1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



603 



FAX. 



One colony with proper atlcnshun and man- 

 agement will yield more honey and net more 

 money than a dozen left to shift for themselves. 

 When a qneen is ready to gnaw frum the cell, 

 And gittin' quite ripe, sometimes it is well 

 To help her climb out: but then, I have seen 

 A waste in the haste of puUin" too green. 

 Have tested bottom-boards with and without 

 paint. I think it decidedly the best to give 

 'em a good priniin' coat of white lead — they 

 haint so apt to git warped er kracked. 



It don't pay to use unfinished sexshuns left 

 over from last year's krop. The bees will put 

 first-class honey into a fourth-rate receptickle: 

 but kustomers at large won't give a gilt-edged 

 price for the same. 



Some one sez that a bee-sting is 

 Mity good fer the rumatiz; 

 And I konfess, fer a little bit. 

 It does make a feller git up and git. 

 A few days before swarmin' time a layin' 

 queen usually slacks up a little on account of 

 room, and grows sum smaller, so that, when 

 the bees swarm, she frequently gits a bustle on 

 her equal to a vargin queen. 



Found a yaller-jackets' nest last week, a 

 small one, made of a kind of paper, and in the 

 form of a hen's egg. The outward shell en- 

 closed a disk of paper cells standin' on a sort of 

 pedunkle. The queen was yaller, and per- 

 formed 'bout like a Italyun queen. She was 

 four times bigger than the single worker that 

 was with her. 



Heard a farmer say one day. 

 That he 'lowed the bees would pay 

 On his farm — liked honey so; 

 It and buckwheat cakes 'd go 

 Awful nice; but one drawback 

 Skeered him out— bees had a knack 

 Of just makin' the fur fly 

 When he happened to pass by 

 Whare they wuz; and wouldn't tend 

 To 'em fer that " bizness end." 



Ellery Krum. 



THOSE OLD BEE-BOOKS. 



ANOTHER PEEP AT THE "GOOD OLD TIMES." 



We are now through with all of the bee-books 

 printed before 170O, and are ready for the next 

 one, printed in 1749, during the reign of George 

 II. This makes a skip of 70 yeai's after Rus- 

 den's book was published, as noticed in our 

 last. In this interval Sir Isaac Newton lived 

 and died. The great impetus given hy New- 

 ton to the manufacture of lenses put the world 

 ahead with mighty strides in the study of in- 

 sects. In 168,5 Stelluti published a description 

 of the parts of a bee which he had examined 

 through a microscope. In fact, as soon as this 

 instrument became of practical utility a com- 

 plete revolution in huinan ideas took place in 

 regard to bees and other insects. The rapidity 

 of this change is strikingly noticeable to one 

 who reads the books of those days in the order 

 of their appearance. If we take that portion of 

 time included between the writing of Butler's 

 Feminine Monarchy, KiO'.t, and the death of 

 Lord Byron, in 1824, we find a succession of 

 English names so numerous and brilliant as to 

 be absolutely astounding. In that list. we find 

 Shakespeare. Milton. Newton, Ilerschel. Ba- 

 con, and Davy. England also received a mighty 

 impulse in the arts and sciences when so many 

 people, of the very flower of a nation, were 

 driven from France by the revocation of the 



Edict of Nantes, in 1G8.5. I allude to the expul- 

 sion of the Protestants. Well, why do I men- 

 tion all this? Simply to account for the won- 

 derful advance in bee-literature at the time of 

 which I write — \1'iO. And as I write those fig- 

 ures I am reminded that Huber — the immortal 

 and glorious Frenchman — was born on the 2d 

 day of July of that year. Besides, it is well, at 

 times, to take a brief view of the history of our 

 ancestors, and see the difficulties which they 

 encotintered and obstacles which they sur- 

 mounted. The cobwebs of ages hung over 

 England in the time of Butler, in matters 

 which were purely scientific. Even the rotun- 

 dity of this globe was not then universally 

 accepted as the true theory. I believe, further- 

 more, that bee culture will be none the less 

 attractive when we know its history. 



The book in question is entitled " The True 

 Amazons; or, the Monarchy of Bees." It was 

 printed in that celebrated hot-bed of literature. 

 Paternoster Row. London, in 1749. By the way, 

 I wish some of our English readers would tell 

 us something about that street as it is to-day. 

 The author's fiame is Joseph Warder, a physi- 

 cian of Croydon. Somebody has written on the 

 flvleaf, " Very rare and curious." That is true. 

 The book commands respect as soon as one has 

 read a page. The part devoted to bees contains 

 163 pages, nearly the size of this. It is dedicated 

 to the queen, probably on account of the fact that 

 Warder must have despised such a contempti- 

 ble man 9,^5 George II. is known to have been. 

 When this royal figurehead heard of the death 

 of his father, George I., he exclaimed, " Dat is 

 one pig lie!" I suspect Warder feared the king 

 would say that of this book, especially where 

 the queen is spoken of as a female. What Eng- 

 land owes to her queens for what they have 

 done that was good, and for the evil they have 

 prevented, is ahead of my arithmetic. 



In Rusden's book, mentioned in my former 

 article, he makes out that all bees are "fertilized 

 singly by the rex apurii (king bee). Mr. War- 

 der himself speaks of the workers as being 

 true females, and of laying eggs in the spring. 

 He demonstrates by actual di-ssection that the 

 drone is a male, and that its use, aside from 

 paternity, is to keep the eggs warm by sitting 

 on them I The use of the queen, in his opinion, 

 was simply to give orders , and be a lady. He 

 makes no mention of her egg-laying propensi- 

 ties. He speaks of the loyalty of the bees 

 toward the queen, and tries to shame the Brit- 

 ish for their intense dislike of George II. by 

 telling them they should be as loyal as the bees. 

 What George ought to have been as a king is 

 not mentioned. He says that many of the ab- 

 surdities which Mr. Rusden " imposed " on the 

 world were the result of following the "silver- 

 tongued Virgil." as he calls him. That's i-ight. 

 Virgil was a perfect ignoramus in regard to 

 the habits of the bees. Our authorsaysof him: 

 "Though Virgil was a great poet, in treating 

 of bees he writes more like a poet than an ex- 

 perienced bee-master." Again: " Hon^^y putre- 

 fieth not: but by its conservative virtue doth 

 prevent other bodies from putrefaction." This 

 proi)erty of honey was well known to the 

 Egyptians, who used it. we ai'e told, in embalm- 

 ing. Again. Mr. Warder says: "Eggs are laid 

 only in the middle cells, while those all around 

 the hive are reserved for honey — nature, or, 

 rather, the God of nature, having taught the 

 bees that, if they should cast their eggs near 

 the outside of tlie 'hive or box. there would not 

 heat sufficient come to hatch them." That 

 sounds as if frames were not used. Mr. Warder 

 is opposed to the killing of drones, and says it is 

 as foolish as for a man having ten rams and a 

 thousand ewes to kill the rams in order to in- 

 crease the flock. Thiit would be a more forci- 



