MARCH 15. 1915 



219 



Dr. C. C. MiUer 



;teay steaws i^^^^m. 



Tin-: winter with its blanket of 

 snow has been fine for white clo- 

 ver, but I'm afraid of the present 

 daily thaw (March 1) with the 

 thermometer at 25 or 30 deiiTees 

 each night. 



WuEN ] read of the wonderful woik 

 Billy Sunday is doing, I feel i:u'oud to think 

 that I live in ]\Iarengo, one of the very first 

 places he visited with a series of meetings 

 when he started out on his remarkable 

 career. I believe heartily in Billy Sunday. 



TnK Prairie Farmer, Feb. 13, contains 

 seven articles in reply to inquiries about 

 sweet clover, occupying nearly two pages, 

 and it isn't a special sweet-clover number 

 either. One man in Illinois contemplates 

 sowing seven acres in sweet clover, another 

 forty. That " weed " surely seems coming 

 to the front. 



Beks never had less attention from me 

 in winter before. First part of winter was 

 so cold the outside door could be kept near- 

 ly shut all the time. Of late, with 25 de- 

 grees at night outdoors and 35 daytime, I 

 leave open, day and night, the door opening 

 from outside into the furnace-room, and 

 daytime I keep shut the door between fur- 

 nace-room and bee-room. That takes the 

 bee-room down to 48 through the night, and 

 up t-o 55 daytime. Not ideal, but not so 

 very bad. 



" Oily waste," says Editor Bixby, West- 

 ern Honey Bee, February-, p. 5, " is excel- 

 lent to start the smoker witli . . . but it 

 burns out to a fine impalpable soot that 

 blows out of the smoker on to the comb. I 

 spoiled several sections of comb honey while 

 experimenting with it." Don't know how 

 that is here; but my assistant has a notion 

 it makes the bees cross. [We use the oily 

 waste all the time, and cannot see that the 

 bees are any crosser than they should be. 

 May be they are used to it. — Ed.] 



Double telescope covers are warmer than 

 single-board covers, according to page 90, 

 but some will object to their weight. To 

 such let me commend covers like mine, with 

 dead-air space — light as single-board cov- 

 ers, and much warmer. [But they are not 

 heavier. They are made of two separate 

 pieces — a super-cover and a telescope cover. 

 This makes it possible to use packing mate- 

 rial between in cool or cold weather. A 

 two-piec« cover takes a little more time to 

 handle, and may not be as handy as yours. 

 But yours you cannot pack. — Ed.] 



In America it is the general belief, I 

 think, that, taken all in all, sugar is just as 

 good as honey for bee-food. In Europe 

 there is more of a belief that sugar is de- 

 ficient as a substitute, and some even go so 

 far as to believe that feeding sugar is to 

 blame more or less for failure of the har- 

 vest. The subject is of so much importance 

 that 1 may be excused for again referring 

 to some things said in back numbers of the 

 German bee-journals; for if the Germans 

 are right we are wrong, and we may do 

 well to find it out. Their argument is this: 

 Besides invert sugar, honey contains pollen, 

 ethereal oil, tannin, malate, tartrate, oxa- 

 late, and nitrate of potassa, different phos- 

 phates, manganese, natron, silica, sulphur, 

 lime, iron. These things are necessary in 

 the makeup of a bee's body; and although 

 sugar may answer as a heating material in 

 winter, when it comes to supplying material 

 for rearing brood and to repair the waste 

 of mature bees in activity, honey, and not 

 sugar, is the thing needed. So it comes to 

 pass that when sugar is used in spring bees 

 are slow to build up, and attain full vigor 

 only when the harvest is well along and 

 bees are present that have been reared on 

 real honey. Are the Germans right or are 

 we? 



Frightful indeed is the statement, p. 

 212, that 4.45 per cent of the American 

 population are drug-users. Well, it's not 

 as dark an outlook as it might be. For not 

 ten hours before I read that statement the 

 new federal regulating act went into effect 

 that has struck terror to the hearts of both 

 vendors and users of cocaine, heroin, etc. 

 In the Chicago Herald a dispatch dated 

 Springfield, 111., Feb. 28, says: "Pathetic 

 pleas received by Gov. Dunne from ' dope 

 fiends ' who threaten suicide unless they are 

 given aid in procuring drugs after their 

 supply is cut off by the federal regulating 

 act, which goes into effect at midnight, have 

 brought home to the state administration 

 the suffering the new law Avill bring to 

 thousands in Illinois." Each writer asserts 

 tliat he has been a habitual user of drugs 

 for years, has tried to quit and cannot, and 

 asks the state to furnish specified drugs in 

 gradually diminishing doses, with the cer- 

 tainty that if this request is not complied 

 with there is nothing left but death. Like- 

 ly, iiowever, when they find they can't get 

 the dope they'll manage to rub along with- 

 out it. Even if they should all commit 

 suicide it might be a cheap price to pay 

 for shutting off the further crop of victims. 



