There must be nearly five hundred colonies 

 in the city of Burlington. 



Well, the result is this, our citizens are 

 justly complaining:, our grocerymen and 

 fruit dealers are terribly annoyed, our ladies 

 are provoked and say some hard things 

 about the bee-keepers, and the reporter of 

 our evening paper has been admonished to 

 do his duty, and now we are catching it 

 tiirough the columns of one of our dailies 

 and your humble servant has been alluded 

 to in a manner that comes very nearly being 

 personal. 



Tiie great scarcity of flowers for the last 

 few weeks is the cause of all this difficulty. 

 If l)ees can get an "honest living" they 

 will do it, but if they cannot, you know, 

 they are given to tiiievlng. 



"What shall be done with my bees ?" has 

 been the question with me for the last few 

 weeks. Kealizing, as I do, that no one has a 

 right to do anything that interferes with the 

 rights of others, I have determined on ship- 

 ping my bees out of the city as soon as 

 possible. I have already made arrangements 

 with a gentleman in the country to take 

 them, and so in a few days I shall be 

 deprived of the real pleasure I have hitherto 

 enjoyed of spending my mornings and even- 

 ings in the apiary. I shall, however, con- 

 tinue an interest in forty or fifty colonies, 

 but cannot give them the personal attention 

 I so Tuuch desire. 



The heavy rains we liave had recently, 

 liave revived vegetation, and we are expec- 

 ting our fall flowers to yield unusually large 

 supplies. I. P. Wilson. 



Burlington, Iowa, Aug. 2.5, 1878. 



For the American Bee .Tournal. 



Establishing the Purity of Italians. 



Mr. Editok : I believe you are correct. 

 We should have some established standard 

 of purity for the Italian Bee. But, query : 

 Who shall fix the standard ? Not one, but 

 all; not in person, but by voice in delegation. 



All will agree that the worker-bees must 

 show three distinct bands, but all, probably, 

 will not agree as to their color ! One wants 

 them 07'a?i(/e ; another, ieat/ier; and a third, 

 chestnut; while others have little or no 

 choice in the shades, on condition that the 

 bees are long and tapering below the thorax, 

 and quiet in disposition, not leaving their 

 combs for a given time after being removed 

 from their hive, though carried in the open 

 air. 



Some, no doulit, will have strong preju- 

 dices in favor of the shades of queens, and 

 the number of the crowns and spots on their 

 bodies. But long experience shows that 

 shades and spots are largely dependent upon 

 the manner and season of breeding queens. 



Beauty of color should never be made a 

 test of purity in blood, yet it should be cov- 

 eted when not at the expense of good 

 qualities. A. Salisbury. 



Camargo, 111., August 24. 1878. 



[Friend Salisbury is right. Let the Na- 

 tional Society appoint a committee to take 

 all the testimony, weigh well the points, and 

 then render a decision. In other words, give 

 us a Standard. Such a committee should 



be composed of the ablest and most thorough 

 men we have, and the committee should 

 have time given them in which to report 

 through the bee papers. And when this is 

 done, let that be accepted as the Standard, 

 by wliich to judge all disputed cases of 

 purity.— Ed.] 



For the Atnorican Bee Journul. 



Chaff from Sweet Home. 



Such, in a great measure must bee-keepers 

 regard the long article which was published 

 in the August No. of the American Bee 

 Journal, from the so-called Zell's Encyclo- 

 ppedia and the corrections (?) by D. D. 

 Palmer. 



The note Mr. Palmer received from the 

 publishers, confessing their ignorance of 

 the source of their information on the bee, 

 and also their statement, that it was proba- 

 bly procured fi-om standard works on the 

 subject, which to practical bee men, are 

 known to be unreliable, &c., shows very 

 clearly of what unreliable material Zell's 

 Encyclopaedia is composed. 



Because of this confession it logically 

 follows, that the balance of the book is 

 equally worthless, which I believe has long 

 been well known by scholars. 



We supposed, however, that D. D. Palmer 

 was a practical bee man, and would write 

 practical facts. Instead, however, in his so- 

 called corrections, he has given to the world 

 through the American Bee Journal and 

 the aforesaid Encyclopaedia, some of the 

 worst "Chafl:" ever written on the "bee." 

 Take his No. 1. It is generally believed by 

 practical bee men and asserted as a fact by 

 anatomists, that when a bee loses its entire 

 sting by its being dragged out of the abdo- 

 men, it must and invariably does die in a 

 short time. If friend Palmer will examine 

 the anatomical parts of a bee for himself, I 

 think he will change his mind. 



No. 2 is undoubtedly composed of both 

 truth and error. The queen is the mother- 

 bee of course, and she is also queen quite as 

 much so as Victoria Is the Queen of England. 

 Both are rulers to a certain extent, aiul both 

 are ruled. He says : " When swarms issue, 

 she does not come forth of her own free 

 will, but is pulled, crowded and dragged 

 out." This may be so sometimes, but not 

 always, as I have witnessed the exit of the 

 queen, and I have never yet seen the least 

 evidence of any crowding or pulling out. 

 I also know that sometimes she comes out 

 out among the first, and sometimes at 

 the very last. I have seen her once this 

 season walk out of the hive very deliberately 

 after the swarm was high up in the air. 

 The entrance was large and free, the alight- 

 ing board long, and I had a free, unob- 

 structed view of her. She was picked up 

 and placed on a brush which was hoisted up 

 into the air among the bees. They at once 

 found her and commenced settling on and 

 around her. 



In No. 3 our Encyclopaedist says : " The 

 queen is never accompanied by a guard of 

 12 workers, neither more nor less, but apart 

 of the time she is accompanied by workers. 



