1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUBE. 



685 



could cheat people very well. When they 

 turn them over, and look at the stem end, 

 then they discover that it is not a peach. 



The Lorilland tomato, with us, rots the 

 worst of any thing we ever got hold of ; and 

 almost all of our tomatoes, except the Peach, 

 are rotting at the blossom end before they 

 get ripe. Perhaps after they get down to 

 the business of bearing ripe tomatoes, they 

 will get over it. May be the great abun- 

 dance of rain has something to do with it. 



Our garden for testing honey-plants is 

 now looking very pretty. A bed that was 

 made of a rive-cent package of mixed port- 

 ulacas takes the shine, and also takes pretty 

 much all the bees. The melissa, or bee- 

 balm, is pretty well covered with bees ; but 

 owing to the fact that only a few blossoms 

 are out at a time, comparatively, it does not 

 present the scene of activity as do the fig- 

 wort and some others. 



Gleanings, in Bee Culture. 



Published Setni-Monthly . 



-&.. I. ROOT, 

 EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, 



2*£EIDIliT.£-, OHIO. 



*»*~40« 



1ERMS: $1.00 PER YEAR, POSTPAID. 



For Clubbing Bates, See First Page of Heading Matter. 

 JMIEIDIiT-a., ^TTGr- IS, 1889. 



Thy way is in the sea, and thv path in the great waters, and 

 thy footsteps are not known.— Psalm 77: 19. 



We notice by the last issue of the Revistit Apieola, 

 published in Spain, that Frank Benton's present 

 address is Krainburg, Haute Carniole, Austria. 



THE ILLUSTRATED HOME JOURNAL, 



Published by Thomas G. Newman & Son, of Chica- 

 go, 111., we are glad to recommend as being a first- 

 class publication of the kind. It is well illustrated, 

 and the matter all of it as it should be, suitable for 

 the home. The price per year is now $1.00 per an- 

 num, or we will club it with Gleanings for $1.75. 



A GREAT HONEY-YIELD IN TEMPE, ARIZONA. 



You will notice by the statistical department that 

 our friend Gregg, of Tempe, Arizona, reports 30,280 

 lbs. from 190 colonies. Now, this is the more as- 

 tonishing to me, as Tempe is dependent entirely 

 upon irrigation. They do not have any rain to 

 amount to any thing at all, if I am correct. My 

 younger brother lives there, and I believe he is in 

 the near neighborhood of Mr. Gregg. Now, then, 

 friend G., if you have secured a crop of over 20,000 

 lbs. of honey, you can certainly afford to tell us all 

 about it— what it came from, how you did it, etc. 

 If the honey was produced by irrigation, may be 

 some of the rest of us may bring in irrigation to 

 make our honey crop a little surer than it is at pres- 

 ent. In this connection perhaps it would be well to 

 remark that Frank McNay, of Wisconsin, produced 

 3(1,000 lbs. from S3 ) colonies, and S. I. Freeborn, of 

 the same State, 32,000 from 300 colonies. This latter 

 about equals Mr. Greek's yield per colony. Chas. 

 Dadant & Son secured 36,000 lbs. from 400 colonies. 



RAISING CELLS ABOVE QUEEN-EXCLUDING HONEY- 

 BOARDS NOT NEW. 



Friend Heddon has called our attention to the 

 fact that the subject given in the heading is not 

 new, and that, tome five or six years ago, he dis- 

 covered it was possible to raise cells and young 

 queens above a queen-excluding honey-board. He 

 has referred us to an article which he wrote on 

 page 518 of Gleanings for 1885. A paragraph of it 

 reads as follows: 



I have also discovered that two queens can be 

 kept in the hive, one on each side of the excluder. 

 In fact, wherever 1 have used the excluder, as soon 

 as I put eggs and young larva* above it (where the 

 queen could not go), queen-cells were started in 

 quantity. In several instances last season, young 

 queens were hatched. In two such, where we had 

 put the queen above (to test the excluding powers 

 of the board) she remained above, and a young 

 queen was reared, hatched, and fertilized, below. 

 This point is going to be of value to us in future. 



He mentions the same thing in his book (publish- 

 ed in 1885), on page 78, in similar language. Mr. J. 

 D. Fooshe published the plan as new, and Doolit- 

 tle corrects him by saying that the same was al- 

 ready given in his book. Now, Mr. Heddon bobs 

 up and says he published it before either, and pro- 

 duces the printed proof. Notice, in friend H.'s last 

 sentence of the paragraph quoted that he (Heddon) 

 had succeeded in having a queen reared and fertil- 

 ized above the perforated metal. Now, who will 

 bob up and antedate the published report of the 

 whole lot of them? Verily there is nothing new 

 under the sun, or at least it looks that way some- 

 times. 



A KIND WORD FOR THE ABC BOOK. 



In the Review for August, one of its correspon- 

 dents complains of the ABC book. The editor is 

 kind enough to make the following points in his 

 reply : 



While we do not agree with all of the teachings 

 contained in the A B C of Bee Culture, we regard it 

 as one of the most consistent books ever written. 

 Instead of bewildering the beginner with a thou- 

 sand and one descriptions of different hives, " traps 

 and calamities," its author sticks to one hive, one 

 system, and one every thing else down through to 

 the last chapter. And while they may not be the 

 best, they hang together; each part fits the other; 

 and if Mr. Root can furnish these things cheaper 

 than the reader can make them, said reader ought 

 to be thankful. We think many of the accusations 

 of " ax-grinding" are unjust. A man doesn't al- 

 ways think an article is best because he adopted it; 

 rather he adopted it because he thought it best. 

 We don'twish to be understood as saying that the 

 ABC mentions only one hive or system, but that 

 the reader who follows the instructions given will 

 never find himself in a muddle by having adopted 

 the parts of two opposing systems. 



Many thanks, friend Hutchinson. During my 

 early experiences in bee culture I was so much 

 mixed up and mystified by the advice contained in 

 the different books and agricultural papers on the 

 subject of bee-keeping that I made up my mind to 

 write up a plain, simple book of directions; and 

 you have perhaps put it in words better than I 

 have seen it before; in fact, better than I could 

 have told it myself. The fact that I invented and 

 manufactured many of the goods I described, I 

 have always felt to be in one sense a drawback. 

 On this account I tried to have the ABC book as 

 free from any thing like ax-grinding as possible. 

 If I am correct, nowhere in the ABC book is it 

 mentioned that we have the articles for sale, al- 

 though I have several times said that the expense 

 ought not to exceed a certain amount; and T also 

 gave the very fullest directions possible to enable 



