226 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apr. 15 



GLEANINGS FROM OUR 

 EXCHANGES 



By W. K. Morrison, Me' ina, O. 



Those who desire to keep well informed in re- 

 gard to irrigated lands in the West can hardly 

 do better than subscribe for Ranch and Range, 

 Denver, Col. 



A new bee-journal has made its appearance at 

 Kiev, Russia. It is entitled The Bee-Ueper of the 

 Ukraine. Kiev is Mr Titoff's headquarters, and 

 doubtless his presence had something to do with it. 



The Federal Independent Bee-keeper, in its Jan- 

 uary issue, mentions the New Zealand flax-plant 

 as a great yielder of honey. I hope to see the 

 day when this valuable plant will be successful- 

 ly introduced into the United States. 



Many Gleanings readers reside in fopical 

 countries where literature in regard to farming is 

 scarce. For them we can recommend the Jour- 

 nal d 'Agriculture Tropicale, 164 Jeanne-d'Arc 

 prolonged, Paris, France. It talces in a wide 

 sweep of the agricultural horizon It gives very 

 accurate accounts of the beeswax and honey mar- 

 kets in Europe. It has fine reviews of books on 

 tropical agriculture. 



In L'Apiculteur for March, Mr. Alin Caillas 

 has an excellent article on the radio-activity of 

 honey. He is the official chemist of the French 

 bee-keepers' association, and ought to know what 

 he is writing about. He says that Madame Cu- 

 rie has stated that honey examined by her was 

 radio-active; and as radium has already proved 

 itself very potent in the treatment of lupus and 

 cancer, Mr. Caillas thinks this will increase the 

 consumption of honey. 



A NEW BEE-JOURNAL. 



With the title of Revue Francaise d' Apiculture 

 a new bee journal has recently made its appear- 

 ance at Marseilles, France, it is a monthly, and 

 is published by the beekeepers' association, tak- 

 ing in the territory around the mouth of the 

 Rhone. As it is published in a fine bee coun- 

 try, and under good auspices, it ought to succeed 

 in carving a niche in the temple of fame. France 

 has something like thirty bee journals at present. 

 4^ 



PROFESSOR GASTON BONNIER. 



By the death of Monsieur. Giard, the presiden- 

 cy of the French bee-keepers' association became 

 vacant a short time ago. Luckily the French had 

 some big timber handy, so they elected the fa- 

 mous Sorbonne professor, Gaston Bonnier, to the 

 president's chair. Undoubtedly he is the best- 

 known writer on bees now living; besides, he is 

 well known in the botanical and zoological world 

 by his books on these studies. He is the profes- 

 sor-in-chief of the natural-history department of 

 the normal school attached to the Sorbonne (Uni- 

 versity of Paris). 



With his uncle George de Layens, also a pro- 

 fessor at the same university, he wrote the com- 



prehensive bee book, " Cours complet d'Apicul- 

 ture" (A Complete Course in Bee-keeping), a 

 standard French work which has had a large sale, 

 and has been translated into other languages — 

 notably the Spanish, Italian, and Russian. 



Either by himself or in conjunction with his 

 uncle (now dead) he has published a number of 

 other books. A complete botany of France is a 

 joint work. A feature of it is, that all bee-flow- 

 ers are marked. By himself he got up the "New 

 Flora," which contains 2028 photos of plants to 

 aid in identification. He has another on the 

 " Nectaries," which describes in a brilliant man- 

 ner the nectar-secreting organs of plants. This 

 originally appt-a^ed as a paper inserted in the An- 

 nals of the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1879, but is 

 now published in book form. 



Mr. Bonnier's strong points are physiological 

 botany and evolution One might readily judge 

 this by the titles of some of his book". One, for 

 example, is the '^ Enchainment of the Organisms^ 

 One of his recent essays, which wa? at once cop- 

 ied into several languages, is "Organized An- 

 archy among Bees. " Mr. Rudyard Kipling tried 

 to comt^at the effects ot this article by one of his 

 own; but as Mr. Kipling knows naught about 

 bees, little attention was paid to it. Mr. Bon- 

 nier, on the other hand, has prubably done more 

 to discover how bees divide up their work t^>an 

 any living man. Moreover, he has a fine apiary 

 of his own at the bee-keepers' school, and also 

 an apicultural laboratory in connection therewith. 

 He also has a laboratory of physiological botany. 

 The former is at Louye, and the latter at Fon- 

 tainebleau. 



In the course of his investigations he has made 

 many journeys through Norway and Sweden, 

 the Tyrolean Alps, the Carpathian Mountains, 

 and the Pyrennes. In this work his name is as- 

 sociated with that of Mangm and Van Tieghem, 

 sauants with an international reputation. The 

 former is the author of a splendid work on the 

 deserts of the world. Their object is to gather 

 up facts relating to rare phenomena everywhere. 



Mr. Bonnier was early initiated into the myste- 

 ries of bee-keeping by his uncle, already referred 

 to. At the age of fifteen he engaged in the usu- 

 al routine work of the apiary, and for many suc- 

 cessive seasons continued to help his relative, 

 who was an extensive bee-keeper. He made fre- 

 quent visits to the apiary of the famous Hame% 

 founder (in 1856) of LApiculteur, and author of a 

 well-known work on bees. 



He commenced to write for publication in 

 1877, and in 1879 he published his "Nectaries," 

 which was sufficient to stamp him as a man of 

 science. His contributions on practical bee-keep- 

 ing have generally appeared in L'Apiculteur or in 

 Rucher du Sud-Ouest. The "Cours Complet 

 sur Abeilles," first appeared in 1895, and there 

 have been several editions since. Usually it is 

 considered a high honor to be elected to so im- 

 portant an office as president of a large society of 

 bee-keepers covering the whole of France; but in 

 this case it is the society which is honored bv his 

 acceptance of the office. Briefly, Professor Bon- 

 nier is an excellent sample of the modern man of 

 science. 



Most of the facts herein stated appear in the 

 March number of L'Apiculteur, from which I 

 take the liberty of drawing them. 



