1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



975 



Thkre is a greater scarcitj^ of honey this 

 fall than we have ever known before. The 

 "bears" have been telling- of the great 

 quantities in storage. We can't find it at 

 ajiy price. 



How we shipped 500 colonies of bees in 

 Dovetailed hives, from Medina to Cuba, 

 without the loss of a single colotiy, and with 

 a very light loss in bees comparatively, will 

 be explained in our next issue with illus- 

 trations. 



Since our last issue Mr. Fred W. Muth, 

 of Cincinnati, son of the late C. F. Muth, 

 has seconded the nomination made by Her- 

 man F. Moore, of Chicago, for E. T. Ab- 

 bott, of St. Joseph, Mo., for General Man- 

 ater. In the meantime Mr. Abbott nomi- 

 nates Mr. G. W. Vangundy, of Utah; Wm. 

 A. Selser, of Pennsylvania; and Wm. Mc- 

 Evoy, of Ontario, Canada, for directors. 

 Mr. Homer Hyde nominates Mr. Udo Toep- 

 perwein of San Antonio, Texas, for the 

 same office. 



THE NOMENCLATURE OF FORCED SWARMS, 

 AGAIN. 



I HAVE been standing alone, apparently, 

 in favor of the word " shook " as applied 

 to a swarm, as being expressive and catchy 

 to indicate a certain kind of artificial pro- 

 cedure in making bees swarm at the con- 

 venience of the apiarist. In the Bee-keep- 

 ers^ Review for November, page 337, Editor 

 Hutchinson has this to say: 



Mr. E. F. Atwater, of Idaho, in writing to Glean- 

 ings .'-ays: 



"The expression 'shook swarms' is so expressive, 

 so catchy, a .d .^o popular, thnt it is here to stay, in 

 spite of grammatical rules and of Dr. Miller too." 



If the fraternity has a g ammatical critic it is Dr. 

 Miller. He keeps close watch and ti ies to have us 

 use correct language. This course is commendable. 

 I doubt if there is any one who is sorry that he does 

 this. 



Once a name or expre.ssion comes into u.se, it is well 

 nigh impossible to change it. For that reason we 

 ought to be caieful how we begin using either. About 

 as soon as anybody said " shook '' swarm, the doctor 

 took up the cudgel. In that he did his duty, but I fear 

 that Mr. Atwater has describid the situation mo t 

 perfectly. A term that is catchy and cxpre.>-sive is 

 bound to come into use, in spile of all protests from 

 grammarians. 



After all, " shook " swarms is not so bad. We might 

 say " shaken " sw rms, but it h.is an awkward sound, 

 and no one will use the expression. " Shook " swarm 

 is terse, expressive, and catchy, and I doubt if we can 

 do better than to adopt it 



I did think for awhile that we mi^ht call them 

 "bru-hed" swarms, but it .'-eems that, in the majority 

 of cases, they are not brushed, tl at they are shook, and 

 that there are good reasons fur the shaking. 



Mr BLardman suggests that we call them artificial 

 swarms Tliis term means too much: it is t ogeiieral; 

 it is lacking in defiiiitet;ess Artificial swarms are 

 made in other v ays than by s!-aking off the bees. To 

 be sure, a "shook"' swarm is artificial, but an artificial 

 swarm may not be a " shook " swarm. 



Mr. Root suggests the use of tne word " forced " 

 swarm It seems to me that this term is oi)en to the 

 same objections as artificial swarms. All swarming 

 that is not natural i^ forced or artificial, and we wish 

 for some term that will designae a swarm that has 

 beei formed by shaking off the bees. " Shook " cer- 

 tainly expresses it. and it is not so iingrammatical as 

 it might be. We simply take the word "shook " and 

 use it as an adjective; it may not be in the proper 

 tense, but. to me, the short, expressive, euphonious 

 make-up more than offsets the slight lapse of gram- 

 mar 



If anybody will suggest a better term, I'll be glad to 

 use it ; but at present I am going to say " shook " 

 swarms. 



THE NATIONAL CONVENTION AT DENVER. 



On Thursday afternoon we listened to a 

 paper from Mr. H. C. Morehouse, of Boul- 

 der, Col., the editor of the Rocky Mountain 

 Bee Journal, on the subject of Bee-keeping- 

 lessons that may be learned from the word 

 "locality." Locality, in the sense to which 

 we applied it to bee-keeping, meant environ- 

 ment. Webster, he explained, gave it the 

 meaning of geographical position; but in 

 bee-keeping- he would give it a much broad- 

 er meaning. Latitude, longitude, altitude, 

 soil, meteorological conditions, all had to 

 be considered. It was not till recently that 

 locility was recognized as an important 

 factor in bee culture. At first it was greet- 

 ed with derision; but now there was a tend- 

 ency toward the other extreme. All the 

 various puzzles of the bee-3'ard were now 

 broadly charged to locality. 



The first great lesson to be learned in 

 regard to locality was variation. The 

 speaker then went on to sa}' there was a 

 world-wide difference between New Eng- 

 land and Colorado; between Colorado and 

 Texas ; between Texas and California. 

 Altitude, soil, and climate had their effect. 

 A S3'stem that was suited to Southwest Tex- 

 as would not succeed at all in Southern Cal- 

 ifornia, or perhaps anywhere else outside 

 of Texas; and he ventured to assert that an 

 arrangement that would give the best re- 

 sults on the Western Slope, meaning West- 

 ern Colorado, would not insure the same 

 measure of success we had sometimes on 

 this side of the Rockies. In conclusion he 

 wished to emphasize the importance of every 

 bee-keeper becoming- thoroughly familiar 

 with his own localitj^ To do this was the 

 study and work of a lifetime. It was an 

 axiom that the man who did not understand 

 his locality was not a bee-keeper in the 

 twentieth-centurj' sense of the word. 



This excellent paper was responded toby 

 your humble servant; but as I have been 

 talking about locality for a year and a 

 half, covering mj' 6000 miles of travel, I 

 will not take space to go over the ground 

 again, even brieily. 



On Thursdaj' evening we listened to an 

 instructive address by Prof. C. P. Gillette, 

 of the Agricultural College, Fort Collins, 

 Col., on the subject of " The Outside and 

 Inside of the Honej'bee." This was ac- 

 companied b}' the stereopticon, and, like all 

 such lectures, it is practically impossible to 

 reproduce it on paper. The address was 

 exceptionally interesting — particularly' so 

 as the professor invited questions from time 



