462 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July 15 



tia frames to the smaller hive. Taking it 

 all in all, we are frank to admit that hard 

 stubborn facts have changed our views on 

 this subject in the last eighteen or nineteen 

 years. 



A. I. Root himself never expressed any 

 opinion on the eight-frame hive any more 

 than to say that when we first introduced it 

 twenty years ago he thought it was a mis- 

 take. He beheved father Langstroth was 

 about right when he fixed the ten-frame 

 size as the right capacity for the average 

 colony under average conditions. A. I. Root 

 himself has never changed frora that posi- 

 tion. In the early editions of the A B C he 

 recommended the ten-frame hives. We be- 

 gan our work of revising the A B C in 1887. 

 —Ed.] 



LIFTING MADE EASY. 



BEES OF AFRICA. 



A Newly Published Work, 



BY BURTON N. GATES. 



In a monograph entitled "Die Bienen 

 Afrikas nach dem Stande unserer heutigen 

 Kenntnisse,"* by Dr. H. Friese, the noted 

 European authority on bees, is presented, 

 according to a review of the work by Prof. 

 W. M. Wheeler, in Science, Vol. 31, No. 

 798, pp. 580-582 (April 15, 1910), "practical- 

 ly all that is known concerning the Ethio- 

 pian apifauna." 



"In all, 777 species of bees are enumerat- 

 ed ... . The introductory part of the 

 work will interest the student of geographi- 

 cal distribution, since it contains a number 

 of maps showing the ranges of some of the 

 more characteristic genera of bees, both in 

 Africa and other parts of the world." 



According to the data presented, it is of 

 interest to biologists to note, as Professor 

 Wheeler i)oints out, "that the Ethiopian re- 

 gion, though it may actually possess as 

 many as 1000 to 1200 species of bees, accord- 

 ing to Friese's estimate, has a much poorer 

 apifauna than Europe. This bears out the 

 author's statement that bees are not really 

 tropical insects, but have their optimum 

 area of specialization in the north temperate 

 zone." There must have been, then, dur- 

 ing geologic time, a migration into the trop- 

 ics. 



Concerning the social bees of the Ethiopi- 

 an region, their are "29 species of Trigona, 

 the honey-bee, and four of its sub-species and 

 varieties {Apis mellifica; A. unicolor-ad- 

 ansoni,unicolor-interm.i88a,unicolor-freisei, 

 and the typical unicolor). The bumble- 

 bees (Bomhus) are absent from the Ethio- 

 pian region, though they are known to oc- 

 cur in tropical South America. 



College Park, Md. 



*ZooloKlsche und anthropologlsche Ergebnlsse 

 elner Forschungsreise Im westllchen und centralen 

 Slid Afrlka ausgefiihrt In den Jahren 190:^1905. rait 

 Unterstiitzung der kgl. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. zu 

 BerUn von Dr. Leonhard Schultze. 2 vols.; 475 pp.; 2 

 pi., 19 charts, and one text figure. Jena: Gustav 

 Fischer. 1909. 



How the Hard Work in Connection with Man- 

 aging an Apiary May be Simplified. 



BY HARRY LATUROP. 



Miss Candler tells us, in Bee-keepers' He- 

 view for January, that "it seems a surprise 

 to some people to find a woman who is a 

 bee-keeper," and that it surprises her that 

 they should take that view of it. In the 

 course of her excellent article she discloses 

 the reason why people look at bee-keeinng 

 as a work not exactly suited to women. She 

 says she has worked too hard at times, and 

 that lifting is the hardest part of bee-work 

 for women. 



I don't believe that being a woman nec- 

 essarily involves physical weakness; but it 

 is a fact that the average woman is not as 

 strong as the average man. There is, how- 

 ever, such a thing as making up for the lack 

 of physical strength by intelligence, by tak- 

 ing advantage of every situation that calls 

 for physical exertion, and by using it as an 

 aid to greater efficiency. 



It was my fortune (or misfortune) to be 

 built on the rather light order. My usual 

 weight, in good health and ordinary dress, 

 is 135 pounds. All my life since boyhoo 1 I 

 have had something to do with lines of work 

 that required lifting and handling heavy 

 things. I began, when 18 years of age, to 

 run a one-horse dray in a village. In this 

 service I delivered trunks to upper rooms, 

 helped carry cook-stoves upstairs and down, 

 and delivered barrels of syrup and heavy 

 packing-cases to the stores. Being light in 

 weight I soon learned how to take hold of 

 things so as to handle them easily and avoid 

 straining myself. 



After the dray business I have had years 

 of handling freight and baggage at different 

 railroad stations. In all my draying experi- 

 ence I was never hurt except once, and that 

 was when a friend helped me to unload a 

 cask of syrup in front of a store. In some 

 manner one of my toes got under the edge 

 of the barrel and was crushed. If my friend 

 had allowed me to handle the article alone 

 I would not have received the injury. 



I always wanted to take a course of physi- 

 cal training in a gymnasium; but having 

 no opportunity to do so I conceived the idea 

 of using my daily work as a sort of gymna- 

 sium training. The plan worked well. 

 There is an immense ]30wer in mind — the 

 will — the mental attitude we assume toward 

 a task. Go into the gymnasium and see. 

 how the skillful athlete takes hold of his 

 work. The lifting of heavy weights or oth- 

 er difficult feats of strength is a joy to him, 

 because he goes at it in the right way. So 

 when I have to lift or move a heavy object 

 I consider that I am in my gymnasium, and 

 that the doing of the task in the right way 

 is to train and benefit me. 



There are certain rules to be observed. 

 Whenever you take hold to lift, always lift 

 on a full breath. Fill your lungs as full of 



