748 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 15 



to put tfiem under sections. His reasons do 

 not appeal to me, for the amount of pollen in 

 my sections would not pay for the extra trou- 

 ble of handling excluders if they cost noth- 

 ing, and along with this goes the trouble of 

 the queen going up, and my drones are not 

 addicted to filthy hdbits in the super. So in 

 my case, at least, if excluders could be had 

 free I would decidedly prefer to secure white- 

 ness of sections by means of thicker top bars. 

 The extra thickness costs a trifle compared 

 with the expense of excluders, and the time 

 taken to handle the excluders costs something. 



Mr. Pettit is in error in supposing that Mr. 

 Root and I imagined that by any process we 

 had evolved thick top-bars. I don't know 

 where the first evolving was done, but I sus- 

 pect it was in the brain of that very practical 

 countryman of Mr. Pettit's, J. B. Hall. Mr. 

 Root speaks of getting the idea from him ten 

 or twelve years ago ; but my interest in thick 

 top-bars antedates that by several years. In 

 1883, at the expo.sition at Toronto, J. B. Hall, 

 in a neighborly way that I have never forgot- 

 ten, showed me a hive containing thick lop- 

 birs, and told me why he used them of such 

 thickness. 



Mr. Pettit thinks prejudice has a strong 

 hold upon me — a fact of which I am only too 

 painfully conscious ; but I try to be free from 

 prejudice where my pocket is concerned, and 

 as yet I do not see what I could gain by chang- 

 ing to thinner top-bars with the addition of 

 excluders. It is only fair to say that in either 

 case, and I have tried excluders on a some- 

 what large scale, and, indeed, in any case that 

 I have tried, I am not as free from brace and 

 burr combs as I should like. If Mr. Pettit 

 finds it necessary for other reasons to use ex- 

 cluders, and if with ^i top bars he is entirely 

 free from trouble, theu I have no quarrel with 

 him for using no greater thickness than 5s- 

 But I should advise those who are just begin- 

 ning, before investing in a full outfit of ex- 

 cluders to determine whether Mr. Pettit's ex- 

 perience or mine would best fit them. 



Marengo, 111. C. C. MiLLER. 



[I was not aware that either Dr. Miller or 

 myself was "excited" over this thick-top- 

 bar matter. Is it not possible that friend Pet- 

 tit himself is a little bit on that order ? When 

 he talks about " ferocious flings," and inti- 

 mates that both the doctor and myself are un- 

 der the spell of prejudice, " an exacting and 

 unrelenting tyrant," and our "revolving 

 around each other by the coat-tail," one would 

 think /lis equilibrium was a little bit disturbed. 

 There is no occasion for excitement, for truth 

 is what we want ; but in the discussion of this 

 question I fear we all lose sight of locality. 

 ■After having gone through the great West, I 

 am frank to acknowledge I have changed my 

 views materially on some things; and I be- 

 lieve that, if our friend Pettit were to make a 

 similar trip, he would be less positive than he 

 now is. When one makes a strong statement 

 he ought to limit it to his own locality. 



Pine lumber behaves very differently in dif- 

 ferent parts of the United States. A top-bar 

 that would not sag in one place might warp, 



twis'^, and check very badly in another. Still 

 again, we do not all use the same kind of lum- 

 ber. In the South the yellow pine is used ; 

 in some parts of the middle West, whitewood ; 

 along the Pacific coast, Oregon pine, Oregon 

 spruce, California redwood, and sugar pine 

 are much used for top-bars, and all these tim- 

 bers have peculiarities. 



After all, as I understand it, Mr. Pettit, Dr. 

 Miller, and myself are not very far apart in 

 our views; and while I rather favor a top-bar 

 '4 thick, Mr. Pettit argues for |^. As to the 

 matter of width, I think there is no difference 

 in opinion ; therefore the only difference be- 

 tween us is in the thickness of the top bar, 

 and thai only % inch. I am willing to admit 

 the y^ bar gives verj' good results in some lo- 

 calities when some kinds of lumber are used ; 

 but the kind of bees, the kind of honey-flows, 

 the depth of bee-space over the top-bars, are 

 other factors that help to make a great variety 

 of opinion. In discussions of this kind we 

 should be broad enough and fair enough to 

 believe that every man is telling the exact 

 facts according to his locality, until we know 

 what are the conditions of that locality. 



As to the other points raised by Mr. Pettit, 

 I can only refer to what I have already said 

 on pages 227 and 380 



I do not wi.sh to convey the impression that 

 we of the Root Co. are wedded to 14, inch, and 

 can not change to ^s . Some conditions in 

 the West, as I have observed them, may ren- 

 der it necessary to make a Y% bar for those 

 parts of the country. Rather than have two 

 thicknesses and the resulting confusion, we 

 may make for our Eastern trade a Y^ bar, even 

 though we may have the feeling that there 

 will be a slight increase in brace- combs. 



There is one point to which Mr Pettit refers, 

 and that is that he succeeds in getting his 

 brood built clear up to the top-bar in L. frames. 

 If he can do that with pure Italians, without 

 reversing, then he can do more than we can 

 do with ours, even with cushions, and more 

 than any one else I have ever. met. We can 

 accomplish the result with Syrian or Holy 

 Land blood ; but we prefer to have a little 

 honey in the brood-nest rather than to have 

 such bees in the yard. 



There are very few producers of comb honey 

 who use queen-bars or perforated zinc between 

 the upper and lower stories. If a |^ top bar 

 necessitates excluders and another bee-space, 

 then it would be cheaper for beekeepers to 

 use the '/% bar without the excluder. As a 

 rule, excluders between the upper and lower 

 stories are used in the production of extracted 

 honey, and to onlj' a limited extent have I 

 noticed them being used in the production of 

 comb. 



To illustrate the difference in locality, I pro- 

 duce here a sample of some of the letters we 

 have received. Here is a man, for example, 

 who says a 5^ -thick top bar is all right, but a 

 \y% top-bar, advocated by friend Pettit, is "an 

 abomination." Well, we will let Mr. Atwater, 

 whom I met in Idaho recently, speak for him- 

 self. 



]\Tr. Editor :—'' The frame's the thing 

 with which I'll catch the conscience of the 



