486 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



lUXE 



You have given us some good poiuts, 

 friend M., aud quite seasonable. The first 

 one reminded me that the grass lias not yet 

 been cut in our apiary. We are not getting 

 a honey-flow to any extent here at this date, 

 June 11, therefore we are not having experi- 

 ence in the line of the rest of your remarks 

 at the present time. Jumping sections is 

 often managed by having the crate over the 

 frames made in two pieces. When the bees 

 begin to seal up the central sections, the 

 two cases can be swung around so the outer 

 ends come over the center of the brood-nest. 

 This is how you do it, I believe. 



HUB ER, A GAIN. 



AtiSO SOMETHING IN REGARD TO HUISH, WHO SO 

 SEVERELY CRITICISED HUBER. 



TN Gleanings for May 15, you have given an ex- 

 ||F cellent engraving of Huber, if Naturalist Li- 

 W brary, Vol. 7, edited by Sir William Jardine, 

 •*■ Edinburg, 18.")2, in its frontispiece, give6 a cor- 

 rect liKeness of this groat naturalist. A mem- 

 oir is also given of Huber. His was a great mind, 

 and I delight to read any notice of ln'm. What a 

 contrast between him and his cotemporary Huish, 

 who undertook to refute by ridicule his discover- 

 ies. In the new edition of his work, Robert Hu- 

 ish, P. Z. A., and Honorary Member of the Nation- 

 al Institute of Prance; the Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences of Gottingen ; the Agricultural Society of 

 Bavaria, etc., a work of 458 pages, Loudon, 1844, in 

 his preface, says: " If in the course of the ensuing 

 work we may have laid ourselves open to the 

 charge of having applied the lash of ridicule too se- 

 verely upon this falsely celebrated naturalist, we 

 can only answer, in extenuation of that transgres- 

 sion, that we have been encouraged to the commis- 

 sion of it by the thorough conviction arising from 

 an experience of above forty years, that the ma- 

 jority of the vaunted discoveries of Huber are the 

 result of fiction and delusion founded on obsolete 

 theories and antiquated prejudices." 



How hard for him who had and was enjoying the 

 distinction and society of the learned, to acknowl- 

 edge that what he had so frequently taught in lec- 

 tures, and published, were errors, even when made 

 so plain and demonstrable as laid down by Huber! 



I note some errors which occur in the 24th aud 

 25th chapters of Huish's work; to wit: 



Common worker-bees are of the neuter gender; 

 they collect honey and make wax. 



Bees deprived of their queen will not work. 



Swarms are always accompanied by a young 

 queen, but never by the mother-queen. 



Wax is formed by an elaboration of the farina of 

 plants. 



The queen lays every egg in the hive, and is, in 

 fact, the only female in it. 



The drones are the males, and fecundate the eggs 

 of the queen as they are laid in the cells. 



The bees allow but one queen in the hive. 



The queeu oviposits only in the spring and sum- 

 mer, and never in the winter. 



The queen is not fecundated by any act of coition 

 with the drone. 



No kind of food is administered to the worms in 

 the ceils. 



There is no such substance in a hive as propolis. 



The bees never make use of their stings in the 

 massacre of the drones. 



The queen never makes use of her sting on any 

 occasion whatever. 



The hive which has lost its queen can not rear 

 another unless there are royal eggs in the hive. 



Bee-bread is not applied to the nutriment of the 

 bees, or as food of the larvae. 



The queen-b( e Ims not the power of emitting any 

 sound whatever. 



The queen-bee pays no attention whatever to the 

 royal cells. 



A hive is not worth keeping after the fifth year. 



Bees can not alter the generic character of the 

 eggs under anj circumstances whatever. 



Bees work their combs always parallel with the 

 entrance. 



He devotes 40 pages descriptive of the different 

 hives, specifying their advantages and defects, and 

 gives two illustrations of the Huber hive. When he 

 comes to speak of the " mirror, or experimental 

 hive," he says: "It is to this hive we are indebted for 

 many of the discoveries of Huber and Dunbar, es- 

 pecially of the latter naturalist; for in regard to the 

 former, it appeared to be to him a matter of per- 

 fect indifference in what hive his experiments 

 were carried on, for the results were always in per- 

 fect unison with his anticipations. 



Murfreesboro, Tenn. W. P Henderson. 



It seems sad to think that Huish should 

 have been so unwise as to ever put in print 

 his unkind criticisms. What a record for 

 future generations ! and yet while 1 read 

 over the mistakes made by Huish. I feel to 

 pity him more than to blame him ; for in al- 

 most every one of the quotations there is a 

 grain of truth ; and we, with all of our later 

 experience, can readily understand how he 

 came to fall into most of his errors. In 

 fact, a great many even now would indorse 

 many of the statements. Yes, if we look 

 back over our own bee-journals we shall 

 find some pretty good men who have taken 

 almost every position held by Huish. Let 

 us be slow to criticise, and never think of 

 taking the '■ lash " into our hands, unless 

 the good of humanity demands that the de- 

 liberate thief and swindler be held up to 

 public view, or something of that sort. 



POLLEN AND HONEY FROM THE 

 "WILLOWS. 



PODI.EN-PRODUCERS. 



ip CORRESPONDENT asks: 'Is there any oth- 

 ^ er name for bee willow, or how can I tell it 

 P from other willow?" In reply I would say, 

 ^ that, so far as 1 know, all willow i3 " bee wil- 

 low," for all of them with which I am ac- 

 quainted yield either pollen or honey, yet some of 

 them are more eagerly sought after by the bees 

 than are others. Among the pollen-bearers we 

 have several kinds of what is known here as "pus- 

 sy willow" (SaliJC), which put out their blossoms 

 quite irregularly. Some are a month earlier than 

 others, and some of the buds on the same bush are 

 ten days later than others. The kinds which seem 

 to attract the bees most are the black willow, upon 

 which the kilmarnoek is budded, and those which 

 produce a long cone-like tiower similar to the black 

 willow, the accompanying cut giving a fair repre- 

 sentation of the latter, a week or so after it is 

 through blossoming and has partially gone to seed. 



