December, 1914. 



411 



Amarlcan liQe Journal 



DAILY WEIGHING A COLONY AT NOON BY COUNT VISCONTI 



talked of America, her rapid growth, 

 her succ-ss and her hopeful future. He 

 said: " I love everything American, 

 except the men who put their feet on 

 the table or spit on the floors." Per- 

 haps he had read Dickens' American 

 Xotes. If Dickens were to come back 

 to life and make the trip again, he 

 would see a great improvement in 

 America on this score. But we still 

 have room for improvement. 



When we left our friends that eve- 



ning, with the expectation of taking the 

 train for Venice the next morning, we 

 agreed to meet them at Bologna on 

 Sept. 8. In order that we might not 

 miss each other. Dr. Triaca instructed 

 us to call for them at the dining-room 

 of the Bologna railroad station, where 

 they would await us. Their train was 

 to arrive a little earlier than ours. In 

 that city was to be the finest of our 

 bee visits. It will be the subject of 

 the next letter. 



Contributed 



Articles^ 



Queen Etiquette— Some Com- 

 ments on Introductions 



BY ARTHUR C. MILLER. 



THE American Bee Journal for Octo- 

 ber has sev ral things to say 

 about introducing queens, and 

 Miss Wilson particularly emphasizes 

 her failure with my method. (So far 

 as I know now it is my own develop- 

 ment, but some one may have preceded 



me though I have found no record 

 of it.) 



Nothing is infallible, but a method 

 which works most of the time is good 

 for something. The new way is far 

 ahead of the cage plan in percent of 

 sufccess, and when the short time the 

 colony is queenless is considered, and 

 the simplicity of the operation is taken 

 into account, the plan is far ahead of 

 any other way I know. 



I have beeii at a loss to understand 

 why some of the " experts " in bee cul- 



ture have failed while many of th 

 novices, as well as others more in the 

 veteran class, have no trouble. 



The method is so absurdly simple 

 that it seems as if any one could un- 

 derstand it, and yet I fear that it is its 

 very simplicity which bothers the vet- 

 erans. They have for so long gone 

 through so many motions to accom- 

 plish simple things that they cannot 

 divest themselves of them. That they 

 are influenced by past ideas and prac- 

 tices I will show by'the following quo- 

 tations. Mr. Byer says : " One colony 

 was given a particularly hard smoking 

 so as to be sitn- of results." He evi- 

 dently thought he knew more about it 

 than the originator who said, " Don't 

 use much smoke." He got the " re- 

 sults " and just what I could have told 

 him — failure. 



Miss Wilson says: "It has been ex- 

 plained that the secret of success of 

 the plan is that under cover of the 

 smoke the queen immediately rushes 

 through the outer wall of the bees into 

 the center of the cluster where she is 

 safe." Where on earth that came from 

 I do not know. It certainly was not 

 from my pen. There is no " outer 

 wall" nor does the queen do any 

 " rushing." 



Mr. Hand says: "Two methods of 

 odor transmission, the smoke method 

 and the cage method, both of which 

 were described in Doolittle's book on 

 queen-rearing published more than a 

 quarter of a century ago." The two 

 methods referred to date back nearly 

 200 years by record, and how much be- 

 fore that I do not know. The smoke 

 method as there described was often 

 given in the press years before Mr. D.'s 

 book was written, much on the subject 

 following the publication of Simmins' 

 "Direct Introduction" in 1882, which 

 was seven years before Mr. D.'s book 

 was published. Mr. Hand, I fear, is 

 not up on the history of the art. 



Coupled with the confusion caused 

 bv mixing old ideas or others' ideas 

 with my instructions is also the diffi- 

 culty some people have of following 

 instructions. In the bee world I be- 

 lieve no small part of this is due 

 to the carelessness of expression and 

 use of terms found in the bee press, 

 something which Dr. Miller has been 

 combating for years, but to what 

 purpose ? Read this from the editorial 

 page of the October American Bee 

 Journal: "A reasonable amount of 

 lower ventilation and a heavy cushion 

 of absoi-bcnls pr, 'venting drafts but 

 allowing the csia/ie of moisture as does 

 a woolen blanket over a man's body, 

 etc. (my italics). Is comment neces- 

 sary ? Carelessness of expression be- 

 gets a looseness of interpretation, and 

 the habitual reader of such writing is 

 prone to give his own views to the sub- 

 ject in hand and fail to get the author's 

 no matter how carefully expressed. 



If you are going to try a thing at all 

 try it as the author gives it. and be 

 sure you understand his method. .Ifter- 

 ivards put on as many of your own 

 frills as you choose, but don't reverse 

 the order and blame the author for 

 something he did not say. 



Mr. Byer failed because he used too 

 much smoke. Had he taken into ac- 

 count the effect of varying quantities 

 and qualities of smoke on bees he 



