Jan. 24, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



57 



free to speak of it, being- a foreigner myself, by birth. 

 The honey-extractor, the bee-smoker, the much-abused 

 foundation, are all European inventions, but take the bee- 

 journals of 25 years ago, and see who took hold and im- 

 proved and made these thing's practical and put them to 

 use. Americans, of course. The Europeans only follovped. 



JHancock Co., 111. 



^ The Afterthought. ^ | 



The "Old Reliable" seen thru New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By E. E. HASTY, Richards, Ohio. 



THINK NEITHER HONEY NOR SUGAR CAUSED IT. 



That life-insurance doctor on page 809, he was presum- 

 ably wrong in crediting sugary urine to the consumption 

 of honey. Moreover (altho a defiance of authorities, and 

 possibly a sad mistake of mine), I will go further and 

 make a pretty decided statement of my private opinion 

 that neither sugar nor honey had anything to do with it. 

 Pestilent old-grannyism has not all been eliminated from 

 medical practice yet : and I doubt whether the present war- 

 fare against sweets is any better founded than the warfare 

 of 60 years ago against drinking water. At that time al- 

 most any patient could be depended upon to die if he suc- 

 ceeded (by bribery or otherwise) in getting a cool drink of 

 water. 



A THREE-SCORE-AND-FOUR BEE-KEEPER. 



Most of us will have to take oS our hats and make a 

 bow to Dr. Besse, with his 64 years of continuous bee-keep- 

 ing. We can't even fib about it when the boys all kno%v 

 that our cradles are not yet 64 years back. And the boy 

 who earns a hive of bees this summer, and continues in the 

 business 64 years, what sort of hive and manipulation will 

 he arrive at A. D. 1965 ? Page 811. 



TONGUE MEASUREMENTS VS. HONEY-STOKAGE. 



Anent the paper of J. M. Rankin, of the Michigan Ag- 

 ricultural College, I will confess that I have felt all along 

 strong suspicions that dissecting bees and measuring their 

 tongues was a deceptive and unreliable way of getting at 

 things. I had a sort of idea that length depended much on 

 the amount of injection with blood and other fluids inci- 

 dent to life, and that cutting the member off would, of 

 course, let all fluids loose, that there would necessarily be 

 contraction, and that the amount of the contraction would 

 not be at all uniform — temperature, length of time the bee 

 had been dead, and other things, playing bewildering roles. 

 May be I'm wrong. Don't want to be out of fashion. The 

 idea is in the air, — breed from bees whose tongues meas- 

 ure high. Measurement, if it is even approximately reli- 

 able, is much more to the point than honey-storage. The 

 latter is almost hopelessly fortuitous, except to long and 

 skilled experiment, while the former gives us something to 

 go by a/ once if we want to improve our bees. Get the 

 tongues, and sooner or later the tongues will get the honey. 

 The way the publisht lengths agree with the honey-stor- 

 ing reputation of the colony seems to be reassuring. But 

 the mitlinietcrs are rather grinding to us. Few of us have 

 any mental picture within as to how short meters or how 

 long meters they may happen to be. I'll come to my own 

 rescue and yours by figuring out that the best 240-pounder 

 bees were snouted up to over 23 hundredths of an inch, 

 while the j-ellow 135 pounders scored less than 20 hun- 

 dredths — the exact figures being .236 plus and .197 minus, 

 respectively. Strikes me %ve have had but few publisht meas- 

 urements of this sort to beat .236. And .197 is not a bad 

 measure. Page 812. 



SEEING ALL OF THE 20TH CENTURY. 



"In all probability very few now living will see all of 

 the 20th century." Editorial, page 819. Tut. tut, dear 

 George W. ! That's not the way to talk it. To defeat the mi- 

 crobes and add 50 years or more to average human life, 

 is not half so wonderful a triumph — not half so wonderful 

 a medical triumph — as some the nineteenth century won for 

 us. Don't start out by telling us that the twentieth cen- 

 tury must, of course, do less.^ 



Mr. 0. 0. Poppleton, of Florida. 



We are pleased to be able to present on our front page 

 this week a most excellent picture of O. O. Poppleton, of 

 Dade Co.. Fla. He was born near Green Springs, Ohio, 

 June 8, 1843. In 1855 he removed to Chickasaw Co., Iowa, 

 where he lived until 1887, when he went to Florida, on ac- 

 count of his health. Excepting about two years at Oberlin 

 Collee^e his education was obtained in the common schools. 



In October, 1861, he enlisted as a private in the 7th Iowa 

 Infantry, and re-enlisted as a veteran in 1863. In Febru- 

 ary, 1864, he was promoted to a lieutenancy, and a few 

 months later was made regimental adjutant. While per- 

 forming his duties overwork resulted in eye-trouble, which 

 has seriously affected his health ever since. After the war 

 he went to farming in Iowa, and married a Miss Groom, 

 who died 12 years later, leaving him two daughters. 



Dec. 6, 1881, he married Mrs. Mattie Herrick, of Ft. 

 Wayne, Ind. On account of poor health and the very se- 

 vere Iowa winters, they went to Florida during the cold 

 seasons for several years, where they found the change of 

 climate, with outdoor living, greatly improved his health. 



When first married he was given a colony of bees in a 

 box-hive. It so happened that in the winter of 1869 he be- 

 came acquainted with a bee-paper that is now extinct. He 

 was very much interested in it, and very soon obtained all 

 the literature on bees he could find, thus learning that 

 there was a better way of handling bees than in box-hives. 

 He soon obtained movable-frame hives, and in a year or so 

 had quite an apiary, which, in common with many others, 

 was almost destroyed by bad wintering in northern Iowa. 

 But the use of chaff-hives removed this trouble for the fu- 

 ture. On account of such poor health he made no effort to 

 do a large business with bees, but kept from 75 to ISO col- 

 onies, spring count, and devoted himself almost exclusively 

 to the production of extracted honey. For the last ten 

 years that he lived in Iowa his annual crop averaged 110 

 pounds per colony. 



More than 25 years ago he discovered the value of chaff 

 as a winter protection for bees. He also invented the solar 

 wax-extractor about the same time. For several years he 

 was vice-president of the National Bee-Keepers' Associ- 

 ation, president of the Iowa State Association, and honor- 

 ary member of the Michigan Association. He has ever 

 been a careful observer, doing his own thinking and ad- 

 hering to plans which he had found successful. 



Over ten years ago Mr. Poppleton kept bees for two 

 years in Cuba, the Dussag apiary in his charge containing 

 from 400 to 500 colonies. During the winter of 1888-89, 398 

 colonies gave a crop of 52,000 pounds of extracted honey, or 

 about 130 pounds per colony— a larger gross yield from one 

 locality, but less average yield per colony, than has been 

 frequent with him both in Iowa and Florida. 



On removing to Florida in December, 1889, and looking 

 over the situation, he decided to practice migratory bee- 

 keeping, keeping his bees at what is now his home in Dade 

 Co., on the banksof the St. Lucie River, from October to June, 

 and at Hawk's Park from June to October. His home was 

 the best winter location, while at Hawk's Park was the 

 best-known field for black mangrove in the State. The 

 two locations were about 150 miles apart by water, and the 

 bees were moved on lighters drawn by steam-tugs. His 

 losses in all this moving were no colonies at all, about one- 

 half dozen combs broken down, and a few dead bees in 

 some of the hives. The four seasons he kept bees in this 

 way gave him average yields per colony, spring count — 

 273, 291, 82, and 300 pounds. The mangrove was frozen 

 down so badly in the winter of 1H94-9S that he has changed 

 the location "of his bees to a place 35 miles north of his 

 present home— a location with some black mangrove, but 

 much inferior to what Hawk's Park v^as before the freeze. 

 His average yield since 1894 has been some over 100 pounds 

 per colony — about the same as he used to get in northern 

 Iowa. 



Owing to the poor health which drove him to Florida, 

 Mr. Poppleton has not tried to do a large business, but has 

 kept only bees enough to give him a fair living. He also 



