1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



17 



ed up to him very much irritated about it, and 

 said, " Youngster, you let my bees alone or I 

 will double you up. When my bees need atten- 

 tion I will attend to them." She can find and 

 cage queens as quick as any one in the yard, 

 and takes great delight in working with her 

 bees. When no one else is in the apiary she is 

 often seen examining hei' bees, with smoker (a 

 " Little Wonder " Bingham) in hand; and she 

 has not yet run across a colony of bees that she 

 can not master, for she goes at them exactly 

 right. 



This very young bee-keeper will be given her 

 bees in the spring (about 10 colonies) to run her 

 own way, unaided by any one to see what she 

 will do, and her work will be reported next fall. 



Floyd. Tex. Mks. Jennie Atchley. 



HOW MANY BEE LOADS TO THE POUND OF 

 HONEY ? 



COKHESPONDENTS OF THE BRITISH BEE-JOUK- 

 NAL STIR UP AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION. 



It seems that the following paragraph— a 

 newspaper cutting — quite inadvertently found 

 its way into the columns of our esteemed co- 

 temporary, the British Bee Journal for Nov. 

 34th. As it started an interesting and valuable 

 discussion, we reproduce it here for the benefit 

 of what follows later. 



WONDERFUL WORK OF BEES. 



Bees must. In order to collect a pound of clover 

 honey, deprive 62,000 clover-blossoms of their nec- 

 tar. To do this, 63.000 (lowers must be visited by 

 an agg-regate of 3,750,000 liees. Or, in other words, 

 to collect his pound of hoiioy one bee must make 

 3,750,€0J trips from and to the hive. Tlie enormous 

 amount of work here involved precludes the idea of 

 any one bee ever living long enough to gather more 

 than a fraction of a pound of nectarine sweets. As 

 bees are known to fly for miles in quest of suitable 

 fields of opei-ation, It is- clear that a single ounce of 

 honey represents millions of miles of travel. It is 

 no wonder that these industrious little insects have 

 earned tlie reputation of bejng " busy " bees. 



In the British Bee Journal for Dec. 8 a couple 

 of correspondents, thinking that the statements 

 above were too big to be swallowed whole, take 

 occasion to analyze them. The first one, under 

 the appropriate nom de pliwie of An Indignant 

 Bee, replies in this facetious style: 



AN INDIGNANT BEE'S FORCIBLE REMONSTRANCE. 



Will you allow me. as a humble member of that 

 highly respectable but little understood body, to 

 wit, the bee community of these islands, to draw 

 your attention to some dreadluUy misleading state- 

 ments contained in a paragraph entitled "Wonder- 

 ful Work of Bees," in your issue of the 34th ult.? 



Now, sirs, I h;ive been applying my mathematicid 

 knowledge (I presume you will admit we bees know 

 something of mathematics) to an examination of 

 your figures; and, assuming that twenty-five cubic 

 inches (say at the most) make a pound of honey, 

 from your data— "3, 7.o0,000 trips for each pound" — 

 I arrive at tlie conclusion tluit yttur precious " busy " 

 bee carries each trip a load of nectar containing the 

 isi^iMin of a cubic inch, an atom imperceptible, I 

 suppose, without the use of a microscope. What 

 bee among us would have tlie impudence to venture 

 home with such beggarly pillage? All the sensible 

 "workers" in this 'ere hive were higlily indignant 

 at being thus misrepresented, and by oiu" own espe- 

 cial organ, too; indeed, one "good old worker," 

 carried away, doubtless, by passion, was heard to 

 •ejaculate " Rot 1 " 



Then we are told that a "single ounce of honey 

 represents millions of miles of travel." Now, I my- 

 self, as a rule, like to get my load as near home as 

 possible; but when I have information of a trea- 

 sure trove, I sometimes scurry aroimd a couple of 



miles or so. Well, now, say I tiy oft two miles and 

 back again, four miles in all; my total journeys (ac- 

 cording to your showing) are four times 3,750,000, or 

 15,0(X),000 miles to collect my pound of honey; in 

 other words, not much less than one million of 

 miles for an ounce ! Is there no discrepancy here, I 

 wonder ? To my mind, your statements are errone- 

 ous and incompatible— or, to put it vulgarly, they 

 are " all over the shop." I beg to enter my protest 

 against your allowing such loose statements to find 

 their way into our journal, which has hitherto won 

 golden opinions among us for its champlon.shlp of 

 our cause. —An Indignant Bee. 



[We are quite concerned as to the manner in 

 which we may safely venture to offer our humble 

 apologies for having ruffled the susceptil)ilities of 

 the "indignant one," whose wrath is poured down 

 on our head as above. If we begin with " My dear 

 aiadam," the indignant one will probably retort, 

 "I'm not your dear madam; in fact, I'm not a 

 'madam' at all; so don't address me in that way." 

 Then what could we say, for, as "science" teaches, 

 .s/ic would be right? And so, having much faith in 

 the siiaviter in modo when dealing with .Ipi'.s mcl- 

 /(■^ca, we make our best bow and observe: "Look 

 here, old girl"— the "old," l)ear in mind, always 

 means yoiuigf)— we thought it just possible that some 

 of our young fellows, who call themselves bee-keep- 

 ers, might have been led to take in the figures quot- 

 ed; but a thorough-going, hard-working, sensible 

 bee, like yourself, with mathematics at your finger- 

 ends as "pat" as some females have knitting-nee- 

 dles—never ! Give our compliments to the other 

 Indignant ones in "this 'ere hive"— not forgetting 

 the "good old worker,"— tell them all, but tell her 

 especially, it i.s all " rot," as she beautifully puts it, 

 and that we, from the first, believed it to be nothing 

 else. Tell them also (we must get the blame on to 

 some ones head, you know), that "it was all along 

 of the printer, and that we will. If they decree it so, 

 send you his name and address; and if you want to 

 keep that printer from sleeping for a month, just 

 drop him a line to say that the very first time he 

 comes within sound or sight of a bee-hive, a swarm 

 of indignant ones will drop on his bald head (if It 

 isn't bald it ought to be, and he's nwfuUu frigiitened 

 of a bee). In the meantime, believe us to be still 

 your humble admirers (for even yuu can not charge 

 us with want of admiration for a "good old worker " 

 bee), and we faithfully promise not to print any» 

 thing likely to make you get" waxy " again; in fact, 

 we are I'eady to promise whatever you like rather 

 than forfeit the "golden opinion" held regarding 

 us by bees in general, and so we still venture to 

 subscribe ourselves your rery own— Eds. B. B. J.] 



[The next correspondent replies thus:] 



THE "SCIENCE" OF BEE-KEEPING; "WONDEBFUIi 

 WORK OF BEES(?)." 



I am a novice In the )<cifnee of bee-keeping, but a 

 great many years ago I very successfully misman- 

 aged some bees. I built a bee-house, had some 

 boxes made of fearful and wonderful shapes, got 

 them stocked with bees, and then, from my proud 



gosition as an "advanced" bee-keeper, looked 

 own upon my neighbors, who were nothing better 

 than skeppists. In two years I had raised about a 

 dozen colonies, but up to this time all the entries 

 were on the debit side of the account. However, 

 the time had now arrived when the Immense profits 

 of my "system" were to begin to pour in. lean 

 not now remember what constituted my special 

 system of mismanagement, but I know it was so suc- 

 cessful that, at the end of another two years, I 

 found myself in possession of a bee-house (the worse 

 for wear), a dozen or so empty boxes (much deteri- 

 orated), and a large lump of very dirty-looking 

 beeswax. 



My skeppist neighbors appeared to see a comic 

 side to this matter; I' never could. I thought I had 

 finally hidden adieu to "our little friend, the bee," 

 but a bi'other in Ontario sent me. as a i>i'esent, 

 Root's A B G of Bee CidtKir and a year's numbers of 

 GlreDiiims. Needless to say, I enjoyed the reading 

 immensely, and, as I read, I began to feel dimly 

 that possibly I might have made some slight mis- 

 takes in mv former attempt at bee-keeping; so I 

 determined'to "try again." and last autumn ob- 

 tained two skeps. containing an old stock and a 

 very late swarm; from these I have this autumn 

 gone into winter quarters with four good colonies in 

 bar-frame hives of my own make, and during the 

 summer have taken 43 pounds of honey, about one- 



