98 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Fel. 13, 



No ; I would uot make a lot of " small specialists " on the 

 farm, for here, if anywhere, " variety is the spice of life." The 

 specialist is the narrow-minded man ; he runs in one groove, 

 he studies one thing, he lives in one atmosphere, he learns one 

 kind of phraseology, and perforce of his being a specialist con- 

 tinuously turns out one grist. He may become an expert in 

 some special line, he may get rich, but a broad-minded man, 

 in sympathy with universal humanity, he never can be. 



Then, how far shall the idea of a specialist be carried ? 

 Some have devoted their lives to the study of one language, 

 but others have looked upon this as a great mistake. I have 

 seen it stated somewhere that the last regret of a noted Ger- 

 man philologist was that he had not confined the labors of his 

 life to the dative case. Such men have their work and place 

 in the world, but the ordinary every-day work of life must be 

 done, and, it is generally done, by those who are not specialists. 



Children are crying everywhere because they are not pro- 

 vided with a delicious and healthy sweet like honey. If they 

 are to have it, it must be produced on the thousands of farms 

 all over our broad land. The farmer who devotes all of his 

 energies to other things and buys his honey usually has none, 

 as he generally thinks times too hard to buy honey ; and so it 

 comes to pass, that to heed the cry of those who would con- 

 fine the production of honey to specialists is to rob thousands 

 of the pleasure and health which is to be derived from the use 

 of this delicious sweet three times a day, 365 days in the year. 

 Honey-production belongs to agriculture. No specialty for 

 me in this line. St. Joseph, Mo. 



Some Subjects Reviewed and Commented Upon 



BY DR. C. C. MILLER. 



Ckimson Clovek. — S. LaMont says, on page 78, that his 

 four acres sowed to crimson clover in October, didn't come up, 

 and from what he says I suspect he means to plow it up and 

 sow again. Perhaps it might be worth while to let it alone 

 just as it is. I know the general teaching is that it must be 

 sown in the fall and get a start so as to live over winter. But 

 lately a writer in one of the foreign journals says that with 

 him it does best when sowed in the spring. Last spring I had 

 some sown with oats at the usual time for sowing oats, or 

 rather a little later. It was not a remarkable success, dry 

 weather being against it, still most of it succeeded in bloom- 

 ing, and if the seed lies in the ground over winter it is possi- 

 ble it may succeed a good deal better than mine did. At least, 

 let a small patch of it try its chances without being disturbed, 

 Mr. LaMont, and then report how it comes out. 



Breeding Off Wings. — Here's a new suggestion ssnt me 

 by J. R. Felt, of Rochester, N. Y.: 



Dr. Miller : — There have heen so many articles in the 

 American Bee Journal upon " breeding out the swarming in- 

 fluence," that I think it is time for some one to write upon 

 "breeding wingless queens," for that certainly would stop the 

 swarming. J. R. Felt. 



Yes, they wouldn't swarm if their wings were bred off, at 

 least a queen couldn't go with a swarm if her wings were bred 

 off, and neither could she if her head was bred off, but there's 

 this difference between that and breeding out the swarming 

 habit, that many desire the latter and no one desires the 

 former. Still, I'd rather have a good plan of management to 

 prevent swarming, habit or no habit. 



That Admitted Failure. — Mr. Editor, please stop my 

 paper, or else stop that man Brodbeck abusing me on page 

 78. Now, look here, my Brod-minded friend, when you say 

 without any qualification or limitation that a thing is an 

 " admitted failure," I think it would always be understood 

 that every one, or at least nearly every one considered it a 

 failure. If you could get ten men to testify very positively 

 that the North American was an utter failure, that alone 

 would hardly justify you in saying it was an admitted failure. 



But you don't get the testimony of ten men. You stand 

 three men up in a row, and two of them don't give the least 

 hint that they ever dreamed of such a thing as the North 

 American being a failure. They merely say it is not repre- 

 sentative. It isn't necessary to be representative to be a suc- 

 cess. I think you had a successful convention of bee-keepers 

 in California, but I think it didn't make the slightest attempt 

 at being representative. 



That narrows you down to the testimony of the Rev. W. 

 F. Clarke, who thinks if it cannot be made representative "it 

 might as well be given a decent funeral." He has made some 

 statements about the North American in a late number of 



Gleanings that I don't believe he can substantiate, and until 

 he does substantiate them I don't believe his testimony would 

 be considered of any great weight in the matter. 



Say, B'riend Brodbeck, between you and me, the North 

 American has had some very successful meetings, and you 

 would have said so if you had been present. Ask Prof. Cook, 

 one of your own men. If they were admitted failures, do you 

 think men would pay so much to attend them year after year, 

 men, too, who have advanced beyond the primary class of bee- 

 keepers? f 



Commissions — Queen-Cells. — Gustave Gross, of Milford, 

 Wis., writes me as follows : 



Dr. Miller: — I noticed in the Bee Journal what you say 

 about commissions in Chicago. I have shipped every year for 

 five years, and have always been charged 10 per cent, by J. 

 A. Lamon and R. A. Burnett & Co. The latter firm, however, 

 charge only 5 per cent, when the shipment amounts to $100 

 and over. 



There is another matter I'd like to mention — the cutting 

 of queen-cells to prevent after-swarms. I have practiced it in 

 over 1,000 cases, and never missed but three cells. The ones 

 that I found the most dangerous (easy to overlook) are built 

 horizontally at the bottom of the comb, from one side to the 

 other. If I had trusted to "Langstroth Revised," I should 

 never have looked for queen-cells in that place, for it says that 

 queen-cells always hang with their mouths downward. 



Gustave Gross. 



It seems that I was wrong in thinking that 5 per cent, was 

 the regular and only commission on sales of honey in Chicago. 

 It shows that for some years I have shipped no honey to Chi- 

 cago on commission. Years ago I shipped more or less there, 

 and was never charged more than 5 per cent., no matter how 

 small the shipment. I think no house at that time charged 

 more than 5 per cent., but I will be glad to be corrected if 

 wrong. In some other cities at that time the commission was 

 10 per cent. It would be a good idea to have full information 

 as to rates and rules in the different places. 



Missing only three queen-cells in a thousand may be 

 called very successful work. But this was after natural 

 swarming, and if it had been after the removal of the queen 

 without swarming the result probably would have been quite 

 different. In that case the most difficult cells to find are not 

 always the ones between comb and bottom-bar, but those right 

 on the middle of the comb, but projecting so little above its 

 surface as to be scarcely noticed. 



Bees build queen-cells mouth downward where they can. 

 Where the situation will not allow it, they make an exception 

 to the rule. 



Selling Honey on Commission. — The following letter 

 gives some experience in selling honey : 



Dr. Miller:— You ask, on page 38, if commission houses 

 in Chicago charge 10 per cent. I enclose a bill and letters 

 from a well-known house, which shows that he not only 

 charges 10 per cent., but charges drayage also. Of the honey 

 sent one lot was extra fine basswood, and the other was mostly 

 basswood, but colored slightly. You will see by one of his 

 letters that the honey was all right except the packages (one 

 gallon cans). He also docked me 45 pounds — something I 

 have never had done before. W. H. Young. 



Ono, Wis. 



Accompanying the above letter was an account of sales 

 from J. A. Lamon, of 345 pounds of No. 1 honey, at 6 cents 

 per pound, .$20.70; 690 pounds of No. 2 honey, at 5}.; cents 

 per pound, §37.95 ; total, $58.65. 



From this was deducted — freight, $7.56 ; drayage, 75 

 cents; commission, $5.85 — total, $14.16. Net proceeds, 

 $^4.49. 



The honey was put up in one-gallon cans, which was more 

 expensive than to use larger cans. If the popular 60-pound 

 cans were used, it would require IS cans, and I suppose these 

 would have cost, delivered, about $6.50. Deducting this 

 from the $44.49 leaves $37.99 clear money for the 1,080 

 pounds of honey, or just about an even 3}-3 cents a pound. 



I commend a careful study of those figures to any one 

 who contemplates shipping to a city market. It does seem as 

 if that honey might have been sold at home for 5 cents a 

 pound, in which case there would have been a gain of $16, 

 and that would have paid for several days' peddling in the 

 surrounding towns. 



If Mr. Young is correct, each can held 12 pounds, but 

 Mr. Lamon says: "Those cans were billed out at llj^ 

 pounds each, and that is all we could get for them." It 



