392 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



GLEANINGS JN8EE CUtTUBE. 



.A„ I. BOOT, 

 EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, 



MEDINA, OHIO. 



IIKlls: $1.00 PER YEAR, POST-PAID. 



FOR CLUBBING BATES, SEE FIRST PAGE 

 OF READING MATTER. 



MgmNA, AUGr., 1 188Q. 



He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, 

 and hangeth the earth upon nothing. -Job. xxvi. 7. 



We clip the following from the Sunday School 

 Times: 



The Department of State, the large mercantile es- 

 tablishment, or the world-famous professional man, 

 returns a prompt reply to your question of busi- 

 ness ; while it is the cheap cobbler or the cross-roads 

 lawyer who keeps you waiting for a month, and dis- 

 appoints you at last. 



SPIDER PLANT. 



A vaiuety of reports have been received in re- 

 gard to the spider plants. With some, they have 

 yielded honey a few days and then stopped suddenly 

 as with us; with others,' they seem to yield right 

 along. Some of the friends I fear do not get up 

 early enough to see the honey. Below is the best 

 report we have had, I believe. 



My bees are making honey fast from spider plant. If I live 

 until next spring', I shall put out a good lot of them. 

 Enfield, 111., July 12, 1880. G. A. Willis. 



The seeds of the Spider plant, which you sent me, all rami- up 

 nicely, and are now in bloom. That "yarn" you told in 

 Gleanings about dipping out the honeywith a spoon, when 1 

 read it. smellcd a little like the leaves of what we call out here 

 the "fish" geranium: hut when I saw great drops of honey 

 standing on the flower, and even dropping on the ground, the 

 odor changed to that of the fragrant rose geranium. 



Bryant, in.. July is, isso. ,\. call. 



We have now demonstrated that seeds sown in 

 the open ground will produce nice plants that will 

 blossom in August. Those raised indoors will blos- 

 som perhaps a month earlier. 



THE THREE-DOLLAR QUEENS. 



I have been taken to task for advertising that our 

 $3.00 queens are all taken from our own apiary, and 

 then getting them from a neighbor, as I publicly 

 admitted in last month's Growlery. 1 shall have to 

 plead guilty. With my multitude of cares, I some- 

 times forget just what I have promised you, and, in 

 this case, finding myself entirely unable to find 

 queens enough in my own apiary, up to the $3.00 

 mark, I went to neighbor H. for some. Neighbor H. 

 is a brother-in-law, has over a hundred colonies all 

 from imported stock, and, in fact, has wintered a 

 number of my imported queens for me, when I had 

 not room for them all. He is an enthusiast on nice 

 bees and queens, and has been remarkably success- 

 ful ; has no blacks or hybrids at all, and has gone to 

 the pains and expense of Italianizing nearly all of 

 his neighbor's bees which I have not done. Was my 

 offense a very grievous one? 



AN AWFULLY "BIG BLUNDER." 



Yes; and T made it too. When I wrote the ABC, 

 I made up my mind I would not copy from anybody, 

 but that I would have it, as far as possible, the re- 

 sults of actual experiments made by myself. For 

 instance, when I got ready to write bee-hunting, I 

 went out into the woods and fields and hunted bees 

 for several weeks, that I might give you correct in- 

 structions. The value of this paper was soon made 

 manifest, by the universal thanks of the people. I 

 tried to do the same with all the rest of it ; and when 



I wanted to tell you about the hatching of bees from 

 the egg, etc., 1 put a comb into a hive, and noted 

 the appearance of the first egg. The date was then 

 written on the top bar of the frame, and the date 

 as-ain when the first egg was hatched into a larva. 

 When the first cell was sealed over, I was on hand, 

 and noted the time again, and found, as I supposed, 

 that it was 6 days and 7 hours from the time the first 

 egg was laid, and so reported it. It appears, how- 

 ever, that I made a big blunder in my computa- 

 tions or "hieroglyphics," and that the 6 days and 7 

 hours was the time from the first appearance of lar- 

 vse; at least so friend Doolittle says in the July E.v- 

 change. When I wrote. I made this remark, which 

 you will find in the ABC: 



We are all of us too ignorant, by far. in this matter, and I 

 suggest that we set to work and investigate the matter thor- 

 oughly. The eggs of the common fowl have been broken, and 

 drawings made of the embryo, every day from the 1st to the 

 21st. Can we not do as much for the science of apiculture! 



The offense is a grave one, I know, but four years 

 have passed, and it would seem no one has before 

 noticed it. 1 am very much obliged indeed for the 

 criticism, and, as friend D. is a sharp, keen observer, 

 I will pay him $100.00 to go through the A B C in the 

 same way, and pick out the mistakes, and he may 

 have them published in any journal he chooses. 

 But I really do not believe it is best to take a body's 

 "head off," though he fg sadly at fault. If friend 

 Nellis and friend T\ will write a book covering the 

 ground that the ABC does, perhaps they will have 

 a little more charitv. I did not know before that I 

 had contradicted Mr. Quinby, or I should have 

 looked into the matter more. The work was mostly 

 done, at a time when I was crowded with the cares 

 of a large business, as you all know. Friend Nellis 

 says he has been sick, and it may be that somebody 

 else made those editorial remarks. Never mind, 

 friend N., although the words stung and hurt, per- 

 haps they will do me the more good; but will not 

 the people think we editors are not living in broth- 

 erly love? 



NOT PUTTING ON YOUR COUNTY. 



Tii.vt is just what I am going to "scold" about this 

 time. You know I told you before that the Express 

 and R. R. companies have recently decided to refuse 

 any package that does not have the county, as well 

 as town and state, plainly marked on it. This they 

 have decided to do, and I think wisely, that they 

 may not be blamed and asked for damages, when 

 goods go off to some other part of the state, to some 

 town of the same name. It is a lamentable fact 

 that, in almost every state in the Union, there are 

 two or more towns having the same name. I know 

 of three towns in the northern part of our state by 

 the name of Van Buren, and there are one or more 

 Van Burens in about every state in the Union. The 

 postal department have tried in vain to abolish this, 

 and as the only way was to change the name of these 

 extra towns, it has been done, but the people with a 

 sort of mulish indifference, it would seem, persist in 

 calling their town by the same old name, and do the 

 same in dating their letters. The postal guides, 

 with which each of our clerks is provided, give of 

 course only the one P. O. in each state. We have 

 nothing else to go by, and can have nothing else, un- 

 less it is the Express company's books. Wisely, 

 there are no two counties in the same state of the 

 same name, and if you only give your comity, you 

 may call your town almost any name and we can 

 find you. If you do not give your county, we are 

 obliged to go to the postal guide, and put on the 

 county given there, even though it may send your 

 goods the whole length of your state wrong. This 

 has happened a great many times this summer, but. 

 my friends, I can not see how I am in any way at 

 fault, while you persist in refusing to give your 

 county. I would once more suggest that everybody 

 who is big enough to do business have some envel- 

 opes and postals with his name, town, county, and 

 state printed on it. If he won't do this, and forgets 

 to write it, it looks to me as if he ousrht to be made 

 to stand the consequences of mistakes and blunders 

 of this kind. I made up my mind to say I would not 

 be responsible unless you gave your county, but I 

 feel so sorry for everybody who has trouble by foi- 

 getfulness, and because I have so many times of 

 late talked to you about saying what you will or 

 won't do, that I guess I will not set a bad example, 

 even if the circumstances are trying. May the kind 

 Father above help us all to get along in business 

 and not get mad or be stubborn. 



