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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 



Over ten thousund bushels of alfalfa seed will be 

 shipped from Garden City this year. Now, this 

 clover (as it is sometimes called) is in bloom from 

 May 10th until in November. We always cut four 

 crops of hay per year from it, and quite frequently 

 five, depending- entirely as to whether we have an 

 early or late spring. From the time we cut the first 

 crop in the spring until winter comes on, our alfalfa 

 is ready to cut every thirty days, and we get from 

 seven to ten tons per acre during the season. Un- 

 like red clover, alfalfa, when once set, is good for 

 all time. So long as we irrigated it, it became 

 thicker every year; and if a person were handling 

 bees there would be no trouble in having a continu- 

 ous bloom from them from May 10th until in Novem- 

 ber, which, it seems to me, would certainly pay 

 well. 



From those who have experience, I hope we shall 

 hear more through your excellent paper, as to the 

 quality of honey and the amount that can be made 

 from alfalfa bloom; and if it is profitable, we shall 

 hope for some one who has had experience in the 

 business to bring some bees here and utilize the 

 sweetness we are each year wasting. 



In Finney County we have alfalfa fields ranging 

 from 50 to 350 acres. The hay is used to feed stock. 

 Alfalfa hay will fatten cattle about as well as corn, 

 and is much cheaper, and requires less work than 

 corn, even in the best corn countries. We winter 

 our hogs on alfalfa hay and water. They will eat it 

 as well as cattle will eat timothy hay, and keep in 

 good stock shape on it. We can run ten head of 

 hogs per acre on green alfalfa, and make nine- 

 months-old pigs weigh from 200 to 225 pounds. 

 Many of our farmers are using their whole farms in 

 alfalfa and hogs, cutting only enough hay to winter 

 the brood sows. While in all these ways alfalfa can 

 be used, yet the part the bees utilize goes to waste. 

 Let us have some apiaries here. Good alfalfa land 

 under irrigation is cheap— can be purchased from 

 $6 25 to $12.00 per acre, owing to location. Alfalfa 

 seed is worth $3.00 per bushel. One bushel of seed 

 will sow three acres. It costs from $1.00 to $1.25 

 per acre to irrigate during the whole season, so 

 that, at a cost of about $1800, 160 acres could be set 

 in alfalfa for bees, and at much less expense, if the 

 party does his own plowing and sowing; or if the 

 party does not desire to purchase land and go into 

 the alfalfa business, let him bring his bees to gath- 

 er the honey from the alfalfa already growing. 

 Surely no one will object. 



Now, Mr. Editor, I hope you will excuse me for 

 having introduced myself to you in such along 

 article; but I felt like writing this much, for I am 

 interested in this subject; and if you consider this 

 worthy a place in your paper, I shall be pleased. 



Permit me to say, I am wonderfully well pleased 

 with your publication, both for the many useful 

 suggestions it gives— the general information with 

 which it abounds, and especially am I well pleased 

 with its high moral tone. A. ('. McKeeveb. 



Garden City, Kan., Nov. 16, 1889. 



Friend M., we'are very glad indeed to get 

 the facts yon furnish us. It is going to be a 

 pretty hard matter for me to make a trip to 

 Arizona, at least very soon. But I could 

 skip down to your locality with but compar- 

 atively little trouble. The first thing, how- 

 ever, is to find some live bee-keeper in your 

 vicinity, and have him give this matter a 

 careful test. Come, friends, ye who hail 



from the locality mentioned, stand up and 

 tell us what you know about it. During my 

 trip to California I was constantly on the 

 lookout for alfalfa. Perhaps it was not the 

 right time of year. For some reason I have 

 never yet seen one solid field of alfalfa of 

 even 25 acres. If so, I did not know it. 



OUR HOMES. 



AN INTERESTING ARTICLE FROM THE PEN OF T. B. 

 TERRY, WHICH EVERY FATHER AND MOTH- 

 ER SHOULD READ. 



fRIEND ROOT:— Our minister called on us last 

 Sunday for aid to establish a good reading- 

 room for the boys and young men who hang 

 around town nights. He didn't put it in just 

 those words, but that is the truth of it; it is 

 for the idle young men who hang around the stores 

 and saloons evenings. This matter has been run- 

 ning in my mind all the week. It has seemed to 

 me that prevention would be a thousand times bet- 

 ter than the cure in this case. There should be no 

 call for a young men's reading-room in a little 

 town the size of this, where almost every one is 

 comfortably well off. There should be no occasion 

 to fix up a pleasant room to try to draw the boys in 

 and keep them from the saloons and other such 

 places. 



How should we manage to prevent it? Why, in 

 the first place by making home the brightest and 

 most cheerful place possible, and providing good 

 books and papers suitable for the boys and young 

 men as well as the older people. I think we ought 

 to study to do this, and to encourage the young 

 folks to have their mates visit them and have a 

 good time at their own homes. Then I would, from 

 the very beginning, never allow a boy to run around 

 town nights. Pray tell me why he should any more 

 than his sister? No decent girls ever hang around 

 the saloons and shops and stores. Such a thing is 

 never thought of. Wouldn't we have thought our 

 minister crazy if he had wanted help to fit up a 

 reading-room for girlsf Is a boy any better able to 

 stand temptation than a girl? 



It is beyond a doubt a duty required of us par- 

 ents to keep our boys at home nights; but it is hard 

 to do this, entirely against their wills; therefore as 

 a help I would make home pleasant— so pleasant 

 that it would require but very slight authority to 

 keep them there— often, perhaps, none at all. I re- 

 member once visiting at a farmhouse where the 

 mother expressed much anxiety because her only 

 son went to town nearly every night. They were 

 moderately well-to-do farmers. But I could hardly 

 blame that bright son for wanting to get away from 

 the place where he ate and slept. Wasn't it a good 

 house? Oh, yes! quite good, and well furnished; 

 but it was wretchedly warmed and lighted, and 

 there wasn't a book or a paper that any boy would 

 care to look at. They cut their wood each day, 

 from hand to mouth; lived around the cook-stove, 

 mostly, and had one poor little lamp burning that 

 hardly gave more light than a candle. This partic- 

 ular case interested me a good deal. I remarked to 

 the mother: "That is a nice new carpet you have 

 in your best room. " 



"Oh, no!" she said; "we have had that twenty 

 years! " 

 Do you know what thoughts came to my mind? 



