IHE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



18? 



somehow daring the darkness? financially 

 foundered? entire crew of hopes and aspira- 

 tions panic stricken, and i)ulliug for land in 

 the small boats? editorial rudder unshipped 

 by the impact of such biu waves as seldom 

 strike a craft without smashing something? 

 It is highly creditable to the Review that its 

 June number was so nearly up to its high- 

 water mark of excellence. He would indeed 

 be a literary swine who should ask for great 

 or expensive advances just now. Really the 

 thing to be asked for is more subscribers 

 with their " mare-compelling dollars " — that 

 editorial lime and nerve, which is so exceed- 

 ingly precious, need not be spent for writing 

 articles for other papers to get the abso- 

 lutely necessary wherewith to make things 

 move ahead. 



Dipping into the articles, I notice first that 

 comrade Aspinwall has tried removing pol- 

 len for the mitigation of swarming (Review 

 148). The rationale of that is easy. Can't 

 raise young bees without pollen and the less 

 pollen the longer time it takes to get ready. 

 Quite likely that is the secret why some very 

 good honey locations are little troubled with 

 over-swarming, while some rather poor 

 honey locations suffer dreadfully — pollen 

 supply scant in the former. I offer myself 

 as an awful example of the latter. Counted 

 20 sftarms one day (from a spring count of 

 99). However, my record fails to show 

 quite as many; some mistake somewhere. 

 These are the record figures for successive 

 days beginning June 27th: 1(5, 17, 1.5. 17, 13, 

 a total of 78 in five days. What distressed 

 brother has been deeper in distress than I? 

 Liked to have never got this article written. 



for a lodge in some vast wilderness, some 

 boundless contiguity of shade without pollen! 



Our new comrade Lundy gives us some- 

 thing to chew on (Review 14'.(), where he 

 contributes his experience in letting warm 

 air through a bee cellar to warm up freezing 

 celery beyond. Presume he didn't try that 

 for the sole benefit of the bees. Interesting 

 to see that the loss was greatest near the 

 passage through which the warm air flowed. 

 In telling us of his out-door, above-ground 

 clamp he strikes an important point which, 



1 think, very often puzzles and misleads 

 veterans, and bewitches experiments. Bees 

 in winter go out to fly — so far so good — but 

 they go in wherever the crowd and the sun- 

 shine seem most attractive. Let the student 

 look a little out. The colony that came 

 through overwhelmingly strong is not a bet- 



ter strain of bees — neither is its wintering 

 method a better method — it just swindled 

 its neighbors of their population, and that's 

 all there is of it. But as to bee-trapping 

 a colony out of their own home into another 

 to build early comb, or mitigate the terrors 

 of swarming, I feel like an old fox at the 

 smell of a rat trap — or is it superstition that 

 ails me? 



The electric alarm against bee thieves 

 which you give on page UtS is doubtless a 

 good thing; yet there lies '* in perdu " a 

 cause of failure not often thought of. A 

 neighbor of ours once put up a burglar 

 alarm to protect his barn and stables — a 

 stunning affair, with a dozen or so of mar- 

 bles to run from a tube and drop on an old 

 pan. Well, the neighbors' boys found out 

 about it and kept his pan rattling so con- 

 stantly that he had to abandon it. 



Glad to see the Australian queen cells re- 

 produced in the Review. They are daisies. 



And so brother Aspinwall actually tried to 

 cross the honey bee and the bumble bee 

 half and half (Review 119). Bully for him 

 — and all the Darius Greens of experimental 

 science ! Glad he has cheek enough to tell 

 us about it, instead of sheepishly keeping 

 still over the failure. 



An ideal apiary, with not a tree near, save 

 such as one could stand on the ground and 

 take a swarm from ! Right you are, brother 

 Clarke. Yet both Mahomet and I have at 

 times tolerated the inconvenient location of 

 mountains (and tall trees) when we would 

 fain have made them get up and trot around 

 to satisfy our ideals. A close row of tall, 

 densely grown trees (I have such near my 

 apiary) seems to repel swarms. Individual 

 bees in daily flight find them too dense to 

 go through conveniently and form habits of 

 flight which take the swarms elsewhere 

 when swarming occurs. I've had 2.50 swarms 

 this year so far, and not one of them has 

 located on the above-mentioned rows of tall 

 maples. 



How much wax is there in the bottom rub- 

 bish and dust under an average colony? I 

 have often thought of saving it by some pro- 

 cess such as comrade Thompson collects for 

 us on page 124— but never had time. If 

 some brother anxious to experiment for the 

 general good will prove to ns just how much 

 wax we lose per colony each spring we will 

 know better what we really want to do aboat 

 it. 



