144 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 



to the greater part of our readers, but we can not 

 publish long- letters that are likely to interest only a 

 few, comparatively. Anj' one can have friend K.'s 

 communication who cares to pay the postage on it. 



UNTESTED QUEENS IN FEBRUARY AND MARCH. 



Who is there among our friends in the South that 

 arc able to ship untested queens now? Lot him 

 speak out, and we will give him a free ad. 



Don't forget the bee-keepers' meeting at the 

 E.xposition in New Orleans on Tuesday, Wednes- 

 day, and Thursday, Feb. 24, 25, and 26. I shall be on j 

 hand the second day, nothing preventing. 



THE EXPOSITIO.V AND SUNDAY. 



I AM informed that every exhibitor has tlie privi- 

 lege of covering up his goods so that they can not be 

 seen on the Sabbath-day, if he chooses. If this is 

 thecase, the matter is in the hands of the exhibitors 

 to a considerable extent, and we may hope that 

 Sunday exhibitions will be found so unprofitable 

 that they will be discontinued. 



A BOOK ON CARP CULTURE. 



I HAVE completed arrangements with Milton P. 

 Pierce, Secretary of the American Carp-Cultural 

 Association, for writing mc a book on carp culture. 

 Mr. Pierce is jjcrhaps the best authority we have 

 on the subject in the United States, and perhaps 

 the best in the world. The book will bo fully illus- 

 trated, and the price will not exceed 50 cts., and 

 probably not over 35. Further particulars will be 

 given later. 



OUK REVERSIBLE FRA.MES. 



The machine for making our reversible frames is 

 not yet completed, and we can not very well send 

 out good samples till the machine is finished; that 

 is, there are so many orders for them that they 

 would cost a great deal more than we get for them, 

 made by hand, and they wouldn't be very nice eith- 

 er. The engraver is at work on a cut, but we are 

 obliged to go to press without it. Devices for re- 

 versing are coming in by the score; but a great 

 many of them are only repetitions of what have 

 been figured and described in our back numbers. 

 Before you waste much time in inventing, dear 

 friends, it will be well to post yourselves in regard to 

 what has been done already. 



OLD BONES. 



Yes, what do you do with them around your 

 house? We have just commenced saving all of 

 ours, and in the adjoining town there is a mill 

 where they grind them up for poultry, and lor fer- 

 tilizing purposes. Wc just got a bag full, and I 

 thought it looked a little coarse for plants; but I 

 mixed in some with a box of nice soil, sprinkled on 

 some radish seed, then a little more bone meal, and 

 over all some dried moss rubbed up tine, and sifted 

 on the seeds with a sieve. The whole was placed in 

 the greenhouse, in the sun. In just four days the 

 seeds were pushing the moss out of the way, to get 

 up, and the bone meal had, in that short time, become 

 so decomposed that it looked like u mass of mold, 

 and the radish roots were pushing all in through it. 

 Our bone-mill pays $16.(i0 per ton for any sort of old 

 bones. Chickens will eat them when ground up, as 

 greedily as if they were coarsely broken grains of 

 corn. Save the bones. 



MOORE S crate FOR HOLDING SECTIONS. 



As (juite a good many seem to prefer this arrange- 

 ment fo)- i)laeing section.s over the hive, we have ar- 



ranged machinery for making them at a low price. 

 The only important thing in their construction is to 

 have the partition-boards spaced so the 41^ x 4^4 sec- 

 tions will exactly fit. To do this we have a saw- 

 arbor arranged with thick saws, to cut gi-ooves for 

 the partitions to slide into. As the whole 5 grooves 

 are cut at one operation, the crate is made very 

 cheaply. The price of a single crate, nailed up, will 

 be 2J cts.; 10 crates, S1.80; 10), Sie.fO, to which must 

 be added the price of crating. Price of Moore's 

 crate in the flat, singly, 15 cts.; 10, §1.35; 100, f 12.50. 

 These prices include the necessarj' strips of tin, and 

 nails for nailing them up. An engraving of one of 

 these crates will be given in our next issue. One 

 especial advantage these have over the crate wo 

 have been using is, that it holds each section exact- 

 ly square, and when filled with honey they come out 

 all ready to go into the shipping-case, square and 

 snug. These crates will go inside of a Simplicity hive. 



REVERSIBLE FRAMES. 



Friend Howes, whose reversible device has been 

 twice illustrated in GLE.4.NINGS, claims that friend 

 Heddon's arrangement is an infringement on his 

 invention. Now, perhaps I am not the one to de- 

 cide this matter, but this is certain: Although 1 

 examined Howes' device carefully when it was 

 first submitted, and have studied a great deal on 

 the subject, it never occurred to me to unite the 

 two supporting arms by an extra top-bar, until I 

 saw it in Heddon's article in the ^4. B. J. So far as 

 I know, friend Howes was the first one to suggest 

 pivoting the device to the center of the end-bar of 

 the frame; but it seems to me, that as soon as a 

 device should be called for, for reversible frames, 

 this would be one of the first things to occur to al- 

 most anybody. If it did not occur to anybody un- 

 til it occurred to friend Howes, ver3' likely the idea 

 would be patentable. Now, in case he does get it 

 patented, as to whether friend Heddon's plan in- 

 fringes or no, it seems to me lawyers might argue 

 the matter a long while, and never settle it even 

 then. We have never used the arrangement, and I 

 do not think now we ever shall. 



GILT-EDGE MEN AND WO.MEN. 



May be I have talked about this before, but 

 something tells me it won't do any hurt to talk some 

 more about it. In that big index-book to our ledger, 

 that I told you about (the one that indexes a quar- 

 ter of a million of people in our business transac- 

 tions), we are obliged to record character, and 

 grade character, as it were, and the grading runs 

 all the way up from the man who coolly repudiates 

 a fair and square promise, to those who are so 

 careful of their commercial standing that they 

 would almost pay something they did not owe, 

 rather than have appearances against them. Once 

 in a while we find a phase of humanity s* fair and 

 unselfish that I told the girls we wanted some way 

 to indicate such inen in that big index, and I pro- 

 posed that we should call them "gilt-edge." A few 

 months ago we changed the table giving the price 

 of our foundation-mills, to a smaller-sized type, to 

 give more room. One of our best men did it, who 

 almost never makes a mistake; but this time he got 

 the wrong figure, and made the price of a $40.00 

 mill only ijSoO.CO. Before it was discovered, some 

 price lists had slipped off. .v customer got one, and. 

 not suspecting any mistake, sent .*30.00 for the mill. 

 It was a fair and S(]uare bargain, so we sent it along, 

 but said that the price was a misprint. He replied 



