172 
THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
prepared to slaip tlieir honey to distant cities 
for a market in order to find a ready sale for 
the products of their apiaries. It does not 
require very extensive or expensive advertis- 
ing to develop a home market. Place the 
price of your honey at such a low figure that 
everyone can afford to purchase it. Let the 
people who think they can go out of town and 
get better honey by paying higher prices go : 
and do it. Have a good quality of honey 
where all who desire can taste it, aud nine out 
of every ten persons who do so will purchase 
more or less for their families. If you have a 
poor quality of honey, be honest and tell each 
purchaser that you have honey but that the 
quality is not as good as it is some seasons. 
As to which is the best and most profitable to 
raise, comb or extracted honey, each one must 
decide that matter for himself. The demand 
in any particular locality will be the best 
criterion to go by. 
Do not tell your townspeople that your bees 
have “ made” a big lot of honey. One need 
not give himself or his business away to his 
neighbors. A man who kept bees in W enham, 
some twenty years ago, was so well pleased 
with his success one season that he told his 
neighbors all about it. The man who kept 
the bees had but one acre of land, and those 
who owned more or less in the same town 
accused the beekeeper of robbing them. They 
said his bees must have got all the honey 
away from home and in less than two years he 
was driven, bees and all, from town. ’Tis a 
dangerous thing to make known your success 
in any kind of business. 
SHIPPING HONEY TO COMMISSION MEN. 
I have always discouraged shipping honey 
to be sold on commission. The commission 
man has but two motives in dealing in honey : 
first, the profit or percentage ; second, to get 
it out of his way as soon as possible. The 
commission merchant gets his percentage 
whether the producer gets any profit or not, 
■ — that does not concern the merchant. 
I know it is almost impossible to get any 
dealer to t ike honey by the tons or carload 
and pay cash for it, yet there are some who 
will do it. In my opinion, it would be a good 
move for the large honey producers to lease a 
building in cities or large towns and ship their 
honey there and employ an honest and trusty 
person to sell it. If such places are estab- 
lished, a uniform price might be placed upon 
honey. The large honey producers could 
purchase the crop of the small beekeepers, 
and thus, to a great extent, control the mar- 
kets. This is an experiment worth testing, 
and it may work well. 
EXPERIMENTING IN THE APIARY. 
If there are any people who have a strong 
desire to conduct experiments in their voca- 
tion, it is beekeepers ; and we think nearly all 
who keep bees have experimented more or 
less : the testing of different styles and sizes 
of frames, hives, honey-hoards, division- 
boards, feeders, etc. etc. This is all right. 
Well conducted and careful experiments are 
just what will bring perfection in the end. 
Continue to experiment and thus amuse and 
instruct yourself. We have spent hundreds 
of days in experimenting and intend to keep 
at it until perfection has been reached. One 
of the practical and best objects to experiment 
for is the improvement in a race or strain of 
bees. Cross up the different races and strains, 
and if a careful record is kept of such 
experiments the results will be beneficial and 
satisfactory to yourselves, and to the beekeep- 
ing fraternity if such experiments are made 
public. Experimenting with frames and 
hives will hardly pro re as satisfactory as 
many other experiments. Experiments in 
contraction of the brood-chamber or for build- 
ing up colonies rapidly in the spring will be 
productive of good results, and so also will 
experiments in queen-rearing and fertilisation 
of queens by particular drones. Don't waste 
much time in inventing bee-feeders. The 
simplest kind of an arrangement for a feeder 
and feeding bees is the best, and all such are 
well-known to every person who reads and 
keeps himself posted. 
FOUL BROOD. 
Eoul brood is the terror of the beekeeper in 
some localities. To experiment for its cure, 
results in loss of time and money. An apiary 
in which this disease has once got a good hold 
is in the condition of a pest-house to which 
the public may have free access. All the 
apiaries for miles around will sooner or later 
be infected by foul brood unless vigorous and 
prompt measures are taken to annihilate 
everything of the combs, bees and honey, and 
in most cases, the hives should be destroyed. 
We shall advise you to destroy all as soon as 
possible after the disease has made its appicar- 
anee. First get some person who knows his 
business to examine the combs and brood. If 
he decides that your bees are infected by foul 
brood, lose no time in ridding your apiary of 
it. When you have thoroughly cleaned up 
! everything that might be a means of commu- 
nicating the disease to other colonies, then go 
a long distance and get a new lot of bees after 
thoroughly examining the stock and assuring 
1 yourself that the colonies you can purchase 
are perfectly healthy in all respects. 
ABOUT HIVES. 
If you have a hive in use that seems to be 
well adapted to your location, I would not 
change even if satisfied that some one else has 
a better one. ’Tis best to let well enough 
alone. Nevertheless, it would be hard to find 
a beekeeper who is thoroughly satisfied with 
the hive he uses, since no hive is perfect, and 
we never saw a beekeeper who was not always 
ready to test a hive when it was plain to him 
that some other hive had many good features 
that his own did not possess. Under such 
circumstances only would we advise any one 
to purchase new hives and other bee fixtures. 
