48 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 15 



[If this is true, and I believe it is, then the 

 experiment of Mr. Doolittle reg-arding- those 

 four colonies wherein the shortest-tong'ued 

 bees g-athered the most honey proves noth- 

 ing-. Prof. Gillette's measurements of those 

 bees were for tong-ue leti^ih — or at least 

 that is so reported in Doolittle's article. It 

 is possible and even probable that those 

 short-tong-ued bees were not really short 

 but long- reach bees. This only emphasizes 

 the fact that tongue measurement ought to 

 be confined to tongue reach, and that by 

 some sort of g-lossometer that will g-ive the 

 measurements for a whole colony and not 

 for a few bees. — Ed.] 



The uncapping -fork, heretofore, has 

 been mentioned only in terms of praise. 

 Now L^Abcille seems to prefer the knife, 

 because with it inequalities of the surface 

 may be cut down so as to make the combs 

 of uniform thickness, and the knife is also 

 needed to remove burr-combs. [While on 

 my western tour I saw considerable ex- 

 tracting- in a wholesale way, and I am very 

 sure that the fork could not be used in place 

 of the knife. It is the general practice to 

 space the combs in supers 1'2 to 1^4 from 

 center to center. This, of course, makes 

 very thick extracting - combs. They are 

 then sliced down to from % to one inch in 

 thickness, leaving sharp clean-edged cells 

 so that nearly all the honey can readily 

 flow out by centrifugal force. But from the 

 experience I have had with forks, combs, 

 and brushes, I could do no better than to 

 make the edges of the cells very ragged. 

 The result would be that it would be very 

 difficult to throw the honej'^ out of them, es- 

 pecially when many cells are onlj^ partly 

 opened. — Ed.] . 



You WANT ME, Mr. Editor, to make war 

 against what was formerly ungrammatical 

 but is now accepted as good usage. Not I. 

 When a thing becomes accepted as good 

 usage it is grammatical, and I don't pro- 

 pose to fight grammatical expressions. 

 I've no call to go back to past generations 

 and fight them for admitting some words 

 and usages into good society that possibly 

 ought not to have been admitted. I've more 

 than I can do to fig-ht stubborn editors that 

 will insist in defending expressions that 

 are not now grammatical, never have been 

 grammatical, and I hope never will be 

 grammatical. Now are you " shook " 

 enough? ["Nixie." But say; how can a 

 word be grammatical when it violates all 

 present rules of grammar? Accepted usage 

 may give a word respectability in litera- 

 ture; but how could it make it grammati- 

 cal, present or future, if it was not so in the 

 present or past? I suppose this is one of 

 the things we shall have to fight out when 

 we get together. — Ed.] 



Reidenbach, according to Leipzig. Bztg., 

 has been making some very careful investi- 

 gfations as to the comparative size of cells 

 in new and old combs. Like others, he 

 finds the cell-walls remain thin, although 

 in very old comb the septum may be J to t 



inch thick. To get at the contents of the 

 cells, a novel plan was used, although a 

 very common-sense one. He carefully mea- 

 sured the amount of water each cell would 

 contain. A cell in freshly built natural 

 worker comb he found to contain .28 cubic 

 centimeter, yet on the edge of new comb out 

 of which brood had already emerged he 

 found cells containing only .20. In old 

 combs with septum \ to \ inch thick, the 

 centents never fell below .20, but in most 

 cases the measurement was .25. [In other 

 words, there is scientific proof to show that 

 the diameter of the cells of honej'-comb does 

 not become less through age. We have 

 known, however, that the depth of the cells 

 varied; but this does not make shorter bees, 

 because the cells at the start are longer 

 than is necessary. As I have before stat- 

 ed, Nature would not make such a tremen- 

 dous blunder as to make smaller bees. All 

 species have a tendencj^ to remain the same 

 size. — Ed.] 



I arise to remark that " in this locality " 

 no stock whatever is taken in the belief that 

 length of tongue is a mere incident in red- 

 clover queens. It's an essentiiil of the most 

 essential character. You may have all the 

 other characteristics j^ou like, and if you 

 haven't length of tongue you'll never get 

 the nectar out of red clover. Just tell me, 

 if you please, Mr. Editor, how you're ever 

 going to get the nectar out of the bot- 

 tom of a 20-hundredth tube with a 19- 

 hundredth tongue reach. [You can not, 

 of course; but if one colony would gather 

 twice as much honey as another one whose 

 bees had longer reach, then I would take 

 those bees that got the honey somehow. 

 Suppose here is a colony whose bees have 

 an average tongue reach of .19; and sup- 

 pose, ag-ain, that one-half of all the corolla- 

 tubes of the red clover in the field are .20 

 deep and over. Is it not possible that the 

 .19 reach of bees might get all the nectar 

 from the tubes .19 and under, while the .20 

 reach bees would get onlj^ one quarter of 

 the hone}' available to them- I still think 

 that length of tongue should be considered 

 of secondary importance, and that the abil- 

 it}' to get honey by some meayis should be 

 the first consideration. — Ed.] 



Blu-tering .'■torms with chilling breath 



Howl around the door; 

 Winter conies with all his hosts 



From the icy arctic shore. 



BRITISH BEE JOURNAL. 



Quoting from Science Sif tings we learn : 



Few people know that honey possesses great value 

 as a food on account of its ease of digestion ; for which 

 reason it is especially desirable for those with weak- 



