504 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Aug. 8, 1901. 



But soon after he arrived on the shores of America, at the 

 age of 20 years, his interest in the little busy worker was 

 rekindled, and developed into a disease known otherwise as 

 " bee-fever." 



With great enthusiasm he took up the bee-business as 

 his life occupation. Not being sufficiently conversant with 

 the English language, the German bee-literature was 

 studied first. Standard works and bee-keeping periodicals 

 were read through. Bee-keeping was gone into with great 

 anticipations and enthusiasm. Finally, the study of the 

 American bee-literature was taken up, and, by reading the 

 leading bee-papers regularly, he tried to keep up with the 

 procession. 



Two hundred colonies are the most he has owned at 

 one time, keeping them in several apiaries. Two years 

 were also spent in Virginia in search of a more favorable 

 location for bees. He finally decided to stay in New York, 

 where he owns a small farm devoted principally to fruit- 

 growing. 



Mr. Greiner's anticipations to become rich through bee- 

 keeping, did not materialize, but, loving them, he sticks to 

 them, alwaj's having some experiment going, sometimes 

 being on a wild-goose chase, sometimes after realities, but 

 the pleasures he secures, he says, are many times greater 

 than the profits. 



^ The Afterthought. ^ | 



The '*Old Reliable" seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By E. E. HASTY, Sta. B Rural, Toledo, O. 



bee-keepers' exchanges. 



.Sometimes an argument is a sword which cuts both ways 

 when the one who uses it thinks it cuts only one way. Mr. C. 

 A. Hatch, in arguing for exchanges, says it is only when the 

 soldier ceases to be an individual that the army becomes a 

 power. That sounds conclusive — perhaps is conclusive — but 

 those of us who value our individuality too much to give it up 

 might quibble a little thus : The British soldier is more an 

 individual than the Russian soldier ; the American soldier is 

 more an individual than the British soldier; and the Boer sol- 

 dier is more an individual than the American. We do not 

 consider the above succession a diminuendo, but the opposite. 

 And is it not true that the individuality of the Boer is the 

 very thing that makes him terrible ? Now if the Russian and 

 German armies overdo the business of taking away individual 

 initiative, may it not happen that our bee-keepers' exchange 

 will do the same thing? 



REPUTATION AS A HUMORIST. 



I shall get a reputation as a humorist if the proof-reader 

 keeps on helping me. On page 473, in the place of ■' 800 

 years "during which the family was to abstain from honey 

 read— something else — probably simply for years. Also in- 

 stead of punctured with dead flies read punctuated with dead 

 flies. 



SWEET CLOVER. 



The Wisconsin Farmers' reply about sweet clover, on page 

 397, seems to me to be, in the main, a calm and reasonable 

 article. Being brief it did not detail the good points as we 

 might have done. I fear that rejoinders like Mr. Abbott's are 

 loo well calculated to make the great, big outside world of 

 mankind think that we are a small group of cranks — cranks 

 incapable of recognizing beans, when the ligature of the bag 

 has been duly loosened before our eyes. Many years ago I 

 introduced sweet clover into our garden. For most of the 

 time it did practically no harm — that is to say, made me little 

 if any more work than the other plants would, which, in the 

 absence of the sweet clover, would have been claiming the 

 same space. Quite recently it has made itself a sad nuisance 

 in the ground occupied by asparagus and winter onions and 

 strawberries. Too tough to hoe out, or chisel out, too strong 

 to pull, and with multiplying powers like the potato bug's. 

 This power gradually to fit itself into new situations is a 

 dangerous one. In my early enthusiasm for sweet clover I 

 sowed some by the roadside (not beyond my father's estate, 

 however) and to the best of my knowledge not one plant from 

 that sowing ever came to bloom. But after say a dozen years 

 it began of itself to travel out from the garden along the 

 road, and is now abundant for quite a distance. 



DR. MrLLER AND HIS 70 YEARS. 



And so our beloved Dr. Miller, senior member of the staff, 

 is seventy years old. The burden of declining years is but. 

 poorly got rid of by pretty speeches, but we will hope that th& 

 " labor and sorrow " of which Moses speaks so pathetically 

 may be specially lightened in his case by that Power which 

 overshadows and holds all our lives. It turned out so in 

 Moses' own case. Moses probably wrote that psalm when he 

 was a little past seventy, expecting the next ten years to b& 

 weary ones, with death somewhere near. It turned out that 

 he didn't begin to live on a grand scale until he was eighty, 

 and that he finally died at a hundred and twenty without his 

 eyes being dim. Courage and cheer, O comrade ! When on 

 earth heaven shall be open, and the servants of God ascend 

 and descend upon the Son of Man, you and I shall come from 

 one of the planets of Alpha Centauri, where we have been tell- 

 ing good news (and introducing bees ?). and our eyes shall not 

 J)e dim, and our hands shall not tremble. Pages 401 and 

 402. 



BREEDING BEES. 



It looks possible, dear " boss," that a cross between poor- 

 looking hybrids and five-banders might result in three-banded 

 bees — to the confusion of the purity rule. Let's not be too 

 sure of it, however, till some reliable observer has seen it. 

 From what we know of crossing, and its relations to sporting, 

 we would be much more likely to get a colony of all stripes 

 and colors from five bands to none — no evenness in anything. 

 Page 408. 



HOW TO " SPOT " DKONE-COSIBS. 



Red spot painted on the bar right over a patch of drone- 

 comb. Thanks, Mr. Doolittle. Those who wish to do the 

 utmost in the line of controlling drones will do well to take 

 heed. Page 403. 



^ The Home Circle. ^ \ 



Conducted bu Prof. f\. J. Cook, Claremont, Calif. 



RECREATION. 



If the various home circles could now (July 17), look in 

 upon me and mine at this delightful vacation time, no one would 

 wonder at my theme which I bring into the homes to-day. Where 

 are we ? Away up among the Sierra Madre mountains. While 

 we read daily of the terrible heat in all the Eastern cities, I 

 am writing this early morning with my heavy winter overcoat 

 about me, and half wishing it were warmer. While our 

 friends of Kansas are mourning because the rain comes not, 

 our tent is pitched close by a rapid mountain stream, whose 

 waters, fed by the snows hard by. are as cold as they are pure 

 and refreshing. As we lie in our beds, the rippling waters, 

 as they dance over the rocks, sing to us all the night long. 

 This swift-running mountain stream divides just above where 

 we have fixed our vacation sojourn, so that they hem us in, 

 and we are really on an island. The little valley in which our 

 rest-days are flying so rapidly by, that we sigh that the end 

 will come so soon, are so heavily wooded that both shade and 

 seclusion are ever awaiting those who wish to enjoy them. 

 The great mountains, which shut us in on all sides, are also 

 heavily wooded, and we rejoice constantly in the soft, green 

 landscape which holds us in its embrace. 



Northwest of us is " Old Baldy," which reaches nearly 

 11,0U0 feet skyward. Its snowy summit is only sixteen miles 

 away, and tomorrow our party of eighteen are. to scale its 

 heights. It is a cool, delightful, restful place. 



I think I have before counted our Southern California 

 blessings in these home papers. The marvelous scenery every- 

 where ; high mountains, grand as beautiful ; lovely valleys 

 verdant with alfalfa fields, and resplendent with beautifully 

 kept orchards : incomparable climate, which knows no winter, 

 no sunstroke, but which hands forth warmth and sunshine 

 every week the year through ; delicious water that comes pure 

 and sparkling right from the mountain rocks. If typhoid 

 germs, or other taint from water, ever come to blight our 

 Southern California homes, it will speak of gross neglect or 

 carelessness in the homes that are shadowed ; most luscious 

 fruits, our party right from our own orchards and gardens 

 bring for our refreshing — oranges, lemons, poraolas, plums, 

 apricots, apples, peaches, and I might have added strawber- 

 ries, blackberries, raspberries and nectarines. And all these 



