78 



THF BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



but the rapid drying will not admit of its 

 being kept on hand long. Gleanings, 22. 



Dr. Miller, in Gleanings, 43, says a joint of 

 grass properly shaved down is better than a 

 quill tool to transfer larvte. Quite appro- 

 priate that a straw should recommend hay. 



Bee-keepers suffer a little persecution at 

 times an account of the favor they how to 

 sweet clover, which the general public is get- 

 ting a trifle frantic against, as an obstruc- 

 tion and eye-sore in the highways. Friend 

 Baldridge's tract, to show them that experi- 

 menters under government pay are doing 

 the same thing — well it mav not cure their 

 hostile views, but it is a good rod to draw 

 their lightning away from we'uns. 



■' Why not use a bee-escape to get the bees out 

 of those combs ? Too much lifting to put them 

 on ; and I don't think the bees can be got out of 

 the senond or middle story any way with an es- 

 cape.'' E. France, Gleanings, '45. 



As the three story method seems to be the 

 winning idea, the escape seems fated to 

 travel the road of the by and by with a lame 

 foot. 



And friend France gets in a good shot at 

 the current style of apicultural interviewing. 

 At the cost of many shekels run off a thou- 

 sand miles (or less) somewhere. But when 

 you get tliere no time to be shown anything, 

 on even to talk about anything, 'cause there's 

 only so many minutes to get started on the 

 next thousand miles. Most as bad in its way 

 as spending ten dollars to go and hear an 

 essay read. 



Fred. Craycraft, of Cuba, reinforces Dr. 

 Gallup, of California, about the practicabil- 

 ity of crowding out the swarming trouble. 



'■ Where there are a large number of colonies 

 (say 500) in (me place the bees do not get enough 

 honey during spriog and summer lo encourage 

 swarming to any extent ; and during the cam- 

 panula honey flow the bees aie never strong 

 enough to swann ; therefore it can be seen that 

 the swarming question can be eliminated, p. 48. 



Yes, the fact that Cuba's great honey har- 

 vest comes in the winter evidently makes it 

 possible to dodge swarming. But who will 

 furnish me with Cuban conditions by fast 

 freight ? And what will the price be ? 



According to Prof. Cook in Gleanings, 52. 

 Eucalyptus longifolia is the tree to plant for 

 honey in California. Blooms through No- 

 vember and December into January ; and is 

 very attractive to bees. A beautiful orna- 

 mental tree ; and it grows so rapidly that 

 they have a two-year-old that is seventeen 

 feet high (or was it seventeen miles ? I wish 

 to be accurate in these little matters ; and in 

 dealing with California one's sense of the 

 probable has to be renounced.) But anoth- 



er eucalyptus (there are a hundred of them) 

 kills bees by the gallon. Still another one, 

 of the guardian angel sort, plays the same 

 game on mosquitoes and microbes. But if 

 they keep on fooling with eucalypti until 

 the one that kills all people who tell big 

 stories, then, sir 



Almost afraid Prof. Cook is getting the 

 scientific frame of mind drawn out of him 

 by that exuberant climate — afeered if he 

 should get a crop of six or seven tons he'd 

 pronounce it sixty-seven tons too. 



Variety, variety ! Variety is the spice of 

 life ; and it seems it is the successful spice 

 of death, in the very important job of keep- 

 sng a bee cellar free of mice. Poisoned 

 cheese, poisoned mince meat, and poisoned 

 honey, and each put in fresh every few 

 weeks is the way friend Davenport recom- 

 mends. Gleanings, 53. By the way, is not 

 the honey spread a useless addition ? I have 

 kept piles of sections in a mouse infested 

 garret, with almost no damage. Naturally 

 I concluded that mice do not eat honey until 

 nearly starved to death. I once had some 

 partly grown,' mice get into a deep box where 

 they could not get out. A few sections of 

 honey were in there. The mice perished, 

 apparently of starvation, without having 

 eaten very much of it. Try bruised black 

 walnut meats instead of honey, or a nice jam 

 of pumpkin seed. No doubt about the mis- 

 chief mice do in eating bees, gnawing combs, 

 and keeping up a destructive disquiet. 



The Germans have a queer kink that bees 

 never carry eggs or larv;e about. The fact 

 that French and American authorities take 

 the affirmative seems to serve as negative 

 evidence to them. Ernest mixes in to the 

 effect that he has seen a bee carying an egg 

 — but he neglected to follow on and see 

 whether the egg was used for lunch, or queen 

 rearing, or what. Gleanings, 88. 



And Mr. Doolittle is actually yielding a 

 little to the lean location tactics of less hon- 

 ey in the hive for winter. He tells us {Glean- 

 ings, 101) that he recently let his bees go into 

 the winter with 18 pounds for out doors and 

 12 for the cellar. This was with the intent 

 to feed them in the spring ; but most of 

 them did not get fed at all. I go quite a bit 

 below 18 pounds rather than feed in fall — 

 but then I am a hardened old offender. 



Mrs. Atchley halts the statement that the 

 bees of a five- bander queen, mated to a 

 black drone, cannot be told from pure three- 

 banders. Always some black children in 



