206 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 15. 



" That is all true in a good year— with a little 

 skilled labor thrown in. But in a bad year— 

 and bad years will come— you will have to feed 

 two dollars' worth of sugar to each and every 

 one of your colonies— amounting to $64,000. I 

 think it would be better for you to build a beet- 

 sugar factory. A good factory could be built 

 for f50,000, and you could make your sugar 

 cheaper than you can buy it. Oh, yes! then 

 there is robbing. You must be wide awake 

 when that begins, and it does begin with feed- 

 ing. Once the robbers get a snifif of the fresh 

 feed they will rob all the weak hives in the 

 apiary. When they are finished, the strong 

 hives will rise up in arms against one another. 

 It doesn't much matter which whips — you are 

 the loser, for millions of your bees are slain. 

 Oh, yes! then there are the fires that occur 

 every year in the dry season. They are just 

 the thing to cause a big loss, when they sweep 

 over miles of mountain and valley, as they do 

 sometimes. But why tell you of losses by flood 

 and fire; by skunks, bears, and other wild ani- 

 mals, when there are greater enemies within 

 the hivt s ? Yes. there is foul brood that sweeps 

 away whole apiaries in a single year — as viru- 

 lent and as infectious as the smallpox — travel- 

 ing through all the surrounding country, carry- 

 ing death and utter annihilation wherever it 

 goes. Then there are losses by death of queens, 

 by fertile workers, bee-paralysis, diarrhea, 

 mumps, measles, whooping-cough, etc. But 

 the worst of all is the toothache and earache. 

 These coming in collision will cause the bees 

 and sometimes the bee-keeper to dash them- 

 selves to death against the first post, tree, or 

 rock they come to. Now let me tell you about 

 the ravages of the moth-worm — " 



" Skylark, you may stop right there. I have 

 enough of bee-keeping." 



"Well, but, Rollins, I am not done yet; fori 

 haven't told you of the thousands of stings, and 

 how to cure them." 



"That's enough; I don't intend to get them, 

 if I can help it. Good- by.'" 



"Good-by, friend Rollins; but if you wish 

 any other information on bee-keeping, always 

 consider me ready to give it freely." 



" I don't wani it," he yelled back. 



There is one (would-be) extensive bee-keeper 

 killed, anyhow. Yes, killed as dead as a salted 

 mackerel. If all bee-keepers would give the 

 same vigorous encouragement to every appli- 

 cant for advice, honey would advance a hun- 

 dred per cent within two years, and more too. 

 But friend Eugene Secor is not of my way 

 of thinking. In Review, page 19, after giv- 

 ing us a very good article on the depressed 

 state of the market, the adulteration of our 

 product by middlemen, etc., he winds up by 

 giving us two remedies as follows: 



1. Produce only comb honey, and put it up in such 

 "taking" packages that itwiU find its way on to the 



tables of those who can afford to pay for luxuries. 

 That's what comb honey Is, and always will be. 



2. Encourage small bee-keepers (the adjective has 

 reference to numbers of colonits). 



Remedy 1 is a good one, and I believe it is the 

 only one that will ever completely stop adulter- 

 ation. If there is no extracted honey (or very 

 little — there always will be a little from broken 

 comb, etc.), the temptation is gone, and the 

 extracted that gets into the market will go up 

 as high as comb. 



Remedy 2 stuns me. How encouraging small 

 bee-keepers could tend to advance the price of 

 honey, I can not tell. Has friend Secor got it 

 too— that insane mania, common — yes, univer- 

 sal— among bee-keepers? Areweallmad? Is 

 tiiere not one sane man to call a halt in the 

 manufacture of new bee- keepers? Mr. Editor, 

 is there any proof now at hand — is there any 

 tangible probability that you can point out — 

 that we shall not all be in crowded asylums in 

 less than five years ? Here are my remedies: 



1. I will place friend Secor's first remedy, to 

 pro.iuce only comb honey. 



■.'. Stop, by every means in your power, the 

 production of disvracted honey, for that is the 

 name by which it should be known now. 



3. Discourage, by every means in you r pow- 

 er, every ivould-be bee-keeper, even if you have 

 10 floor him with a skillet. 



4. Let us get from some foreign country, or 

 breed a race of bees, with long and fiery stings 

 — a race with coiled-up, hidden stings, that they 

 can dart out 13^ inches into the amateur. This 

 will settle Mm. 



These four rules put into effective operation 

 would advance the price of comb honey to 40 

 cents a pound in less than two years, and in 

 three it would be 50 cents. 



Here is the bee we want. If it is twice the 

 size of our Italians, it must have a long and 

 fiery sting. Below is an extract from an article 

 by J. E. Crane, Review, page 17: 



In looking over an old volume of the Anurican 

 Bee Journal I came across the following under the 

 title 



A CHINESE BEE. 



"The Apicultural Section of the Entomological 

 Society at its annual meeting in Paris, August, 1874, 

 made 'many interesting statements. Mr. Durand 

 Saint Armand. a government officer in Cochin 

 Cliina, states that the country possesses a bee twice 

 the size of ours, whicli, consequently, ought to have 

 a proboscis long enough to extract the lioney from 

 red clover, which is known to be very abundant. 

 This bee is found in great numbers all along the 

 coast, in a wild state, in hollow trees, and the na- 

 tives hunt them for their wax. The extensive for- 

 ests of this country are leased for the product of 

 wax which is to be sold to the Chinese." 



Here, then, would appear to be our bee twice the 

 size ot Apis meUifica. and living, lilie them, in hol- 

 low trees. Can not our bee-keeping friends in 

 France give us more information in regard to these 

 bees ? 1 believe a large portion, if not all, of Cochin 

 China is now in the hands of France. 



If you would like to have any of yo\ir frtends 

 see a specimen copy of Oleanings, make known 

 the request on a postal, with the address or ad- 

 dresses, and we will, ivith pleasure, send. them. 



