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Vol. XXI. 



NOV. 15, 1893. 



No. 22. 



Stray Straws 



FROM DR. C. C. MIUi-ER. 



Sealed coveks seem to have their fate 

 sealed. 



Make a note of that plan of uniting colo- 

 nies on different stands given by Doolittle on 

 page 806. Ifs capital. 



One- CENT postage is having some discus- 

 sion. I'd rather go back to the old three-cent 

 rate, and have free rural delivery. 



President WHiTCO>rB and Secretary Stilson, 

 of Nebraska State Association, are making a 

 push to have an experimental apiary at the 

 State University. 



The bicycle is proving quite a benefit to 

 me. It is stirring up public opinion as to the 

 necessity of having good roads. Bad roads are 

 expensive things. 



The relations between the two editors sit- 

 ting on one chair at the Chicago convention 

 may never be "strained," but I thought the 

 chair seemed a little strained. 



Your bees are ahead of mine, friend Root. 

 Mine wouldn't be so well off in winter quarters 

 yet (in the cellar), for these first days of No- 

 vember are almost like summer. 



If a. I. Root should see the springs about my 

 old home among the mountains of Western 

 Pennsylvania, some of them coming right out 

 of the side of the rocks, you couldn't get him 

 away from them. 



Look here, friend Root, what are you going 

 to be up to next? hauling last week's heat 400 

 ft. and using it over Sunday ! Next you'll be 

 sealing up condensed heat in tin cans, and ship- 

 ping it to the North Pole. 



After reading a late number of Aj)i I sup- 

 posed myself dead and buried. An editorial in 

 last Gleanings shows I was only shot at and 

 missed — shows what my imagination will do 

 when I'm in a dangerous place. 



Honey is slowly working its way into the 

 market quotations as an article of commerce. 

 Yet many papers even now quote beeswax and 

 not honey, seeming to think that beeswax is 

 still a more extensive commodity than honey. 



Friend Root, you ask if wheels all steel 

 can't be made as light as wood. Of course, they 

 can, just like the wheels of bicycles and little 

 boys' express wagons. I think sulky-wheels 

 are now made that way. Why not wheels for 

 heavy wagons? 



Those ten thousandths of an inch, on p. 

 830, remind me of a little discussion in Chicago, 



where some objection was made to going into 

 too fine measurements. Got to have them, 

 brethren, if our experiment stations are good 

 for any thing. 



Washday has much of its terrors taken 

 away if the work can be done without rubbing. 

 Nearly all the rubbing can be saved by the use 

 of kerosene. Farther on you'll learn how. 

 Some succeed, some fail. Perhaps those who 

 fail don't implicitly follow directions. 



That plan of having two nuclei in a hive is 

 good— saves heat. But why "draw out the 

 division-board and let the nuclei unite" in the 

 fall? They seem to winter just the same with 

 the division-board left in. I've tried it lots of 

 times. Then you have another queen in the 

 spring. 



Ignorance as to bees gives way very slowly. 

 Even so intelligent and reliable a paper as the 

 Rural New-Yorker seems to think there should 

 be no laws against spraying fruit-trees in 

 bloom, but that the owners should be compelled 

 "to keep his bees at home by providing bee- 

 pastures there" I 



I KNOW the answer to that tin-cup conun- 

 drum on p. 8;.'"), friend Root. The tin cup at 

 the town pump in Marengo is never stolen. 

 The bottom is punched full of small holes. The 

 cup is of good size, and you get all the drink 

 you want before it leaks out. But it isn't 

 worth stealing. 



Guenther, the well-known German authori- 

 ty, says, in Centralblatt, that queens fertilized 

 in his locality before the middle of May were 

 not prolific or long-lived, while those fertilized 

 so late that they did not lay till the next spring 

 were eminently satisfactory. He thinks the 

 usefulness of drones is not impaired by age. 



Jas. R. Bellamy, in A. B. J., says he has 

 had colonies with 8 frames of brood full from 

 April to August, yet not strong in bees, while 

 others with the same amount of brood would 

 have three times the bees and honey. He 

 thinks the difference was caused by the longer 

 lives of the bees in the second case. If he is 

 correct it would pay to breed for longevity. 



I do.n't know exactly what to make of that 

 editorial on page 828 about the large " area for 

 gaining a subsistence without resorting to api- 

 culture." Does that m<!an that a man will re- 

 sort to apiculture only when crowded out of all 

 other imnins for gaining a subsistence, or does 

 it mean that, as population increases and civ- 

 ilization advances, a great(T number will re- 

 sort to the more refined and elevating pursuit 

 of apiculture? 



Eucalyptus honey is a bone of contention 

 between Australia and the mother-country. 

 Londoners say it is valuable on account of its 



