1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



853 



honey crop is now mainly in the grocery windows, 

 and will be pretty well cleared out by Christmas. 

 After that the bee-men who have held on to what 

 they produced will be sure to reap their reward. 

 Audubou, Iowa, Oct. 17, 1889. Z. T. Hawk. 



Your reasoning is good, and seems to be 

 sound ; and if in repeated practical tests it 

 works as it has with you, it will prove a 

 most important matter, especially in the 

 matter of comb honey. I have worked hives 

 with 11 frames instead of 10, in an ordinary 

 Langstroth brood -chamber, Hi inches wide. 

 The combs had to be very exact, and those 

 that did not contain brood had to be very 

 thin. I presume likely, however, where we 

 wish to crowd the honey into supers, 11 

 frames would be too many ; therefore a 

 dummy of one or more chaff-cushion divi- 

 sion-boards would probably be an advan- 

 tage. — We have seen something of the cut- 

 ting-down of prices by the non- reading bee- 

 keepers ; but I think, friend H., this mat- 

 ter will correct itself in time. People are 

 becoming better and better informed every 

 succeeding year ; and our county fairs are 

 a great factor in getting people acquainted, 

 and in getting them posted. 



A LETTER FROM CHINA. 



BEES UNDER THE PROTECTION OF A CHINESE INN. 



fKlEND ROOT:— Last spring, while on a tour 

 with Dr. Whitney, we stopped for dinner at a 

 Chinese inn. On its right-hand side, facing 

 out, was a bedroom, the front of which had 

 sliding- boards that came to within about four 

 feet of the ground, thus making, when the boards 

 were taken out, a broad window of the front. Even 

 with the bottom of this window, a wide shelf had 

 been extended out into the street, and the space be- 

 low it inclosed with boards extending to the ground. 

 Just under the shelf, at the inner corner next to the 

 door of the inn, a stream of bees was pouring- out 

 and in from two cracks, one on each side of a board. 

 The outer crack was quite wide; but the inner one, 

 for only an inch or two at the top, was wide enough 

 for bees to crawl through. The bees were all com- 

 ing out at the wider crack, and, with but few ex- 

 ceptions, going in at the narrower one. I was in- 

 terested in their docility; for though a number of 

 persons were standing around, and continually 

 getting square across their track, they made no ob- 

 jections. It was a real Chinese scene. The men went 

 their way, the bees their way, each without notic- 

 ing the other. As in several other cases like this, 

 when I asked how they got the bees, I was told that 

 they had come there of themselves. The query 

 rises in my mind, Are Chinese bees more fond of 

 human dwellings than are other bees? I thought 

 last week I was going to have a swarm come to me 

 like this, but they went to a drygoods box that Mrs. 

 Whitney had set up, instead of coming to a nice 

 Simplicity hive right from the " Home of the Hon- 

 ey-Bees." 



POISON OF THE CENTIPEDE, AND THE USE THE 

 CHINESE MAKE OF IT. 



The Chinese are no chemists, and don't under- 

 stand that the fangs of a snake or the nippers of a 

 centipede can secrete poison from blood that con- 

 tains no poison, and 6o they use the whole body. 

 There is no reason for thinking that the centipede 



taken iiihi nally has any virtue as a medicine. The 

 Chinese think that, because tigers are so fierce and 

 strong, eating their blood will make soldiers tiger- 

 like; and I have several times seen men going 

 about with a tiger's skeleton, peddling the bones 

 by the ounce for a tonic. 



ABOUT THOSE WASPS WHICH STUNG THE COOLIES 

 SO UNMERCIFULLY. 



As to our letting those poor coolies get stung, the 

 whole thing was so sudden that none of us four. 

 i. e., the Englishman, Scotchman, etc., got our wits 

 together before the coolies were among the hor- 

 nets. As I ran, I bad thought, " How are our chairs 

 to get past this? and won't it make trouble for 

 passers by?" But I supposed that the coolies had 

 seen the whole thing, and did not dream that they 

 would come running after us as they did. I had 

 been in China only a few weeks. When men, not 

 used to bees, are attacked by angry wasps, they are 

 not apt to see what is happening behind them; and 

 when at a safe distance I turned and saw the other 

 three still running, and the coolies rushing up from 

 the other side, it was too late to stop them. 



CHINESE SUPERSTITION; A DEMON. 



As I was writing on the above, in came the cook, 

 saying, "To-day they say, 'A demon! a demon!' 

 Two of the stone-masons were down at the small 

 river catching the duck that got away this morning, 

 and one of them is drowned." Hurrying to the 

 place, which is nearly half a mile away, T found that 

 the body had not been recovered, and began to 

 strip to swim to the place where the man had dis- 

 appeared; but the Chinese exclaimed, " There's a 

 demon in there!" All the more, of course, I swam 

 and waded about the place (but I can't dive). The 

 bottom of the stream was full of large angular 

 boulders from the cliffs above. I found nothing, 

 and neither did a boat which soon came up. Fear 

 of the water-demon made the Chinese rather ineffi- 

 cient; but just before dark the body itself drifted 

 down to shallow water and was recovered. 



Now, just a few minutes after that man sank, 

 three men on a long narrow raft of small timbers 

 floated slowly past, and were entreated to stop and 

 try to rescue him; but they would not. This was 

 not heartlessness, but superstition— fear of the 

 water-demon, which, they believed, had seized the 

 man; and when that hoat came, the first thing the 

 man on it did was not to search for the body, but to 

 chase and try to kill the poor duck, the " demon 

 duck " 1 heard it called, which had been the inno- 

 cent occasion of the misfortune. Yes, there was a 

 demon there, the demon of superstition. I some- 

 times say to the Chinese, " You are greatly afraid 

 of demons, and all the time are giving them free 

 access to your hearts." 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE FLYING OF INSECTS AND 

 BIRDS EXPLAINED. 



Why should the flapping up and down of a bird's 

 wings propel it forward? Many of us have seen a 

 boat propelled by working an oar back and forth at 

 the stern, and all our ocean steamers are driven 

 forward by a screw revolving in a plane at right 

 angles with the course of the ship. All three kinds 

 of propulsion— wings, sculling oars, and screw pro- 

 pellers—are different modifications of the same 

 thing, the inclined plane. Did you ever notice one 

 striking thing which characterizes the wings of all 

 flying things, whether bird, bat, or insect— namely, 

 that, while the stems of every thing else in nature 

 are placed centrally, wings are always more or less 



