140 



THE BEE-KEEPERS REVIEYi^ . 



The same may be said of the observation 

 that the colonies immediately facing a ma- 

 laria-breeding slough, and those standing in 

 a slight depression of the ground, suffered 

 more than the better located ones in the 

 yard. Worth our while to look a little out 

 for these things. By the way, paralysis is 

 not the only thing which a few inches de- 

 pression in the ground affects unfavorably. 

 I think a good many of us have noticed that 

 hives so located do not winter quite as well. 



I'm greatly afraid B. Taylor's line of ar- 

 gument about the development of bees (Re- 

 view 93) has an ugly lot of truth in it. 

 Lion as a hunter can be developed by man 

 only retrogressively. Condor as a high flier 

 can be " histed a peg lower," but not sent up 

 another hundred feet. Bee as a hustler after 

 honey has already been developed so exquis- 

 itely that all our efforts to radically change 

 its nature will prove damaging. In some 

 things nature has already gone to the 

 " Ultima Thule.'^ The utmost we can do 

 is to keep her there ; and it takes lots of 

 wholesome letting alone to do even that. 

 Cold, wet-blanketty talk, sure enough ; but 

 I'm afraid it's so. 



Mr. Taylor also reports four cellar-placed 

 colonies, with everything right as far as 

 could be seen, but bees all dead. They dif- 

 fer from the live ones simply in being " im- 

 proved " five-banded stock. Lend us a pin 



to stick there, somebody. Knowing 



smile, of the "told you so " species, from 

 Mr. Alley. 



Very seductively Charles Norman pleads 

 for queens from the egg, instead of queens 

 from 3G hour larvae, on page 9(). 



" Queen larvaj which are but a day old are 

 larger than worker larvae of the same age." 



If this is true it weighs more than a good 

 deal of chemical fuddling with tiny atoms 

 of different foods, and more than the queen 

 breeder's " inner light." And we should be 

 a little bit slow about saying that it makes 

 no difference how the first 30 hours of the 

 queen's life are passed. 



THE GENERAL ROUND -UP. 



I praised friend McEvoy too soon for his 

 success in avoiding scenes and quarrels in 

 the performance of his very delicate and 

 important duties. The hornet's nest was 

 perforated. Big one. See American Bee 

 Journal, 174 and 237. 



Considering the way we have been riled up 

 by the publication of advertisements of Apis 



Dorsata, the American Bee-Keeper does a 

 very timely thing by giving us an article 

 about them by the one American best posted 

 —Frank Benton. A. B. K., 81. 



Hello ! The A. B. K. adulterates its fam- 

 ily reading with apicultural information. 

 Prices of honey and other articles in the first 

 century. Don't know how authentic the 

 thing is ; and the absolute prices are worth 

 little or nothing, owing to the great change 

 that has taken place in the supply of silver ; 

 but the comparison of different articles is 

 instructive. Pound for pound honey was 

 one-third higher than butter. (Ought to be 

 27 cents now, according to that.) Well up 

 toward twice as high as cheese ; and four 

 times as high as tallow. The latter guide 

 would make honey 20 cents per pound now. 

 A.B.K., 101. 



Thanks to Dr Miller for his correction of 

 my inference that the old theory of the 

 queen's impregnation was being abandoned. 

 I'll withdraw the statement for repairs — re- 

 marking ad interim that it seems to me that 

 the new theory is the more sensible, and ac- 

 counts for the open every day facts better. 

 By the way, are not those German wise 

 heads like the rest of learned humanity, dis- 

 inclined to formally admit any change, even 

 when materially recanstructing their theo- 

 ries on the sly ? Wouldn't do to confess 

 that they didn't know it all yesterday, lest 

 some one might suspect them of not know- 

 ing it all to-day. It is wandering from bees, 

 I admit, but I am tempted to say a word 

 about one of the greatest of very recent dis- 

 coveries, the discovery of argon— the "hand- 

 kerchief hid in plain sight " which puts the 

 chemistry of the last hundred years in dis- 

 grace. Quite a large percentage of what 

 was supposed to be nitrogen in the air is not 

 nitrogen at all, but a totally different gas, 

 unknown hitherto, and Argon is its name. 

 Less than a year ago two men stood up and 

 faced the scientific scoffs of pretty much the 

 whole world, which were called out by the 

 statement of these facts — and in three 

 months' time had the satisfaction of seeing 

 everybody down on marrow-bones, confess- 

 ing the humiliating truth. Many had no- 

 ticed that nitrogen obtained from the air had 

 a different specific gravity from that ob- 

 tained by means of chemicals (argon is 

 much heavife-r than nitrogen) but only just 

 recently, it would seem, has any one res- 

 olutely taken hold to find out why. 



