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Vol. XXIX. 



MARCH 15, 1901. 



No. 6. 



MILLER 



The secret, most likely, of the large mem- 

 bership of bee-keepers' societies in Germany 

 li 's in the fact that the bee-ketper gets back 

 directly the worth of his money in the way of 

 reduced price of bee-journals and in other 

 ways. New York bee keepers seem to be fol- 

 lowing somewhat the same plan, and I'm 

 wondering whether it may not be partly due 

 to the fact that a man by the name of Greiner 

 happened to select Germany as the land of 

 his birth. 



E. S LovESY says, in The Rocky Mountain 

 Bee Journal, that last year sweet clover yield- 

 ed nothing except along the water-courses. 

 That's the first report I've seen saying sweet 

 clover failed to yield nectar anywhere. [This 

 reminds me that 77?^ Rocky Jl/ountain Bee 

 Journal is a very creditable publication — nice- 

 ly printed, and the general subject-matter is 

 good. We wish our newly arrived cotempo- 

 rary success; and we see no reason why Colo- 

 rado alone could not give a fair support to a 

 bee-journal. — Ed ] 



"The meanest stock to introduce a queen 

 to is one having cells almost ready to hatch," 

 quoth ye editor, p. 184. Must have forgotten 

 jnst then about la' ing workers. [Y-e-s — but, 

 a colony with fertile workers is not, in a sense, 

 queenless, is it ? for it has one or more (drone- 

 laving) queens, or what they think are queens. 

 Ic is usually not possible to introduce another 

 queen to a colony already having one or what 

 they regard as one. When I made the state- 

 ment in question I had in mind a colony that 

 was queenless — entirely so. — Ed ] 



Dr. Pauchet, La Nature says, replaces 

 cod-liver oil with butyroniel, composed of two 

 p^rts of fresh butter and one part of honey, 

 beaten together. He says it is more readily 

 accepted by children, a thing not hard to be- 

 lieve. [I remember my mother used to give 

 me honey and butter when I had a cold. If 

 there is any virtue in such a combination it 

 might be a good idea for us parents to give 



our children bread and butter and honey, and 

 lots of it. "Honey and butter shall he eat," 

 the good Book says, and its advice is always 

 good.— Ed ] 



Sweet clover, says H. M. Jameson, of 

 California, in Tlie Ruralist, " blooms here the 

 first season, and continues for several seasons 

 . The yellow variety abounds here, but 

 the bees never touch it." Three things in 

 that statement are at variance with previous 

 reports. Does the same thing hold true in all 

 parts of California ? If its life history is so 

 much hurried up that it blooms a year sooner 

 than elsewhere, one would think it ought then 

 to die as an annual instead of being prolong- 

 ed as a perennial. 



I AGREE heartily with Rambler, p. 185, in 

 thinking a dead-level country is too monoto- 

 nous. When I came from among the moun- 

 tains to a prairie State I couldn't stand .the 

 level, so I got a spot right on a hill and built 

 a home on it ; and if you were to be set down 

 here blindfolded you couldn't tell whether 

 you were in Illinois or Pennsylvania. I'd 

 want good pay to agree to spend the rest of 

 my life on a level (although I'm trying my 

 level best to live "on the level"), or any- 

 where where the dwellings were thicker than 

 one to every ten acres. 



Spring being at hand, let me remind those 

 whose bees work a little on red clover, and 

 who are trying to grow red clover with short 

 tubes, that, if they can get seed from the Jirst 

 crop, they will stand a better chance of suc- 

 cess, for just at that time bumble-bees are too 

 scarce to fertilize many blossoms, and so a " 

 \arger proportion of seed in the first crop may 

 be of the desired kind than in the second 

 crop. Of course, there may be a larger quan- 

 tity of short-tubed seed in the second crop, 

 but it will be mixed with a still larger quanti- 

 ty of seed that you don't want. 



" Why is it that the bees would peel the 

 cocoons from the sides of the cell and leave 

 the septum ? " says W. T. Stephenson, p. 141, 

 evidently thinking that the same thickness of 

 cocoons is on the walls as on the septum. I 

 think I can show you a good many old ccmbs 

 with the septum yi in. thick. Now, suppose 

 the same amount of cocoons on the cell walls; 



