a Hoffman 

 A. . frame, so that I could set in it two frames, with brood and 



bees, having perhaps two or three thousand bees; glass on 

 both sides, and a handle going over the whole thing. I filled 

 :.. that with bees, and I spent days and days on the streets of 



Chicago. Now my experience was most interesting. In my 

 12 years here I had made acquaintances with policemen and 

 all sorts of people. I said to the policeman at the corner of 

 fcv; " Adams and La Salle streets, "I will block your street in about 



^fc'; , . five minutes," and he didn't believe it. I had in my arms my 



r,|^:- . little nucleus hive which held probably lo pounds, and held it 



i'v. . up to the policeman so that he could look at the bees. Every- 



body that came there stopped — there wasn't a soul went by. 

 He began to look uneasy inside of three minutes, and said, 

 "I guess you are right." I moved on down the street. I took 

 the bees into the private office of the Chief of Police, and said, 

 , "I want to talk on bees in the center of the city." Some of 



the policemen and the inspectors knew me ; and he said, "That 

 is all right. He does not want to sell anything. He simply 

 wants to exhibit the bees." I went up on the Court House 

 : . steps — the top step on the Clark street side, and I soon had 



two or three hundred people there. I don't know where they 

 got their leisure, but nobody seemed to go out of the crowd • 

 while I was there. I had the top of the hive screwed on with 

 screw-eyes. I could screw them in and out with my fingers, 

 : and I took out four, one at each corner. Then I took the 

 bees right out, and they thought it was something tremendous; 

 V- and for three or four years after I made my exhibit people 



: would say, "You are the fellow that had those live bees. 



Why, this fellow handles bees like flies. They go all over 

 him," and so on. I did not take the trouble to explain that 

 they were drawing it mildly, but I dropped that question, and 

 went on to teach whatever came up. I did other things. I 

 would take a frame of honey and a frame of empty comb. 

 After we have extracted our honey how beautiful the comb 

 *■ is, if it is a bright yellow and empty; just the mere wax, 



and you hold it up to the light, and you can see the cells on 

 the ODposite side breaking joints, as I explained to them. 

 Three cells are opposite one ceir on this side, is opposite a 

 third of three cells on the other side. And they would say, 

 "Is that so?" If any of our producers all over our great land 

 will take pains to exhibit but the commonest things, to get 

 acquainted by advertising in the journals and by exhibi- 

 tion of these common things, they can sell enough more honey 

 at home, so that the honey question and the price of honey 

 will be settled. 



Mr. Meredith — I was going to say, in regard to the adver- 

 tising of honey, that a park adjoins my place, and I went there 

 with an e^^hibit of honey, for the purpose of exhibiting and 

 selling it. I put it up in bottles from half a pound to the 

 Mason fruit-jar, but my sales were slow. A candy-maker, 

 had no trouble in disposing of his wares in packages for five 

 . cents. I bought ten -zYt. ounce bottles, got labels, filled them 

 up and sold them for five cents apiece to anybody, more es- 



