Feb. 28, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



135 



usually before the white clover honey-tlow com- 

 menced — g^iving' them these queens from the 

 South. These nuclei thus given laying queens 

 so much earlier than I could rear queens my- 

 self, would do enough better more than to pay 

 first cost of the queens, be in better condition 

 for the coming winter, and save me all the labor 

 and expense of rearing extra early queens. No 

 practical honey-producer in the North needs to 

 be told what this means. 



I observed closely for years, and could de- 

 tect little or no difference between the quality 

 of these queens and those of my own rearin- 

 some of them proving among the best qucn. 

 I ever owned. Were I now keeping bees ;ni 

 where in the North, I should make a very large 

 use of early queens from the South. I should, 

 of course, get them from as able and careful 

 breeders as I could, and I don't think I should 

 have any special fears of injury to queens in 

 the mail. 



Why queens would reach me all right when 

 I was in Iowa, and don't do so in Florida, is 

 one of the unexplained mysteries of "bee-keep- 

 ing. I only know the facts, jiot the reasons 

 therefor. Perhaps some of the readers of the 

 American Bee Journal can give us more light. 

 Dade Co., Fla. 



No. 13. 



-Interesting Notes on European Travel. 



BY C. P. IiADANT. 



IHAV^E well-nigh exhausted my subject, unless I take 

 you on the ocean with me, or unless I take you to the 

 place of my birth and make you acquainted with the 

 coijipanions of my young days, and show you in detail the 

 narrow, winding streets of the old city, or the lonely ram- 

 part walls. You would wonder at the lack of life in their 

 business streets, but would admire the whiteness of the 

 houses, where coal smoke is unknown. You would wonder 

 at the numbers of roaming dogs, at the habit the people 

 have of walking in the middle of the street, owing to lack 

 of room on the sidewalk where two people can not pass each 

 other without one of them having to step off into the gutter. 

 In bee-culture you would see but little of interest, and 

 yet we could not very well do without Europe and European 

 bee-keepers. Did they not originally invent the movable 

 frames, which Langstroth only made more practical by 

 hanging them free from the inner walls all around? Did 

 they not invent the first rudiments of comb foundation ? 

 Did the}' not give us the honey-extractor ? the perforated 

 zinc ? Do they not, from time to time, give us the most in- 

 teresting scientific experiments ? The microscopic studies 

 of Count Barbo, of Milan, made into 32 lithographs some 

 25 years ago, are yet at the head in the way of plain de- 

 scriptions of the anatomical structure of the bee. But for 

 practice, for production on a large scale, with the most eco- 

 nomical results, give us America. 



A'o. /. — Bee-Shed of Mr. F. M. Wagner, of Adams Co. 

 See page i^i. 



-Bee-Shed of Mr. F. M. Wagner, of Adams Co.. III. 

 See page iji. 



But it is strange to see the very deep ignorance of the 

 masses concerning America, on the Old Continent. Some- 

 how they have a very clear idea that we are all millionaires, 

 all Vanderbilts, Goulds, or Rockefellers, but they can hardly 

 separate our millionaires from the Indians and the buffaloes. 

 To them the United .States is a country full of machinery 

 and wealth, and yet half savage. The geography of the 

 new continent is one of the things to come. They have a 

 faint idea of the location of Chicago — somewhere near New 

 York, or on the big Salt Lake. After two months of travel 

 I had to give up the idea of enlightening any one as to 

 where I lived by saying "in Illinois." So I had become ac- 

 customed lousing the term, " On the Mississippi." Once 

 while traveling thru England I met a gentleman, who, af- 

 ter I had given him that answer, said. " Oh, very well. Do 

 you live above Niagara Falls or below?" That is about 

 the extent of the knowledge that most of my French ac- 

 quaintances could show of the geography of the United 

 States. Yet they are all very well acquainted with coun- 

 tries that seem to us rather remote. Africa, Madagascar, 

 Siam, and China, seem to be very familiar. But those 

 places have not built up as America did, and what answered 

 in their geography SO years ago is'still about right at this 

 day, while the growth of America makes a new map neces- 

 sary every 10 years. 



A reader of the American Bee Journal puts this question 

 to me : "How would you like to go back to Europe to live ?" 

 Not at all. America is the country for me. I should like to 

 re-visit the places I saw — I admire the beauties of the Eu- 

 ropean cities, of their buildings, which are certainly more 

 artistic and in better taste than our plain, 

 square brick boxes, which we call business 

 houses or factories. They do not have a 20-story 

 sky-scraper by the side of an ugly 3-story 

 .stjuare brick house as we do here ; and around 

 their monuments it seems as if a part of the or- 

 naments had been lavisht on all the surround- 

 ing buildings. This is true of either London 

 or Paris. But give me America for pluck and 

 enterprise. Give me America for a neat farm- 

 house, with a good barn far enough from it to 

 keep the pigs and the manure smell out of the 

 front yard. Here we have no peasants and there 

 is an opportunity for every one. 



America, in my mind, has been made what 

 she is by her cosmopolitan condition. She 

 draws from every%vhere. All languages are 

 hers. All nations join here, and each brings 

 the knowledge and the views from his own. 

 The Dane and the Spanish, the Italian and the 

 English, the French and the German, all bring 

 their customs, their habits, and from the friction 

 of all these elements light is evolved. Amer- 

 ica is especially prone to adapt herself to all 

 sorts of things. Nothing is good enough for 

 her if something better is to be had. and altho 

 we must acknowledge that the first results of 



