jyui 



GLHANlNGvS IN BKK CL'LTUKK. 



295 



NATIONAI^ BEE-KEEPHRS' ASSOCIATION. 



Object : — To promote and protect the interests of its 



f-*> members; to prevent the adiilleration of honey. 



Offjcers:— E. R. Root, President, Medina, C; R. C. 

 Aikiu, Vice-president I,oveland, Col.; Dr. A, B. 

 Mason, Secretary, 3512 Monroe St., Sta B, Toledo, 

 O.; Eugene Secor, Gen'l Manager, Forest City, la. 



Board OK DIRECTORS: — E. Whitconib, Friend, Neb. ; 

 W. Z. Hutchinson, Flint, Mich.; A. I. Root, Medi- 

 na, O.; E. T. Abbott, St. Joseph, Mo.; P. H. El- 

 wood, Starkville. N. Y.; E. R. Root, Medina, C; 

 T. G. Newman, San Francisco, Cal.; O. M. Doo- 

 little, Borodino, N. Y.; W. F. Marks, Chapinville, 

 N. Y.; J. M. Hambaugh, Esrondido Cal.; C. P. 

 Dadant, Hamilton, 111.; C. C. Miller, Marengo 111. 



Fees: — Annual membership fee, Jl.UO Remittances 

 may be sent here or to General Manager as above. 



In our issue for March 15, page 246, I refer- 

 red to H. G. Acklin as if he were Presidei:t of 

 the Minnesota State Bee keepers' Association. 

 Mr. Acklin wiites that this is a mistake, and 

 that Mr. Wtn. Russell is President, and that 

 he hopes I will make the correction, which I 

 cheerfully do. 



GLEANINGS ENI^ARGED. 

 The large amount of advertising and of 

 excellent matter that has been coming in of 

 late, has made it necessary to nearly double 

 the size of Gleanings. For several issues 

 bick we have been giving 16, and last issue 20 

 extra pages. This number has 16 extra pages 

 again. The great variety of the illustrations 

 that we are and have been giving will enable 

 those of our busy readers to take in a great 

 deal of valuable information at a few glances. 

 P'or example, I take several illustrated papers, 

 and find that I can almost keep track of the 

 war news in different parts of the world by 

 reading scarcely a line except those that ap- 

 pear at the bottom of the pictures. The his- 

 tory of the old civil war is pretty faithfully 

 told by the pictures alone in the old numbers 

 of Harper^s Weekly, published from 1861 to 

 1866. 



BEES AND FRUIT IN THE FARM PAPERS. 



In the last issue of the Fariii Journal there 

 is a very full and comprehensive report of the 

 matter we printed on page 152, concerning the 

 jaws of worker-bees and those of wasps, and 

 the inability of the former to puncture the 

 skin of sound fruit. The illustrations have 

 been reproduced, and the whole matter has 

 been given very strong prominence in this 

 most influential farm paper. It has a subscrip- 

 tion-list of over half a million ; and such mat- 

 ter going before farmers and fruit-growers and 

 bee-keepers will prove to be of inestimable 

 value. Besides the article in \^^ Farm Jour- 

 nal, some articles of a similar nature have 

 bt-en published in other agricultural papers, 

 with the result that the decision of the cele- 

 brated trial at Goshen, completely exonerat- 

 ing the bees, has gone far and wide over the 

 land. The National Bee-keepers' Association 

 has more work of this kind, and it shotild re- 



ceive the substantial encouragement of bee- 

 keepers everywhere. Let those who have not 

 renewed their membership do so at once ; and 

 those who have never joined, let them get 

 into line with a dollar bill. Such splendid re- 

 sults as were secured at Goshen can not be se- 

 cured without somebody paying for them. 

 Send a dollar to Eugene Secor, Forest City, 

 Iowa. 



CLOVER AND LONG - TONGUED BEES ; HOW 

 LONG MUST BE THE TONGUE-REACH? 



FriedemannGreiner, on page 28'Jof this 

 issue, expresses some doubt as to whether bees 

 having a tongue-reach of % inch would be 

 able to get a very large percentage of the hon- 

 ey from red-clover blossoms ; perhaps he is 

 right, but late last fall we secured some red- 

 clover heads that seemed to be fair specimens 

 of heads in the height of the season, although 

 they might not have been. The measure- 

 ment of the corolla-tubes of these heads 

 showed a variation of from H to y<& inch. 

 The greatest lengths were in the very center 

 or top of the head, and would comprise in 

 number only about one quarter, I should judge 

 at a rough estimate, of the number of the 

 shorter tubes, ranging from Y% to % inch in 

 depth. I reasoned this way : Ttiat if we could 

 breed bees having a tongue-reach of % inch, 

 we should be able to get all the nectar out of 

 34' of all the tubes, and a very large percent- 

 age of the nectar in the tubes J^ inch long or 

 more. If the clover heads that we measujed 

 last fall were a fair average, and if my rough 

 estimate is reasonably correct, then bees with 

 a tongue-reach of % inch ought to be able to 

 get three-fourths of the honey, I should say, 

 from the heads of ordinary red clover. 



"While I believe we ought to work toward a 

 red clover with shorter tubes, yet knowing as 

 I do the tendency of all varieties to re\ert 

 back to the original types, especially of the 

 clovers, my hopes are not as strong in this di- 

 rection as they are in the lengthening of bees' 

 tongues. Here is the difficulty, as I view it, 

 with the red clovers : Suppose half of the 

 farmers have sown the short-tubed variety. 

 The farmers in the other half of the vicinity 

 sow the red clover of their fathers. The bees 

 would mingle the pollen of the older with the 

 newer type, with the result that the last nam- 

 ed would work backward toward its old length 

 of tubes. 



While there would be the same tendency to 

 sport backward in the case of bees, yet it 

 seems to me we can control our bees belter 

 than we can control the clovers of the farmers 

 in our vicinity. 



BEES WITH LONG TONGUES ; POSSIBLE AND 

 PROBABLE DISAPPOINTMENTS. 



A YEAR or SO ago there seemed to be a great 

 rage for five-banded or yellow bees ; and now 

 nearly all the breeders in the country are ad- 

 vertising long-tongued stock. This is right 

 and proper. But there is danger that many 

 who get queens of this blood will be disap- 

 pointed, and in the end the whole business 

 will be condemned. It is hardly probable 

 that even a large percentage of the queens 



