202 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



will appear about April 1. Gleanings 

 welcomes it into the field, and sincerely be- 

 lieves that it will do a large amount of good 

 on the western coast. 



HELEN KELLER, THE BLIND DEAF-MUTE. 



This wonderful girl recently delivered 

 an address before a thousand people. The 

 wonder of wonders is that, with apparently 

 no means of communicating with the outer 

 world, she is now able to talk, write, sing, 

 play the piano — in fact, do every thing that 

 we all do except see and hear. Play the 

 piano ! how is it possible that one can pro- 

 duce strains on an instrument that she can 

 not hear? But Gleanings has more than 

 a common interest in Helen Keller. She 

 wrote a short article for it (p. 844, 1891), 

 when she was about eleven years old. If 

 we are right. Gleanings was one of the 

 first to publish her letters, and since that 

 time her fame has gone around the world. 

 Her picture appears on page 463, 1891, 

 with much information concerning her. 



LOWER freight RATES FOR HONEY IN NEW 

 SOUTH WALES. 



Freight rates on honey in New South 

 Wales have been lowered, as the honey now 

 goes as Class A, the rate of which is lower 

 than Class B. There is no distinction made 

 between honey in comb, in glass, or in tin, 

 as shown by the following clipping from 

 the Agricultural Gazette for September 2 : 



The Chief Commissioner for Railways has ap- 

 proved of the charges for the conveyance of honey 

 by rail being reduced from " B " to " A " class rate 

 and conditions, and the necessary by-law has been 

 forwarded for the approval of the Executive Coun- 

 cil. This means that for the future the rates per 

 ton will be as follows, two tons being the minimum : 



Miles 50. . Rate per ton .... $1 . 60 



Miles 100 . . Rate per ton ... . 2.88 



Miles 150 . . Rate per ton ... . 3.90 



Miles 200 . . Rate per ton ... . 4.84 



Miles 300 . . Rate per ton ... . 6.34 



Miles 400 . . Rate per ton ... . 7.34 



Miles 500 . . Rate per ton ... . 8 . 34 



Miles 600 . . Rate per ton ... . 9 . 34 



it would seem as though there would be 

 a difference between the rate on comb hon- 

 ey and on extracted, though no mention is 

 made of it in the above. Will some one 

 from Australia please explain ? 



solid vs. screen doors for honey and 

 extracting-houses. 



A CORRESPONDENT in this issue recom- 

 mends the use of a solid door in place of 

 a screen door to the extracting-house. He 

 is entirely correct. Others have called at- 

 tention to the importance of the same thing. 

 A solid door that is used for constant in- 

 gress and egress should, of course, be kept 



closed. Ventilation should be secured by 

 screens at the windows. The robbers that 

 will cluster on the window screens will have 

 no way of getting in; but robbers on the 

 screen door, every time it is opened, will 

 pounce into the building. There are some 

 extracted-honey producers who contend 

 there should be no bee-escapes on the win- 

 dow screens — that the robbers trapped with- 

 in the building should be held in until the 

 work is done, and then released when they 

 can do no harm to any one at the close of 

 the day. If they are professional robbers, 

 they make it a practice to let them starve 

 to death, because, if released, they will con- 

 tinue to make themselves a nuisance. 



INDOOR wintering AT MEDINA; BROOD-REAR- 

 ING IN CELLARS. 



We went into winter quarters last fall 

 with something like 600 colonies. About 

 half of them were wintered outdoors, and 

 the other half in cellars. So far the loss all 

 told does not exceed one per cent. 



In Gleanings for February 1, page 73, 

 we reported how we moved on a sled some 

 ten miles one of our outyards during the 

 dead of winter, when the temperature was 

 only 15 degrees above zero, to one of the 

 cellars. Prior to that time we had moved 

 in two other yards and placed them in the 

 same cellar. All the moved lots of bees 

 seem to have wintered equally well so far 

 as we can discover; but we have taken out 

 only half of them, especially those that be- 

 gan brood-rearing in December and Janu- 

 ary. The remarkable thing is that many 

 of the colonies are stronger this spring than 

 they were last fall. Ordinarily there is not 

 much brood-rearing in the cellar; but the 

 late moving possibly stimulated the bees 

 to breeding earlier than usual. Well, we 

 were a little fearful that so much brood- 

 rearing would prove disastrous toward 

 spring; but, so far as we can see at this 

 time, no bad results have followed. 



There was one weak nucleus of Italians 

 last December. A fine Carniolan queen 

 was sent in, and she was introduced to this 

 nucleus of Italians. They began breeding 

 almost immediately; and this spring, when 

 we took them out, there was the original lot 

 of Italians and a fair-sized colony of Car- 

 niolans of all ages. About four-fifths of 

 them were of the black race, and a nicer lot 

 of bees we never saw. 



Another tiling that developed was that 

 those colonies that were bred so earlj' began 

 to use up their stores. They were given 

 ]3ie-plates of candy, as already explained, 

 and the breeding continued. More anon. 



