185)6 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



141 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION. 



POINTS TH.VT NEED MODIFYING. 



Bn Dr. C. C. Milk): 



You ask, Mr. F^ditor. on what points the pro- 

 posed constitution of the North American Union 

 lacks ray approbation. Well. I'll tell you, 

 premising that I'm not at all sure I would not 

 have made worse mistakes if I had been on the 

 committee. "But in the multitude of counsel- 

 ors there is safety." 



Point 1. In Art. I., notice of annual meetings 

 to be mailed to members besides being publish- 

 in bee-journals. Is there any need of mailing 

 notices, seeing we've never felt the need of it 

 heretofore? If there should be 1000 members It 

 would make an annual tax of perhaps ipl.">, and 

 to no good purpose. 



Point 2. Art. III., sections 3 and 4. lead to 

 the supposition that the ballots are to be sent 

 to one of the ofticers, who may be a candidate 

 for re-election. That has been the case always 

 with the Bee keepers' Union, and I don't know 

 that any harm has come from it; but it isn't 

 certain that it would work with every one else 

 as it has done with Mr. Newman. The thing 

 is wrong on general principles. A ballot is con- 

 sidered better than a viva-voce vote, because a 

 man is more free to express his preference than 

 when he does it openly. But if the vote is to 

 be sent to one of the candidates, that freedom 

 is taken away. 



Point 3. Section 7 of Art. III. may be all 

 right; but just what does it mean? According 

 to section 1 the president shall preside at the 

 annual meeting; but according to section 7. 

 some other man. According to section 7, a re- 

 corder is to do what section 1 says two other 

 men are to do. Will there be no conflict be- 

 tween these three officers as to their duties? 

 Then is a stenographer to be secured addition- 

 ally? 



Point 4. Art. IV. provides for one or more 

 annual a^sessments. The old Union never had 

 any thing of that kind, never s-eemed to need it, 

 and the needs seetn less now than formerly. 

 Many men will willingly pay a stipulated 

 amount annually who would stay out rather 

 than be in daiiger of paying an uncertain 

 amount at any uiiceitain lime. 



Points. The new constitution lacks a very 

 inipurtdnt .safeguard that was thrown about 

 the old Unluu. .V man who wantid the Union 

 to back him if he gut into trouble had lo be a 

 member of the Union before he gut into trouble. 

 According to the propuscd cun-tiiution there is 

 no such safeguard, and 1 may stay uul of the 

 concern indeimiiely till 1 gel inio trouble, then 

 ■come in a,nd have all thu Oenetils that the oldest 

 member can have. 



When you straighten up the.se live points I'll 

 see if there are any others. But I want you to 



understand that I'm for amalgamation first, 

 last, and all the time. 



SHALL TEMPERATURE IN THE CELLAR BE 

 UNIFORM ? 



After I got that sub head written I stopped 

 and thought awhile, then I took up the volume 

 of Gleanings for 189.5, neatly bound in — shoe- 

 strings—sat down in my easy-chair by the 

 Howe ventilator, read what R. McKnight says 

 on page 940, and what P. H. Elwood says on 

 page 8.52, and said to myself, " Sometimes I 

 think— but then, again, I don't know — and the 

 more I think about it the more I don't know 

 what to think." The fact is, here's one of the 

 things we know little about; and one of my 

 Straws, Dec. 15, contains questions I'd like to 

 have answered. McKnight seems to have 

 gravitated toward a belief that a uniform tem- 

 perature is a bad thing. I'm loth to accept 

 that, and yet for some time my practice has 

 been to run up the temperature of the cel- 

 lar at intervals ten or twenty degrees higher 

 than its usual condition. 



If I could find out exactly what temperature 

 is best for bees to be held at throughout the 

 entire winter— understand I mean the temper- 

 ature is not to vary a degree throughout the 

 whole winter— and along with that if I could 

 have the air of the cellar renewed once every 

 *24 hours, I shouldn't worry a particle about 

 doing any thing to wake up the bees for a spell 

 of stirring about. But I run up the tempera- 

 ture of the cellar by spells for two reasons: One 

 is, that the temperature may have been too 

 low, and I want to make sure that every bee 

 in the cellar finds it warm enough to turn over 

 in bed if she wants to. The other reason is, 

 that I want to make sure of pure air in the 

 cellar. If the outer air is below freezing I 

 can't very well air the cellar by opening doors 

 and windows, but I can have it thoroughly 

 aired by making the air so warm and light that 

 the outer air, wliich is colder and heavier, will 

 crowd in by reason of its specific gravity. 



1 have au idea that bees are all right— of 

 course, 1 don't say I know it for sure — if the 

 cellar is kept straight along all winter at the 

 same temperature, and that at intervals they 

 stir about enough to make some little change 

 in their domestic arrangements, then settle 

 down again. I suspect that, in a cellar con- 

 taining KX) colonies or more, some one of the 

 colonies can be found on the move at any given 

 point uf time, and that lliey don't need any 

 firing-up of ilie cellar lo stir them up, no two 

 colonies perhaps having their " moving " periods 

 at the same time. 



Now, I suppose we might tind out whether 

 this view is correct. If I had two weeks, with 

 nothing else to do, I'll tell you what I think I'd 

 do. I'd get some one to change off with me, 

 and I'd start in for a siege of watching some 

 eight to twelve colonies. I'd note when each 



