1124 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 15 



but what you do state on the label must be ac- 

 curate, and not in the least misleading. You 

 must not decei\e the consumer. 



the piping would be useless, which is not likely. 

 Bees do not care for the sounds we make. The 

 sounds we produce are probably too coaise. 



SETTLERS ARE WANTED. 



Uncle Sam wants settlers on irrigation projects. 

 For the Salt River Valley project apply for fur- 

 ther information to Louis C. Hill, Supervising 

 Engineer, Phoenix, Arizona. For the Klamath 

 project, in Oregon, apply to William H. Heile- 

 man, Engineer, Klamath Falls, Oregon. For the 

 Truckee-Carson project, in Nevada, apply to 

 Thomas H. Means, Engineer, Fallon, Nevada. 

 For the Yuma, Arizona, project, apply to Fran- 

 cis L. Sellew, Engineer, Yuma, Arizona. 

 # 



THE GLUCOSE QUESTION NOT DEAD. 



The pure-food officials have an association of 

 their own which they term Association of State 

 and National Food and Dairy Departments. 

 This year it had its convention at Mackinac Is- 

 land, Michigan. Among other things which 

 the meeting did was to pass a set of resolutions 

 severely condemning Secretary of Agriculture 

 Wilson for holding up the operation of the na- 

 tional pure-food law in certain cases. They do 

 not blame President Roosevelt at all; in fact, 

 the latter setms to blame Secretary Wilson for 

 lending a too sympathetic ear to the wail of cer- 

 tain corporations. It is pretty plain, from all 

 that has been said, that they had the glucose 

 decision in mind, and they are not at all pleased 

 at the outcome of it. In any case, a paper which 

 is published by the glucose and whisky interests 

 rushes to the defense of Mr. Wilson. It is evi- 

 dent the glucose decision will not be allowed to 

 rest very long. The Association intends to have 

 all the States pass a uniform pure-food law al- 

 most simultaneously. It will be more stringent 

 than the national law. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH BEES. 



Lord Avebury, who presided over the Franco- 

 British Congress of Bee-keepers in London, made 

 a very interesting address on the subject of bees 

 to the assembled bee-keepers. Of course, what 

 he had to say was interesting because it was most- 

 ly original. When he was still Sir John Lub- 

 bock he issued his famous "Ants, Bees, and 

 Wasps," which gained him much fame as a stu- 

 dent of bee habits and lite. His address was 

 largely a continuation of that book, recounting 

 his experiences with bees in trying to discover 

 whether or not they hear or can distinguish 

 colors. 



On the latter subject his experiment was con- 

 vincing. He said, "After the bees had returned 

 twice 1 transposed the papers. She returned to 

 the old spot, and was just going to alight when 

 she observed the change in color, pulled herself 

 up, and without a moment's hesitation darted off 

 to the blue. No one who saw her at that mo- 

 ment could have had the slightest doubt about 

 her perceiving the difference between the two col- 

 ors. " He also related his experiments with re- 

 gaid to bees heating, but I do not believe his ex- 

 periments are convincing. I do not doubt that 

 bees hear. Anybody who has paid much atten- 

 tion to the piping of queens must have come to 

 the conclusion that bees do hear. Oihtr^ise 



BEES ON THE HEATHER BLOOM. 



This is the season of all seasons with many 

 European bee-keepers, for the heath or heather 

 is now in bloom, and thousands of bee-keepers 

 have their apiaries located right in the midst of 

 the bloom, the better to secure a crop of honey. 

 For many of them it must be an arduous under- 

 taking to send their bees uite a distance from 

 home. But there is money in it. Some keep 

 their hives on house-wagons all the year round, 

 ready to move at a moment's notice. The Ger- 

 man and Austrian wandering bee-keepers have a 

 powerful organization of their own, protecting 

 their interests. 



We too might have something of the kind if 

 we had the heather. No one seems to have the 

 enterprise to introduce it. There are places on 

 the Catskill and Shangunk Mountains where it 

 might succeed if given a fair start. Probably 

 in Western Oregon and Washington, in peaty 

 marshes, it would stand a fair chance of succeed- 

 ing, and possibly at high altitudes in the Rock- 

 ies — that is to say, at ^000 feet and over, where 

 the soil is peaty and the rainfall sufficient. 



THE ALFALFA KING. 



Not long ago a number of the agricultural 

 journals of this country announced to the world 

 that Mr. R. E. Smythe, of Sherman, Texas, was 

 the alfalfa king of the world, with a total area of 

 1400 acres; but Mr. T. J. McKeon, of Argen- 

 tina, in a letter to Hoard's Dairyman, very ef- 

 fectually disposes of that claim. He instances 

 the record of General Julio A. Roca, twice piesi- 

 dent of the Argentine Republic, who has 192,000 

 acres in alfalfa, or 300 square miles. Messrs. 

 Salaberry, Labor, and Bercetche, of Cordoba, 

 have nearly 100,000 acres more, and La Ger- 

 mania Estancio Land Co. about 110,000. There 

 are also many who own large areas planted in al- 

 falfa far excelling the Texas man. Mr. McKeon 

 himself claims to have ten times as much as Mr. 

 Smythe, and is now putting down 4800 acres 

 additional. This looks like great news for the 

 bee-keepers, for in South America the cattle are 

 allowed to graze on the alfalfa almost the year 

 round. In Chili and Peru there are also vast 

 areas set aside for alfalfa. As a matter of fact, 

 the culture of alfalfa in this country is only in its 

 infancy, and in time we shall see similar areas in 

 this country, notably so in Texas and California. 



ALFALFA I.N THE TROPICS. 



There is an impression abroad that alfalfa will 

 not grow in the tropics; but as a matter of fact it 

 grows to perfection in Peru, a strictly tropical 

 country. It was from Peru the seed was intro- 

 duced into the United States. But it rather likes 

 a hot, dry, semi-arid country, and would prob- 

 ably succumb in a steaming, moist lowland 

 country. The writer has seen it growing in Gren- 

 ada, one of the most southern of the West India 

 islands. The editor of the Journal of the Jamai- 

 ca Agricultural Society thinks it would grow in 

 Jamaica, if given a fair chance, and he is prob- 



