1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



31 





'-36"Pages7xI0 

 00 PER YEAPj 



Butter :ui(i honev sliall he eat. that he may know to refuse 

 the evil, and choose the good.— Isaiah 7: 15. 



We are enjoying a "cold snap"' just now. 

 How are those bees? 



By the time this number is in the press we 

 (Mr. and Mrs. A. I. R. and E. R.) expect to be 

 in attendance at the North American conven- 

 tion in Washington. 



We wish to call particular attention to a 

 novel paper bee-escape, described in another 

 column, that can be made for less than a cent 

 each by anybody, and by the hundreds, with no 

 other invtriiment than a pine stick. 



One of the drawbacks to the business of iieep- 

 ing bees is the U7icert(mifj/ of the honey crop. 

 Rambler, in this issue, in his comparison of the 

 honey industry to that of the making of beet 

 sugar, brings this out in strong contrast. 



On page S88, Dec. 1. friend Golden uses the 

 expression. " in all stages down to eggs, and not 

 a queen." He meant to say, " not a queen miss- 

 ing.''' In correcting his manuscript he accident- 

 ally scratched out the "missing " word. The 

 word seems to have been " missing " all round. 



Although Bro. Hutchinson was severely 

 criticised on account of his course in the sugar- 

 honey matter, the last number of his journal 

 shows that he stands Hre well. Instead of " get- 

 ting mad."" nothing daunted he accepts the 

 criticisms in good part, and goes ahead and gets 

 up an unusually good number of that already 

 excellent paper, the Beekeeoers' Review. 



We had hoped to close the discussion on 

 sugar honey in this issue as previously an- 

 nounced: but as it is such a ''red-hot subject," 

 and as two more of our able correspondents beg 

 to be heard, the matter will have to run over 

 into our Jan. 1,5th issue, after which time we 

 must positively refuse to entertain further dis- 

 cussion, at least for the present. Perhaps some 

 of us "didn't know it was loaded."" 



That picture of the Rambler at the World's 

 Fair, and the general remarks on matrimony, 

 by the senior editor and Dr. Miller elsewhere in 

 the same issue (Dec. 1). raised a perfect storm 

 from the bachelors in California. We give, in 

 another column, a good sample of how one 

 bachelor feels. His article is not exactly a 

 storm of abuse nor a howl of protest, but a 

 bright, witty rejoinder, and a facetious disser- 

 tation on the character of the Rambl(>r. We 

 have come to the conclusion that it is risky 

 business dealing in futures, especially in the 

 line of matrimony, and. and — perhaps some of 

 our bachelor friends have felt/u.sf, so i^efore. 



FOOD AND FUEL — HOW THEY AHE WASTED. 



Some good authority on heating dwellings 

 says that, with many of the open grates and 

 fireplaces, nine-tenths of the heat goes up the 

 chimney, and only one-tenth is utilized for 

 warming the room. Another good authority 

 states that, when we swallow our food as the 

 majority of people do when they eat their 

 meals, three-fourths of it goes off as waste, and 

 only one-fourth nourishes the body. So you 

 see you will really save money by eating slowly 



and chewing your food until the machinery of 

 the digestive apparatus can get hold of and 

 utilize every bit of it. A. I. R. 



CHESHIRE AND COWAN ON DIGESTION OF NEC- 

 TAK, AND DIGESTION IN GENERAL. 



On page 10, I'rof. Cook makes a couple of 

 quotations from Thos. W. Cowan's excellent 

 work, "The Honey-bee," in which he, Cowan, 

 seems to corrolwrate Prof. Cook. Some time 

 ago when this matter of digested nectar came 

 up. Mr. Cowan sent us a letter in which he 

 differed quite materially from the position of 

 Prof. Cook on the matter of digestion. This 

 letter was forwarded at the time to the pro- 

 fessor, but was by him inadvertently mislaid, 

 and hence wa'* never published. Now. if two 

 such gi-eat lights hold different views on the 

 subject of digestion, will it not largely modify 

 the force of the quotations so far as they may 

 support Prof. Cook's position? In all of this 

 discus.sion a great deal hinges on what we 

 mean by digestion, or what detinitions we may 

 accept. Now. with regard to Cheshire, if we 

 understand the matter correctly he does not 

 support Prof. Cook's position at all. The quo- 

 tations which we herewith present from Che- 

 shire's Bees and Bee-keeping. Vol. I., were first 

 pointed out by W. F. Clarke, in the J3ce-?ccepe?'s' 

 Review; and as they answer our purpose, we 

 reproduce them here. The first one appears on 

 page 60. Vol. I., and reads as follows: 



Let us now investigate in detail tlie stcimaeh- 

 luouth and chyle-stomaeli. We have already learned 

 that the lirst of tiiese enables the bee to store lioney, 

 which, althougli carried witliin her body, does not 

 enter her dig'estive system. 



The second one, on .page 65, reads thus: 



The honey -sac of tlie bee corresponds to the crop 

 of most insects. When nectar Is g-athered by 

 the forag'ingr bees, it is simply held in store in this 

 cavity, the processes of digestion in no true sense 

 beg'inning until tlie next cliamber, the chyle- 

 stomach, Is reached. 



To make sure we were right, we verified the 

 quotations as above, and find them, as furnished 

 by Mr. Clarke, to be correct, by the volumes of 

 Cheshire we have. 



CUT NAILS VERSUS WIRE NAILS FOR BEE- 

 HIVES ; WHAT NAILS TO USE FOR DIF- 

 FERENT KINDS OF AVORK. 



We notice by the New York Tribune, that 

 " cut nails have been determined, after a gov- 

 ernment test, to be superior to wire nails in 

 holding power." This verifies our personal 

 experience exactly. It is a great mistake to 

 use wire nails to fasten sidewalk boards to the 

 runners (or stringers). If you will take notice, 

 you will see that all such boards secured by 

 wire nails will show the heads of the nails 

 sticking up in a few months, anywhere from a 

 thirty-second to an eighth of an inch above the 

 surface of the wood; but not so with cut nails. 

 They never stick up unless the wood is worn 

 or rotted away around them. 



A couple of years ago we owned, as some of 

 our readers remember, a kicking horse. He 

 took particular delight in battering the side of 

 his stall, or a sort of liarricade that we had 

 constructed and fastened with wire nails, to 

 keep the horse in the next stall from being 

 kicked; but every two or three days we had to 

 drive those wire nails in again, because the 

 continual battering would result in leaving the 

 heads of those nails sticking up from a sixteenth 

 to an eighth of an inch. Unless they were 

 " driven home " occasionally, the whole struc- 

 ture would have tumbled down. But, drive on 

 those nails as much as we would, we could not 

 get the boards to " hug "" together tight. We 

 had almost decided to use screws, when the 



