890 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15 



ping- has caused the death of the queens I 

 Why, bless your heart, doctor, in the natu- 

 ral course every queen is superseded, clip 

 or no clip, making a fourth to half the queens 

 in an apiary superseded every year. [This 

 is a g"ood point well made, but I should not 

 have thought of it. This illustrates the im- 

 portance of having a prominent apicultural 

 writer almost constantlj^ working with the 

 bees during the height of the season, so 

 that he may be able at once to recognize 

 truth from fallacy in deductions. — Ed. J 



Mr. Editor, on p. 850 I committed Doo- 

 little to your tender mercies, and then you 

 proceed to let him alone and to go for me. 

 Bless your heart! / didn't say it was a pos- 

 sibility, easy or hard, to have 108,000 bees 

 the progeny of one queen. Go for Doolittle. 

 [Why, bless your heart, doctor, Bro. Doo- 

 little was as much on my side of the fence 

 as on yours; in fact, I claim that, if you 

 had not read him with slant-eyed glasses, 

 you would have seen he was, if any thing, 

 more on uiy side of the fence. Mr. Doolittle 

 is no doubt laughing in his sleeve over the 

 rumpus that he has unwittingly kicked up 

 between us. We may yet have to call on 

 him to explain what he did mean, and thus 

 settle the row. Well, he is respectfully re- 

 quested to do so. — Ed. J 



"Last winter," says A. C. Miller in 

 Amei: Bee-Keeper, "I had two colonies, 

 each in a ten-frame Dovetailed hive with a 

 half-story full of sawdust over the enameled 

 mat, and the whole hive from the under edge 

 of cover to the ground surrounded by a sin- 

 gle thickness of tarred paper." They win- 

 tered so finely that he will repeat the ex- 

 periment on a larger scale. [In packing 

 hives for outdoor wintering, experiments 

 have shown that a good generous supply of 

 packing material over the top of the brood- 

 nest is much more important than around 

 the sides. Of course, it is desirable to have 

 it all around the hives — top, sides, bottom, 

 and ends. We have had reports where whole 

 apiaries have wintered outdoors by simpl}^ 

 having the upper story packed with packing 

 material; but better results are secured, of 

 course, by packing all around. — Ed.J 



"It might not be a bad idea for each an- 

 nual convention to nominate three candidates 

 for General Manager, and nine candidates 

 to succeed the three directors whose terms 

 expire with the following December." 

 That's a suggestion of Editor York as to 

 the National. It's worth considering for 

 the future. [I do not believe it would be 

 wise to bring about conditions or a prece- 

 dent whereby the office of General Manager, 

 at least, should be changed as often as once 

 in two or three years. When we get a good 

 man, as in the case of our present General 

 Manager, we ought to hang- on to him. One 

 who has been in the harness, and knows 

 how to pull, should not be made to give 

 place to one who may be merely popular in 

 the eyes of bee-keepers or members of the 

 Association, and j'et possibly be entirely 

 unfitted for the exacting and important du- 



ties of the office. But I do believe Bro. 

 York's suggestion is all right for the Board 

 of Directors. Some of us who have been so 

 long on that Board could just as well get 

 out, and thus place the responsibility for 

 the success of the organization on other men 

 whose help we need. — Ed.J 



I WANT to say, in language somewhat em- 

 phatic, that some better way should be pro- 

 vided than to have Directors' meetings that 

 keep Directors out of the sessions of the an- 

 nual convention of the National. It isn't 

 fair to the Directors; and if they are good 

 for an}' thing it isn't fair to the convention. 

 [You are right; but the time of our national 

 con\entions is so much taken up by general 

 convention work that it is often difficult to 

 squeeze in a little side-committee work be- 

 tween the sessions. I think the time will 

 have to come when the Directors will have 

 to consult bj' letter, and that the discussion 

 of some of these questions will have to be 

 done through correspondence. Such i\ plan 

 is unsatisfactory, in that it gives the cliair- 

 inau of the Board almost exclusive power to 

 direct, if he chooses, the work of the entire 

 Board.* If he suggests, for instance, that 

 such and such a thing ought to be done, and 

 gives his reasons therefor, in the absence of 

 any counter-argument his proposed policy 

 is sure to carry, when it inaj' not alwaj'S 

 be wise. — Ed.J 



Cut-off top-bars spaced endwise have 

 been condemned by soine, and I have won- 

 dered why. H. H. Hyde now says, p. 857, 

 that the staples are continually driven fur- 

 ther in. Sui-el}' I shouldn't like that. I 

 think I have used them abovit as long as any 

 one, and I find them a boon. It is much 

 easier to handle the frames than with long 

 top-bars glued at each end. Not a staple 

 has ever been driven further in, to my knowl- 

 edge. But m}^ end-bars are ;^/s thick, and 

 /^~\ top-bars "^ thick; so the sta- 



I ^1 pie is driven through the 



end-bar into the top-bar. 



' I What is really wanted — I've 



hankered after it for years — is a spacer that 

 cari't be driven in more than the right depth, 

 say a niiil with a head % inch thick. If 

 that can't be got, why not a shouldered sta- 

 ple? I can"t understand Mr. Hyde's say- 

 ing the staples become a ball of propolis. 

 Propolis is so bad here that a Hoft'man frame 

 is a nuisance; but there has been no trouble 

 with propolis on the end staples. [I take 

 it that staples do not push in with (j'ou even 

 without the shoulder) under the projections 

 of the top-bar; but what you desire is some- 

 thing that can be used as spacers betiveen 

 the bars. If there were demand enough to 

 warrant it we could make staples shaped 

 as in the diagram you have made, and the 

 expense would be insignificant; indeed, an 

 order for 100 lbs., sent to the wire-goods 

 people, would bring the desired article, and 

 at a price within the range of all bee-keep- 



* I speak from an experience based on the time I 

 was Chairman of the Board ; and at that time I saw 

 how easy it was to get indorsed any plan I had. 



