650 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Oct. n, i9on 



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The Afterthought. 



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

 By E. E. HASTY, Richards, Ohio. 



VARIATIONS IN WEIGHT OF A COLONY. 



That greatly longed for and despaired of thing — a cure 

 for bad seasons — arrived at last ! And will the inventor 

 patent it ? And how high will he put the price? F. W. 

 Hall, page 573, takes a 10-pound super of sections from a 

 hive that only weighs TO^ ounces all told ! Or are we 

 driven to suspect (Bathos !) that where we read 70'4 ounces 

 we piust understand 70'+ pounds.'' 



To assist Mr. H. in a puzzle which seems to trouble 

 him, I will remark that a hive gets lighter in the forenoon 

 from at least four causes. First, drying out of dew or rain 

 in the wood of the hive — often much more than one would 

 suspect, but perhaps insignificant in this case. Second, 

 exhalations from the bodies of the bees and brood. I think 

 there is a variation as to how much of this remains inside 

 the hive at night, and gets outside during the fornoon, and 

 how much passes out immediately at night. This loss may 

 be expected to be large when much brood is present, and 

 small when there is little brood. Third, evaporation of 

 nectar — mostly fanned outside at night, except when the 

 gathering is very large ; but some of the vapor may remain 

 inside as a dampening of inner surfaces. The fourth cause, 

 of course, is the weight of the bees that go out to the fields — 

 a very variable element. Also, sometimes, nectar comes in 

 in tVi" forenoon, and not in the afternoon, and sometimes 

 vice vena. I think these causes properly adjusted will 

 a' ount lor most of the eccentricities of weight in such 

 tables. 



WHIMSICAL ABOUT BATING HONBY. 



That lady on page 563, I guess her inability to eat 

 honey was simply a whim — supported perhaps by a little 

 nerve action, as when we can't " go " something because 

 we once took it with pills. Her five days of swollen face 

 kept her thinking about bees and honey, and tasting of the 

 latter, until the rather immaterial barrie's disappeared, and 

 the real facts came to the surface — and hitherto unknown 

 kinks of chemistry need not be called in. 



COLOR OF CARNIOLAN BEES. 



And it's a rusty gray instead of a steel gray that the 

 Carniolan bees are. Strange, how long it took this fact to 

 get to the surface. Doctors disagree of course, but the way 

 our bee-doctors disagree on the color of the Carniolans 

 seems to be a rather extreme case. Chance for our skeptics 

 to say. Is there any such thing as the Carniolan, except as 

 A B and C pop the name onto something they want to 

 float ? Page 564. 



REARING QUEENS UPSTAIRS. 



The scheme of rearing queens upstairs, while a queen 

 presides as usual below, is still mooted, I believe ; and 

 those who still adhere to it might do well to meditate on 

 what the veteran breeder Alley says on page 565 — most of 

 such queens are short-lived and worthless, except in the 

 swarming season, when good queens can be reared almost 

 any way. The thing is rather important. To win a little 

 convenience at the cost of a general damaging of queens 

 would be a sorry bargain. To be sure, Mr. Alley is not 

 above being mistaken ; but the probabilities of the thing 

 rather seem to lie his way. Should we expect bees that 

 already have a good queen, and no assignable reason for 

 wanting another, to do their bcsl in that line ? But I should 

 say. look a little out — yes, look a big out — for bees that will 

 build queen-cells by the thousand. There is such a thing 

 in nature as degeneration. 



LONG-'ONGUED BEES AND SHORT-TUBED CLOVER. 



I will not try for a complete review of the stirring paper 

 of Dr. Milleron long-tongued bees and short-tubed clovers, 

 which begins on page 566, but merely murmur a little at 

 two of the dominant ideas. One is that we must succeed if 

 the effort is pusht years enough. Suppose now that there 

 was a proposition to increase the size of the elephant. 

 Would it be true that with thousands of years enough (or 

 millions) man must succeed in breeding an elephant a hun- 

 dred feet high ? No. Long before that size was reacht the 



point would be reacht where flesh and blood and bone could 

 not endure the pressures that would nccur. I think it not a 

 rare thing, but a common one, for nature's developments to 

 be already quite near in some vital element (very likely an 

 unseen and unsuspected point), but quite near to the point 

 beyond which development can not be pusht for physical 

 reasons. I think this so frequent that the phrase, "We 

 must succeed," ought not to be used. The other thing is a 

 sort of air that " one man is as good as another, sure," in 

 work of this kind. How is it in looking for a queen ? One 

 pair of eyes will see her very quickly. A dozen other pairs 

 will only see a curious, moving mass of bees, all looking 

 just alike. Should you " commandeer " a hundred men at 

 random, and order them at tongue-clover work, three or four 

 out of the hundred would accomplish more than all the rest. 



FINE-GRAIN .\ND COARSE-GRAIN GRANULATION. 



One of the'valuable remarks in the valuable paper of 

 Prof. Cook, page 566, is the surmise that fine grain and 

 coarse grain in granulated honey mainly depends (as in 

 other crystallization) on the rapidity of the process; the 

 more quickly the thing is over with the finer the grain. I 

 would add that the coarsest crystals of all seem to be at the 

 bottom and sides of thin honey, and in unsealed cells where 

 only part granulates. In both these situations the process 

 can go on for weeks. Still, rapidity alone may not deter- 

 mine all. 



HONEY ON COMMISSION OR OTHERWISE. 



It seemed to me that Mr. Doolittle hit almost too hard 

 at the article of W. F. Marks, page 567 ; but the plan of Mr. 

 Marks, to try stopping entirely the sale of honey by com- 

 mission, can not be tried, not even if the trial seemed de- 

 sirable to the most of us. Obviously it would require some- 

 thing like unanimity, and that couldn't be secured. 



SQUIRT-GUN FBBDING OF BEES. 



To have the bottom tight, and everything just right, 

 and then with a squirt-gun feed the whole apiary in a few 

 minutes just at dusk — well, it does seem to be just the 

 poetry of stimulative feeding. The trouble 'pears to be 

 that the practice of stimulative feeding is losing currency. 

 Get a bigger crop if you use a pop-gun instead. (Patent 

 applied for on stimulative pop-gun.) Page 574. 



A MUCH-RETA(l)LED STORY. 



So they held the tails of the oxen that mogged home to 

 whistle music, carrying a swarm of bees as an outer coat of 

 fur — but our editor, he wguldn't hold the tales of the plow- 

 man and the St. Louis Republic. Page 578. 



MINIATURE TUMBLERS FOR HONEY SAMPLES. 



Possibly C. P. Dadant may have been too fast in say- 

 ing that we have no use for the miniature tumbler of honey 

 holding a little over an ounce, and selling for three cents — 

 the tumbler itself costing only a cent. All our packages are 

 to eat at Iwnie, while this seems to be an eat-on-the-spot 

 sort of device, a novel rival for candy. May it not act as a 

 missionary to increase the customers for honey? May it 

 not (properly pusht) in some great crowds, carry off a big 

 lot of honey without lessening ordinary sales in the least, 

 but the contrary ? And American glass men are capable of 

 devising a tiny tumbler that would be valued as a toy when 

 empty. Page 582. 



SH.\DE-BOARDS OF TIN .\NI> SHINGLES. 



Shade-board covered with tin, and let the roof leak if it 

 ffl«.— Doolittle. Shade-board made of second-hand shingles 

 and a slat— to cost almost nothing— and a reliable roof. — 

 Hutchinson. You pays your money (SI. 00 per year) and 

 you takes your choice. Page 583. 



r-. -rz, FLIES AND BUGS ON BASSWOOD. 



i_v Ouite a problem when flies and bugs visit basswood 

 and bees do not. Possibly the insects seen could get some 

 provender by gnaiving at the nectar-glands, while bees do 

 not come till there is nectar sufficient for pumping. Page 

 586. 



LATE YELLOW SWEET CLOVER. 



That's quite a bit of news that Aaron Snyder contrib- 

 utes, page SS9 —two yellow kinds of sweet clover, one of 

 them late, and just as big as the white kind. But as it's 

 not beauty nor variety that we're after, the late yellow 

 hardly shows any reason why we should desire it, as I see — 

 that is, provided we have the white kind already. 



