July 12, 1900. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



437 



to suggest something- better. Too often we reach down into 

 our minds and bring forth our thoughts, and put our brood- 

 ing hypotheses into words, and show our acumen, and the 

 searching quality of our discernment, by shaping our con- 

 clusions and oflering them to be examined. Talk of this 

 kind does not consist of sworn statement. It is merely con- 

 versation, where fact is scarce, opinion abundant, and con- 

 jecture overflowing. 



After years of study I declare to you that I see no other 

 salvation except in some form of co-operation. You may 

 call it a " Combine," an "Association," an "Exchange," 

 or a "Trust," if you will, and try to legislate it out of 

 existence. 



Self-preservation is the first law of Nature, and men 

 must and will combine in furtherance of their mutual in- 

 terest. Mistakes, many mistakes, have been, and doubtless 

 many more will be, made while seeking the best method of 

 organization, but surely these mistakes should not discour- 

 age us — should not deter us from profiting by our past ex- 

 perience. There is no half-way place. We are fighting 

 for our very existence, and we must be prepared to meet 

 conditions as we find them. 



These conditions are plain to all. Why, even the news- 

 boys on the streets of this city to-day recognize them and 

 are organized — associated together for the protection of 

 their interests. Shall it be said that bee-keepers, who, as a 

 class, are among the most intelligent people of the world, 

 can not, or will not, combine for the good of each other? 



I feel deeply, earnestly in this matter. Three years 

 now as secretary of the Exchange I have been in close touch 

 with the commercial world, and have had abundant oppor- 

 tunity to see the inside workings of affairs, and I tell you 

 truly that if you attempt to " go it alone " j'ou will go as a 

 lamb to the slaughter. You will be the legitimate prey of 

 every Harpy that seeks to live off the sweat of honest toil. 



Los Angeles Co., Calif. 





1^^ n 



The "Old Reliable** seen thru New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By E. E. HASTY, Richards, Ohio. 



BITTER-SWEBT, OR THE BOY'S FIRST STING. 



That Italian artist, page 337, certainly knows how to 

 paint a crying boy. Also a straw skep and a rustic bench 

 and roof, he does fairly well on. But did he post himself 

 on the habits of bees before painting his quite successful 

 picture ? Alas, no ! Without smoke his boy has taken two 

 or three good-sized combs from the hive and got the bees 

 off them, and has just received his first sting. 



NATURAL SWARMING. 



Mr. C. P. Dadant betrays his residence in a non-swarm- 

 ing locality where he gives as a test between normal 

 swarms and absconders, " A natural swarm issues only in 

 a good honey-producing time." Instead of being absolute 

 verity this is merely a general rule, liable to many excep- 

 tions. And it is so common for bees to swarm with little 

 honey in their sacs that it is hardly proper to call full sup- 

 ply a general rule. Page 337. 



PROF. LAZENBY'S REPORT. 



An unusual supply of "nuts and raisins," both for the 

 critic and the student, is Prof. Lazenby's report, pages 338, 

 339. It is rather a surprise to me to see pears put at the 

 foot of the list both for pollen and honey, and another one 

 to see the peach rated so low. Takes a good many years to 

 get general rules of this kind settled, and I wonder a little 

 if Mr. Lazenby's years of observation have not been too 

 few. If askt to name the honey-value of the trees off hand, 

 I should have put the order peach, pear, cherry, apple. I 

 see too little of plums to put them in. The nectar in a 

 peach-blossom is often visible to the naked eye — or used to 

 be years ago. 



His first table will be handy to keep for comparison 

 with the work of our own colonies when we incline to in- 

 spect them. It is plain from the figures that he counted 



the pollen-carrying bees, and assumed that all the rest were 

 carrying honey. This will hardly do. Many may have 

 been empty from various causes — and some no doubt carry- 

 ing water and the nameless juices used in brood-rearing — 

 and for the period between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m. quite likely 

 half of them were merely returning from play. 



His weight of strictly empty bees — 5,750 to the pound — 

 is lighter than we have mostly been estimating them (4,400 

 to 4,700), and on the whole I should say the old weights are 

 the more practical, as we seldom have anything to do with 

 bees en masse when they are c?///;^/}' empty. Of course, it's 

 well to know what really empty bees do weigh. 



In table three I should judge the heaviest weights of 

 much more value than the average. Pretty evident that 

 the attempt to get honey-laden bees was a failure in several 

 instances. - Yet it is quite possible that young bees in their 

 /;;-i/ efforts at nectar-gathering sometimes rush home with 

 very small amounts. His two best bees carried 54 '2 percent 

 of their own weight — wonderful enough to stop and think 

 over — but my own observations in the same line make me 

 think that, if he will keep repeating the trial till he hits 

 the most favorable kind of a day and yield, he will record 

 considerably heavier loads, running up to 70 percent or 

 more. 



Guess I shall scold about table four. Weighing the 

 whole man to find out how many silver dollars he has in 

 his pocket is rather crude. There is no serious difficulty in 

 removing and weighing the pollen-pellets themselves, 

 and then we know something about it. I think he is partly 

 right and partly wrong about bees not bringing honey and 

 pollen both at the same trip. When they go expressly for 

 pollen probably he's right ; but when they go for honey 

 and incidenfally get their jackets dusted with pollen, why 

 should they comb it off and throw it away, when they might 

 just about as cheaply pack it in little " pony " pellets and 

 bring it along ? (We apparently see them doing this some- 

 times.) 



The most novel idea of the paper is that a pollen-gath- 

 erer visits three times as many flowers in the same time as 

 a bee after honey. Guess that's right. The pollen is 

 simply dabbled in — which consumes much less time than 

 the pumping up of the nectar. 



ONE OF OLD grimes' BEST HELPERS. 



And so Old Grimes thinks that that machine on which 

 a fellow sits down to walk is the last, if not the best, of the 

 bee-keeper's helpers. I suppose it never thinks that it 

 "owns the apiary and takes a fatherly interest in the 

 owner." Page 339. 



DOUBLINGS. SWARMS IN HIVING. 



Mr. Davenport, in his article on hiving swarms two 

 and two, gave us a good Hamlet, but rather left Hamlet out 

 of it. He " did ought " to have told us some way to head 

 off the great difficulty of that oft desirable manipulation — 

 the disposition of mixt bees to ball their queens. Page 340. 



SWARM-HIVING APPARATUS. 



Wonder if Mr. Snell thought of the Taylor swarm- 

 catcher when he said all but the two he named had gone 

 out of use — may be it's correct, however. Of living bee- 

 keepers I think comparatively few have taken down more 

 swarms than I, and my personal feeling is that any catcher 

 that purports to take down a swarm without getting up 

 where they are is a nuisance — not a little nuisance, but a 

 pretty big one — albeit success can be had with them some- 

 times. Especially may failure be lookt for with a swarm 

 that has a virgin queen. These — at least some of them — 

 are greatly inclined to take wing repeatedly. Page 341. 



EARLY spring HONEY. 



It is worth while to note that the apiary at Notre Dame 

 has again got spring honey enough to extract from several 

 hives notwithstanding the unfavorably spring. One super 

 weighed (in the gross, presumably) 32 pounds. May 16th. 

 Queer. May be our professionals haven't found it all out 

 yet. Page 348. 



bleaching comb honey. 



Queer I didn't think of the obvious way to avoid get- 

 ting sections melted by the sun in trying to bleach them — 

 cotton cloth instead of glass. A. E. White, page 366, 

 seems to have the thing into practical, commercial shape 

 already. Expose to sulphur fumes 7?;-^/ / then it only takes 

 a few hours with most sections. And he finds that nearly 

 all will bleach if exposed day after day. A cotton room 

 built right over one of the honey-house doors makes the 



