172 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Mar. 15 



Stray Straws 



By Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, III. 



The man who owns a piece of land does 

 not own the nectar on it. Prof. Cook tirst 

 made that assertion, and I defy any one to 

 contradict it successfully. 



F. Greiner, page 107, tells how to make a 

 Miller feeder so that the bees can entirely 

 empty it. Here's another way: Instead of 

 having it in two compartments, m&ke it in 

 one large compartment (as most of mine are 

 made), the bees going up each side. No 

 matter how crooked the hives stand, the 

 bees can get the last drop. 



Alin Caillas, L'Apiculteur, 97, thinks the 

 discovery that infinitesimal quantities of ra- 

 dium are found in some honeys, not in all, 

 may have much mportance medicinally Not 

 only may it affect lupus and cancer, but the 

 enfeebled the neurasthenic, and convales- 

 cents may feel its benefits If manufactured 

 radium has proven valuable, he asks wheth- 

 er it may not be more so when taken in its 

 natural state. 



Luther Hackleman thinks bees are not 

 the heartless creatures they are supposed to 

 be. He watched a worker carrying out a 

 wounded comrade. She dropped with her 

 burden near the hive: but, instead of leav- 

 ing it heartlessly to its fate, she first fed it, 

 and then flew off, as if saying, "Good by, 

 God bless you! " [If she fed it, did not such 

 feeding prolong the misery of the bee that 

 must necessarily starve to death? — Ed.] 



Adrian Getaz has my hearty thanks for 

 telling me what crazy work I did in chang- 

 ing from square kilometers to our square 

 miles. That Straw, p. 68, should say that in 

 the German Empire the average is 2 86 colo- 

 nies to the square mile, ranging from 1 43 

 to 6 56; and with apiaries three miles apart 

 the average apiary would have 25. 74 colonies, 

 and in the most densely occupied regions 

 there would be 59 colonies to the apiary. A 

 smaller hat would now fit me! 



Comb honey, in this locality, doesn't need 

 the heat and even temperature mentioned 

 for alfalfa, page 135. Sections piled near the 

 furnace stood through the winter of 1908 and 

 through this winter so far without granula- 

 tion, the temperature ranging from 40 to 80, 

 and the door open a good deal of the time. 

 [Any comb honey kept in a warm place for 

 a time will resist the effect of changing tem- 

 perature better than comb honey that has 

 not been so treated. White-clover honey 

 is much more proof against candying than 

 alfalfa.— Ed.] 



Monsieur G. Martinet, chief of the fed- 

 eral establishment of seeds at Lausanne, 

 among the r'^d-clover plants he had under 

 selection noticed two or three kinds that 

 were specially visited by honey-bees. He 

 placed them, with others, under a cage of 

 coarse cloth which contained a hive of bees, 

 excluding bumblebees and other insects. 

 One kind was especially visited by the bees, 



and showed a harvest of seed as great as 

 plants of the same kind in another cage con- 

 taining bumble-bees, and even greater. It 

 is believed that rigorous genealogical selec- 

 tion will perfect and fix the type, thus pro- 

 ducing a pure race of red-clover capable of 

 fertilization by honey-bees. This special 

 variety being a great producer, the hope is 

 to increase the yield of clover, and at the 

 same time the yield of honey. Moreover, 

 there is complaint of a general disappear- 

 ance of bumbe-bees; and with this new va- 

 riety and plenty of hive-bees, red clover will 

 be a reliable crop. 



Thanks, Messrs Taylor, Holtermann, and 

 Whitney, for contributions to the territory 

 problem, page 154 and following Now can't 

 you three or some one else put your heads 

 together and help me out? Here's my fix: I 

 would like to keep bees; can't do it without 

 pasture; am told I have neither legal nor 

 moral right to any, and would like by some 

 honorable and honest means to have both. 

 Two of you only tangle me up worse than 

 ever by flinging questions at me. Bro. Tay- 

 lor alone considers my need, tells me there- 

 is a way to obtain territory for pasture, and 

 says, "There is no other way." Good. That 

 is just the way I'll do, then. So I get "a fee 

 simple " in a tract of land two miles square, 

 which, as he says, I own clear through from 

 heaven above clear down to where I never 

 expect to make a permanent residence, and 

 settle down safe in his assurance that no one 

 can dispossess me of the right to keep bees 

 there without my consent. But soon I am 

 disillusioned, for from the apiaries on all 

 sides come streaming bees of other men that 

 promptly "dispossess" me of the nectar on 

 my land, and I have no redress. And now 

 I see the lawyer's trick. R. L. Taylor, I ask- 

 ed for the right tO' pasture, and, in reply, you 

 tell me I can have the right "to keep bees," 

 a right that I had before, and that every one 

 now has who commands a few feet of land. 

 It seems that bee pasture is free to all, just 

 like that Montana cow-pasture Bro. Taylor 

 tells about, and just like much of the cow- 

 pasture in Illinois when I first came here. 

 But that wasn't the be&t way for the general 

 good, and so Uncle Sam parceled out the 

 land to individual owners. Now, here's the 

 bee-pasture, exactly parallel to the case of 

 the cow- pasture — free to all, with no sole 

 owners. Why can't Uncle Sam do with the 

 bee-pasture just as he did with the cow-pas- 

 ture? He would thus make a little out of it 

 for himself, make keeping bees as reliable 

 as keeping cows, and do a good thing for 

 the country in general. [The control of bee- 

 territory is an old mooted question. Not- 

 withstandmg it has been ably discussed in 

 our back volumes and in late issues of this 

 journal by able men, it seems no nearer so- 

 lution than it was tArenty years. When law- 

 yers and doctors disagree, who shall decide? 

 Unless there shall be some very good rea- 

 son, we would prefer to have the discussion 

 drawn to a close for the present, especially 

 as the "last say" is so short. Requiescat in 

 pace. — Ed.] 



