1?6 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



and that honey trees shall be chosen when 

 practical. Page 114. 



C. H. Thies contemplates the dreary out- 

 look, and invokes alsike as the deliverer. 

 Page 113. 



Ed. Jolley advises fall stimulation to get 

 young bees, and so prevent spring dwind- 

 ling. Page .S4. May be its all right ; but I 

 have my doubts. 



Mr. Doolittle thinks the early willows yield 

 no honey — although he admits that the bees 

 operate as if they were getting honey. Page 

 87. I suspect that they get some, but usually 

 knead it all into the pollen pellets, so that 

 the honey sac is seldom found filled. The 

 later golden and white willows Mr. D. thinks 

 do furnish honey but no pollen. In the 

 opening of the March number he gives again 

 his well known method of building bees up 

 for an early harvest — excellent for many lo- 

 calities no doubt, and perhaps not so well 

 adapted to others Try it, and see if it pays. 

 He gives an interesting trial of ten colonies 

 in his own yard, half treated by his method, 

 and half let alone. Those let alone only 

 gave two-thirds as much surplus as the 

 others. 



John F. Gates thinks that if queen breed- 

 ers did not keep a white elephant of some 

 sort on hand their business would soon come 

 to an end. Page 52. 



THE GENERAL ROUND -UP 



The American Bee Journal (;523) brings 

 the matter of large versus small brood cham- 

 bers to a vote again in its question box. Of 

 22 respondents only about four are prompt 

 and decided for the small chamber. About 

 eight of them are undecided, or split up, or 

 at least they fail to make their position clear. 

 E. g. Mr. Doolittle, who says he would go in 

 again for the Gallup frame, but fails to tell 

 us how many of them. The remaining ten 

 respondents seem to be out strong for the 

 large chamber. The above seems to indicate 

 that in the racket of discussion, which has 

 been going on for a long time, the large hive 

 is getting much the best of it. I shall soon 

 be lonesome, I fear ; and I am smaller than 

 the smallest souled brother yet heard from 

 — seven Gallup frames for part of my hives, 

 and seven Langstroth frames for the rest. 

 But then if 1 patiently wait till the long pen- 

 dulum of public opinion has time to swing, 

 maybe I'll be right in town eventually. 

 Reckon I'll chance it for while yet. 



In Mr. Hutchinson's article in the Cosmo- 

 politan he has a very different task before 

 him from that which usually falls to the lot 

 of an apicultural writer, namely, to interest 

 and instruct those who know nothing about 

 bees except the surface indications and pop- 

 ular traditions. I think he does the work 

 well. Even the bee man need not go away 

 unfed for lack of food suited to him. Wit- 

 ness the following which tells about holding 

 queen cells up to a strong light, to estimate 

 when the queen will emerge. 



" The first movements are seen about twelve 

 hours before the queen bites her way out : and 

 there is something really impressive in watching 

 the first trembling movement of a wing or a 

 foot — tlie beginning of an awakening into con- 

 sciousness." 



But the editor " put a head on him," and 

 doubtless he feels it a wreath of thorns on 

 his brow — "the honey bee, his home, his 

 migrations, his habits of life, his business 

 methods, his storehouses, his food, etc." 

 Now, don't you know, I'm going to plead 

 for mitigation of the sentence of this editor. 

 To be sure it looks a little like poor rhetoric, 

 in which a permissible pronoun is rather 

 overworked ; but would exchanging the pro- 

 nouns for six "hers" be any better? Not 

 a bit. Making a parade of the feminine 

 pronoun, in regard to creatures whose sex is 

 utterly inconspicuous, and next door to non- 

 existent, would be still worse rhetoric. The 

 masculine gender is grammatically the ge- 

 neric gender, and may be used for any crea- 

 ture (except when there is occasion to em- 

 phasize sex) as a multitude of examples from 

 Scripture and English classics would readily 

 show. The Bible also uses the masculine 

 pronoun in the place of the neuter, when 

 possessive — does it abvays^not a single 

 " its " in all the Bible, except by printer's 

 error; always "his." The style which has 

 crept in among us of always speaking of the 

 bee as " she " brings to the educated reader 

 the puzzling and unpleasant sensation that 

 there must bo some reason for calling atten- 

 tion to the sex ; and yet no reason can be 

 discovered. Let us call the honey bee " she " 

 when she manifests she-ness, and "he" 

 when he manifests he-ness, and at other 

 times either he or it as the preference takes 

 us — and be shy of the stones, and keep in the 

 road. And whether a disposition to get into 

 one's hair is he-ness or she-ness — 'spects 

 that will be a nice and perpetual crow for us 

 to pick. You see, brethren, we have a righ 

 to settle our technical terms without regard 



