THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



113 



The doctor might have made his ex- 

 periment, undertaken to show that bees 

 do not choose for the ])ro(hicLion of queens 

 larvic that are too old, if lie had only fol- 

 lowed it up, and determined whether 

 some of his queens did not turn out to be 

 laying workers, of considerable value. 

 THE WONDERS OK OUR SPELLING. 



Mrs. R. C. Aikin in discussing reform- 

 ed spelling (Gleanings, 87 ) asks the breth- 

 ren if they have ever eaten any gliough- 

 phtheightteeaux and says she should like 

 the pleasure of cooking some for them if 

 they will make "us a visit." The editor 

 says it looks as though it might be some- 

 thing tremendous and confesses that he 

 cannot pronounce it. If he had remem- 

 bered that in our wonderfid language gh 

 sometimes has the sound of p, ough o and 

 plith t he might have ventured to send a 

 grateful acceptance. 



ME.A.Sl'RING UP THE DEAD BEES. 



The editor of Gleanings, at page 179, 

 takes exception to the manner in which I 

 developed his statement concerning the 

 amount of superannuated bees which 

 might be lost in wintering 75 or 100 colo- 

 nies in the cellar. In replying he devel- 

 opes considerable ingenuity in his attempt 

 to minimize the effect of his plain state- 

 ment. First, he complains because I 

 seemed to take it that he meant the whole 

 cellar bottom might be covered to a uni- 

 form depth of from i to 2 inches, or what 

 amou!its to the same thing, because I sup- 

 posed he meant to that depth on an aver- 

 age; but it appears now that he did not 

 mean that. He intimates that the bees 

 would not be evenly distrii)uted clear out 

 to the cellar walls, and, besides, he would 

 figure out the space occupied by 25 un- 

 comfortably large (about 18 x 20 or 15 x 

 24 in. ) stands which he supposes vould 

 be free from bees. 



Then, as he dislikes to take the average 

 depths, so he dislikes to take the average 

 loss to the colony; or I should say the 

 loss to the colony, for by rejecting aver- 

 ages the loss must be uniform. The 

 greater loss, he thinks it natural to sup- 



pose, is the result of the greater number, 

 which enables him to reduce the 

 highest loss from 5 to 4)4 qts.; but if he 

 consistently persists in rejecting averages, 

 no colony can have a greater loss than 

 4 '4 qts.,antl, of course, none less than 

 that. vSuch a loss uniformly distributed 

 one would think would be sufficiently 

 disheartening. If he takes the other 

 horn of the dilemma, and agrees that 

 there is a variation, and that while some 

 lose much le5s than 4 '4 qts , others must 

 lose much more, then we still easily have 

 a loss from 2)2 to 5 qts. 



Again, if the greater loss comes from 

 the greater number, then the less num- 

 ber is responsible for the less loss, and we 

 find 2% qts. the loss to the colony, with 

 75 colonies, and bees enough to cover the 

 floor I inch, and we have a loss, by the 

 editor's method of 2^s to 4% qts. instead 

 of 2}4 to 5 qts. as I slated it. The less 

 term is increased while the greater is di- 

 minished, so a pursuance of the editor's 

 artificial method does not yield results 

 materially different from mine, and hard- 

 ly furnishes a stable foundation for the 

 editor's remark that "It shows how wide 

 of the mark one can be when he becomes 

 a professional fault-finder." 



Pursuing the matter, he deducts the 

 space occupied by the 25 stands and redu- 

 ces the capacity of the cellar floor to little 

 more than one-third what it was, and re- 

 duces the loss correspondingly. My 

 stands are very much smaller, and so bet- 

 ter covered by the hives, yet often the 

 dead bees in them is greater than it is 

 outside — how are the bees kept out of these 

 huge stands? Again, where the amount 

 of dead bees on the floor is so great there 

 will be found among the combs and on 

 the bottom boards of the hives more than 

 enough dead bees to supply the spaces 

 occupied by the stands with the average 

 quantity — why should not some account 

 be taken of these ? 



But I find, on reviewing the whole sub- 

 ject, that I have been allowing the editor 

 to draw me entirely away from his origin- 

 al proposition, which weis not that there 



