THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



feature that you wish to show has gained 

 what the other parts have lost. The use 

 of a small diaphragm, or stop, also adds 

 to the sharpness of the picture; in fact, 

 there are several points to be considered 

 in getting a good sharp picture, but no 

 amount of consideration will enable you 

 to do the best of work unless your cam- 

 era is of such a type that the focus can 

 be properly adjusted. 



»^»t»»#^»»H»^ 



WHY ARE SOME OF THE QUEENS POOR 



WHEN WE SIMPI.Y REMOVE THE OLD 



QUEEN AND LET THE BEES 



CHOOSE THE IvARV^ ? 



Dr. Miller has made an experiment to 

 prove or disprove that bees do not choose 

 too old larvee for the rearing of good 

 queens when we simply remove the old 

 queen and allow the bees to go on and 

 exercise their own choice of what age of 

 larvae they shall use. According to his 

 computations he proved that they did not 

 choose too old larvae. Mr. R. L. Taylor 

 reviews the doctors' calculations, in this 

 issue of the Review, and points out what 

 he considers faulty reasoning. He also 

 points out some factors that the doctor 

 apparently overlooked; viz., the strength 

 of the colony, the number of combs and 

 their arrangement; and he might have 

 added the smoothness of the combs and 

 their age. Bee are always on the look- 

 out for some irregularity upon which to 

 start a queen cell; and they greatly dis- 

 like old, hard, tough, black combs. A 

 comb a year or two old seems to suit them 

 best. While I have no idea that the doc- 

 tor attempted anything of the kind, I 

 must say that by choosing the right kind 

 and number of combs, arranging them 

 in a certain order, and guaging the 

 strength of the colony to a nicely, it 

 would be an easy matter to entirely neg- 

 ative the value of such an experiment as 

 this. As Mr. Taylor points out, it is un- 

 fortunate that these factors were not con- 

 sidered. 



Let us lay aside for the moment the 

 question of whether Dr. Miller is correct 



in the deductions that he has drawn from 

 his experiment, and turn our attention to 

 these /(zrA?. If bees are given larvae of 

 all ages from which to rear queens, some 

 of these will be almost worthless. If they 

 are given larvte all of one age, and that a 

 suitable age, all of the queens will be 

 good queens. If there is any one thing 

 about queen-rearing that I know, this is 

 one of them. I have learned it by hun- 

 dreds, yes, I think I might safely say 

 thousands, of experiments; under all con- 

 ditions and at all seasons wlien good 

 queens can be reared. Theory says that 

 the bees, in their haste to replace their 

 loss, choose too old larvae. Theory may 

 be wrong; but the fact, of some poor 

 queens being produced as the result of 

 this method of management, remains. 

 If the doctor can give a more reasonable 

 theory, I, for one, am willing to consider 

 it. 



*^u»v»»«^«^ 



PHONETIC SPELLING. 



In the first place I will say that I con- 

 sider this an inappropriate subject for 

 discussion in a bee journal, and if ihe Re- 

 view discusses it, it nuist also receive its 

 share of editorial disapproval. The Re- 

 view allowed its columns to be used in a 

 discussion of slang, grammar, rhetoric, 

 etc., and while this discussion may not 

 have been wholly devoid of good results, 

 it also brought out the fact that a pro- 

 longed discussion of such subjects is out 

 of place in a bee journal. It is, there- 

 fore, with a sort of inward protest, that I 

 have allowed anything on the subject to 

 appear in the Review; but when the other 

 journals are discussing a subject, I have 

 no disposition to sit like a bump on a 

 log, and say nothing, even if I do con- 

 .sider the subject inappropriate — so, here 

 goes. 



In our language there are about forty 

 distinct sounds, and to represent them 

 we have only twenty-six characters. It 

 requires no great mental capacity to see 

 that several sounds must be represented 

 by the same character; and that wriggle, 

 and twist, and squirm, and shorten, and 



