1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



537 



lowed closely the directions accompanying the 

 same. Although I produced an inferior kind 

 from spawn taken from my own manure-heap, 

 in each place 1 tried yours in parts of the same 

 beds. Has any one to whom you sold this 

 spawn, or you yourself, succeeded in raising 

 mushrooms with this spawn? If so, will you 

 tell us through Gleanings exactly how it was 

 done ? Allen Bartow. 



Milan, 0.. June 23. 



P. S. — I have kept bees for over thirty years; 

 never knew so much whit(^ clover or nectar to 

 be gathered so rapidly before. 



[Friend B.. to tell the truth we have not as 

 yet succeeded in getting any mushrooms from 

 the spawn we purchased of Johnston A: Stokes, 

 just such as we sold you; nor have we had any 

 report from any one who has succeeded. 

 Knowing Johnston iS: Stokps to be an old and 

 reliable Hrm, we purchased the spawn and sent 

 it out before we had time to test it ourselves. 

 You know it takes a much longer time to test 

 mushroom spawn than it does to test ordinary 

 garden seeds. May be others have succeeded. 

 We hope so. We have just one other com- 

 plaint like yours. If this notice does not suc- 

 ceed in bringing some report of success, we 

 shall have to go back to Johnston ct Stokes.] 



Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither 

 moth nor rust doth eoriaipt, and wliere thieves do not break 

 through nor steal. —Matt. 6: 20. 



We never saw more white clover out than 

 now. 



Did you ever! G. M. Doolittle recommends 

 box hives for farmers! Well, we do not know 

 but we would too, for the class he speaks of. 



W. L. CoGGSHALL, that extensive bee-keeper 

 of West Groton, X. Y., lost so heavily in bees 

 last winter that he ordered and has received a 

 carload of bees shipped from the South, to re- 

 plenish the loss. Other bee-keepers in his vi- 

 cinity have lost, so we are told, all the way 

 from 65 to 70 per cent of their bees. 



A PORTKAIT and biographical sketch of C. H. 

 Dibbern appears in the last American Bee 

 Journal. Mr. Dibbern has been one of our old 

 correspondents. Although not a prolific writer, 

 yet what he does have to say is valuable, and 

 has pith in it. We were surprised to see that 

 Mr. Dibbern, although 53 years old, looks so 

 young. 



We would call special attention to our 

 answers to questions from beginners, that are 

 now running consecutively in Gleanings. We 

 have taken more than ordinary pains to answer 

 the questions correctly, and we believe that 

 some of the veterans, as well as the beginners, 

 will find pleasure as well as profit in their 

 perusal. Whenever we make errors we should 

 be glad to be corrected. 



A FEW days ago Mrs. Atchley mailed us four 

 laying queens, with about a dozen attendants, 

 ail in one cage. Two of the queens came through 

 alive, and the other two were dead. We should 

 have expected that only the survival of the 

 strongest would have been left. Whether the 

 two that are alive, and seem to be getting 

 along peaceably, agreed to disagree, or whether 



these same two killed the other pair, or whether 

 the other two fought between themselves, and 

 both fell mortally wounded, leaving the other 

 pair. Is hard for us to say. We returned the 

 queens to Mrs. Atchley to-day, June 14, and 

 will doubtless hear from her later as to whether 

 the two surviving queens agreed to disagree all 

 the way back. If queens would only aqree. It 

 would be a very economical way of sending 

 four or five together; but they don't— at least, 

 we never supposed they would when sent by 

 mail in this way. 



REPORTS encouraging, AGAIN. 



In another column we reproduce an old de- 

 partment that almost, during these pastseasons 

 of failure, had become extinct — that is, Reports 

 Encouraging. In that department we give in 

 this issue (juite a fair average of hundreds of 

 reports that are coming in, saying, with scarce- 

 ly an exception. " Bees are booming;" "' Never 

 had such a honey-flow." etc.: and it begins to 

 look as though the spell of poor seasons that 

 we have had is broken, and the old-time honey- 

 flows from clover were coming once again. Is 

 it possible that we are going to have one of our 

 old-fashioned honey-flows-? We think it is 

 quite probable. In order to get at a correct 

 status of the situation we hope our subscribers 

 all over the United States will send us reports 

 thick and fast as to what bees are doing. It is 

 to the interest of every honey-producer to know 

 whether the honey-flow throughout the coun- 

 try has been heavy or light. 



cowan's GUIDE-BOOK IN SPANISH. 



On page 447 we said that we knew of no bee- 

 book printed in the Spanish language; but we 

 have just noticed in El Coimenero Espanol an 

 advertisement of Mr. Cowan's celebrated work, 

 translated into that language by Mr. Enrique 

 de Mercader-Belloch. Mr. Cowan also, in a 

 card just received, calls our attention to the 

 fact. ' What we really meant to say was that 

 we knew of no bee-book written by a native 

 Spaniard. Considering the natural advan- 

 tages of Spain over England, in its flora, we 

 certainly had a right to expect a bee-book from 

 some of their native writers, rather than de- 

 pend on a mere translation of a foreign work. 

 We shall be glad to notice any advance that 

 our friends in Spain may be making in bee- 

 literature. It seems strange that the French 

 should have such an inexhaustible amount of 

 literature on bees while their neighboring and 

 adjoining nation has practically none. The 

 advertisement in question says that this is the 

 only bee-book in Spanish, and that Mr. Cowan's 

 work is printed in French, Russian, Swedish, 

 Danish, Spanish, and German. 



QUEENS BY MAIL FROM ITALY; EGG CANDY VS. 

 GOOD CANDY. 



Besides the consignment of imported queens 

 by express, noticed elsewhere, we have been re- 

 ceiving, within the last three or four weeks, 

 consignments of half a dozen imported queens 

 by mail. The loss was so small that we have 

 about concluded that hereafter we shall have 

 all our queens come by mail from Italy; and 

 had it not been for the fact that we put in the 

 egg candy with the Good (or Scholz) candy, each 

 kind in separate holes of the cage, we b(^lieve 

 that all the queens would have come through 

 alive. As it was. many of the cages — in fact, 

 all of them— had a particularly foul and sick- 

 ening odor. While the queens themselves ap- 

 peared to be perfectly healthy, the bees were in 

 the last stages of dysentery, and, of course, 

 soiled the inside of the cage. Why the dysen- 

 tery,? We can asign no other cause than that 



