E 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



3 



EDITORIAL 



WE HAVE on file a large number of un- 

 satisfied complaints against the Pelican Api- 

 aries Company of 

 Complaints New Orleans, La., 



Against whose advertise - 



Advertisers. ment we carried in 



April and May of 

 this year; and against the J. E. Marchant 

 Bee & Honey Company of Columbus, Ga., 

 whose advertisement we carried two years 

 ago. We have written to these parties a 

 number of times, but have failed to get 

 satisfactory replies; and therefore we feel 

 it a duty to advise our readers, before re- 

 mitting any money with their orders, first 

 to ascertain if these firhis can and will fill 

 their orders. 



THE EDITOE SAYS it seems good to get 

 home again. While California is beautiful 

 and the climate de- 

 Back Home lightful, good old 

 Again. Ohio with its beau- 

 tiful green shade 

 trees and green fields was never more ap- 

 preciated than now. Much of California is 

 dry and brown, especially in the summer 

 time. All of the East or east of the Mis- 

 sissippi is green. 



The editor no more than gets home than 

 up and off he goes again — this time to the 

 North and far East. More anon. 



California again — yes, we are expecting 

 to go back for the month of December and 

 perhaps longer. There is also a long and 

 loud call from the great Northwest. 



ON ACCOUNT of the shortage of sugar re- 

 ported elsewhere, we have been conducting 

 some experiments 



New Orleans 

 -^= ; :\ Molasses for 

 ! Feeding Bees. 



in feeding molas- 

 ses. We bought a 

 barrel of New Or- 

 leans. The stuff 

 tastes sweet and is sweet; but the bees 

 won't touch it, even when it is smeared all 

 over the frames and the combs. In one 

 case where the bees were trying to rob, we 

 smeared some of this New Orleans molasses 



on the front of the hive — presto, good-bye 

 robbers! Thev can't stand even the smell 

 of it. 



There are other brands of table syrups 

 that the bees will take, and in the mean- 

 time some of you may be able to get brown 

 sugar. If so, you will find it a very good 

 substitute for granulated white sugar. 



THE STOKY TOLD in another column about 

 Harry R. Warren will seem to some like a 

 fairy tale. Some of 

 Locality — the old beekeepers 



What It Means. of the country will, 

 perhaps, say that 

 there is something wrong, or that Warren 

 could secure as good or better results with 

 less labor. All such should remember that 

 localities in the United States vary so much 

 that what works well in one place might not 

 work in another. Furthermore, the editor 

 once believed that bee behavior was the 

 same all over the United States. He is re- 

 minded again of the question asked by Josh 

 Billings — ' ' What 's the use of knowin ' so 

 much when so much you know ain't so?'' 

 Or, to put it more exactly, bee behavior is so 

 much modified by locality that one is almost 

 forced to forget what he once knew back 

 in the East and learn his A B C of beekeep- 

 ing all over again. It takes years for even 

 a good beeman to learn his locality; and this 

 is particularly so in the great West. 



Some of the fundamental principles that 

 work well in the East will not work in the 

 West. Take the case of swarming. The 

 rules that apply to that particular bugaboo 

 of the beekeeper of the East and some parts 

 of the West utterly fail in some localities 

 in the West. In some places the bees just 

 will not swarm, apparently; or, to put it 

 more exactly, there is no swarming problem, 

 simply for the reason that the bees do not 

 swarm and do not want to swarm during 

 flows of honey. In the spring the bees will 

 swarm, but not enough to bother the oper- 

 ator, and yet perhaps 50 or 100 miles away 

 the swarming problem is serious. 



On account of the varied conditions of the 

 different localities, there is a heavy handi- 

 cap in migratory beekeeping, because the 

 migratory fellows find they have something 



