THE SMERICffrf BBS JOXJRlSmJL. 



453 



"XO TIIE IIIK.I.S." 



The followinif was written in LoncJon, and 

 l>ublished in the People of Sunday, June 9, 

 iind affords one e.\hii>ition of the intense feel- 

 ing excited in every section of tlie civilized 

 world by the great disaster at Johnstown, Pa., 

 the incidents of which, true or imag-inary, 

 have been set to music on both sides of the 

 Atlantic : 



"To the hills ! to the hills ! It's coming !" 



The cry rings shari> and dread. 

 As a horseman, racing madly, 



Adown the glenside sped. 

 '•To the hills !— iih, God, why wail ye?" 



He shouts as tne.v doubting stooil ; 

 *' 'Tis the lake— it comes — oh, believe me I" 



"To the hills, for your lives !— the flood 1" 



The crags with a startling echo, 



Catch up that awful cry ; 

 The dirge of the unknown hero, 



Who thunders reckless by. 

 "To the hills 1 t« the hills f God help them ! 



They heed me not— they wait. 

 Hark ! now they mark tcicir peril. 



To the hills— ah, me — too late." 



The warning cry grows fainter. 



In the swell of a muttered roar 

 That follows the horse and its rider — 



That sweeps all things before. 

 "To the hills '" ten thousand voices 

 ' Now shriek in wild despair, 

 As horror heaj>ed on horror 



Fills the vale and rends the air. 



"To the hills I" 'Tis the voice of the rider. 



Now sunk in a feeble wail, 

 *Midst the noise of the seething waters, 



That tumble and leap o'er his trail. 

 "To the hills ! to the hills ! Lord help me I" 



Now the cry of a drowning man. 

 As the billows hurry him onward, 



Overleap the narrowing span. 



Borne aloft is the corpse of the hero, 



On the crest of a mountainous wave. 

 Tossed hither and thither— everdownward, 



'Midst that ghastly wreck to his grave. ' 

 There hidden from those who would honor him, 



H'fi name ever lost to fame. 

 Hi." rests with the simple record : — 



"Here a Johnstown man died game." 



—Farquhar E. PalUser. 



Uooliltle's Hook on Queen-Rearing 

 is not only of great interest to queen- 

 breeders, but it is also of vital importaDce to 

 every bee-keeper, even if he may iiave but 

 two or three colonies of bees. It contains 

 much that has never before been in print, 

 and is as interesting as a novel. This is 

 what Mr, A. 1. Root says of it in the last 

 number of Oleanings : 



Friend Doolittle's book is as interesting. 

 at least to me, as anything I have ever read 

 in regard to bees, hardly excepting Fattier 

 Langstroth's book, when 1 first got hold 

 of It. 



One reason is, that it is right along on a 

 line where I worked for months, several 

 years ago. I experimented by placing wire 

 cloth between the upper and lower stories. 

 Perforated zinc was not then known— at 

 least I had not at my command anything to 

 permit the worker-bees to go above and tiold 

 back the drones and queen : therefore my 

 experiments amounted to but little more 

 than having queens reared in nuclei above, 

 in strong colonies. These nuclei were either 

 shut off entirely by wire-cloth, or else these 

 drones and queen had free access to the 

 upper story. By having upper entrances, I 

 succeeded in getting queen-cells built and 

 queens fertilized to some extent ; but it did 

 not pay, and 1 was continually annoyed by 

 being obliged to disturb the nucleus every 

 time I wished to get into the lower story of 

 the colony. 



•In Chapter VIII, we are told how to get 

 queens fertilized in the same hive where 



there is a laying queen. These two chapters 

 are certainly worth the price of the book to 

 any bee-keeper. lu fact, it seems to me 

 that every man, woman, or child at all in- 

 terested in bees, nut;ht to read Friend Doo- 

 little's book. The accounts of hUdhcav- 

 erles raid like a hnok of flction. In fact, it 

 sounds to me in some parts like the Arabian 

 Nights : and yet it is absolutely true, every 

 word of it. You can verify it yourself with 

 your own bees. I know it, because I have 

 experimented all along in the same line. 



Those who are unfamiliar with this in- 

 tricate, complicated, and wonderful matter 

 of securing queens from an egg that would, 

 in the usual course of events, have produced 

 a worker-bee, will become familiar with the 

 matter by reading Friend Doolittle's story. 

 The whole of it seems to have been written 

 in Friend Doolittle's happiest vein. I should 

 judge that he had given the book great care 

 and pains ; and I believe that is the way he 

 usually does every thing. 



In order to correct some false impression", 

 Mr. Doolittle writes thus : 



I see that some think that my book was 

 written for queen breeders, who follow the 

 rearing of queens as a business ; but this is 

 a mistake. The book was written for the 

 sole purpose of benefiting all in the bee- 

 business, from the man who counts his colo- 

 nies by the thousand, down to the amateur 

 who has but two or three. 



All want queens for any case of emergency 

 which may come up, or for the purpose of 

 superseding those which are past their use- 

 fulness, or not of the " blood" which they 

 wish, or to give to the parent colony after 

 the old queen has gone out with the swarm, 

 so that second swarming may be prevented. 



How handy it is, then, to rear such queens 

 in an upper story, get them fertilized in the 

 same by slipping in a perforated zinc parti- 

 tion so as to enclose a comb or two on each 

 end of the hive, from which the queen may 

 issue to meet the drones, and, after return- 

 ing, be kept laying here till she is wanted 

 for use, thereby aiding the queen below 

 with brood all the time she is being held 

 before she is wanted for use. 



The possibilities which are before us 

 along the line which this perforated metal 

 may bring us, have only begun to dawn 

 upon us. Queens can be reared and 

 fertilized by the thousands in any apiary, 

 and yet no colony be kept queenless for a 

 single moment, nor any nuclei made, hut all 

 work in the apiary be going on just the 

 same as if no queens were being reared. 

 The advent of the perforted metal is likely 

 to mark an epoch in our history, fully equal 

 to that of the honey-extractor or the mov- 

 able-comb hive. 



The b6ok costs one dollar, or will be club- 

 bed witli the A.MERicAN Bee Jottrnal for 

 a year, and both sent postpaid for $1.7.5. 



Here is what the Bee-Keepers' Record, 

 published in England, says of the book : 



We have read Mr. Doolittle's book with 

 much pleasure, not that we can— for the 

 present at least— hope to profit so largely as 

 we could wish by mastering all the very in- 

 teresting methods of queen-rearing, detailed 

 with the utmost minuteness by the author. 

 To those, however, who can enjoy more 

 close companionship with their bees than 

 other occupations permit us to do, the work 

 under notice will be a most enjoyable 

 "find," even if it be but to read of the many 

 wonderful thitms in queen-rearing accom- 

 plished by Mr. Doolittle. 



To say that queen-rearing is a science 

 does not go far enough ; in Ins hands it is, 

 in a great measure, a mechanical science, 

 for he scoops up queen-larvse, royal jelly, 

 etc., from queen-cells reared by the bees, 

 distributes both larvw and jelly just as it 

 suits his purpose, and rears queens by the 



hundred for a season extending over many 

 months of each year. 



Imagine the queen-breeder gravely setting 

 to work with his wax dish, spirit lamp and 

 ti'ols. moulding queen-cups (or cells), ar- 

 ranging a doz-n or more of these in line on 

 a "stick," supplying each "cup'' with 

 "royal jelly " and a "little larva;" fixing 

 the "stick " on a frame of comb, and setting 

 it in a hive to be completed by the bees, the 

 queens being hatched, and actually ferti- 

 lized, while all this goes on in a fully- 

 stocked hive with a laying queen ; the 

 operator meanwhile rearing as many as 100 

 queens in one colony without interrupting 

 the work of the colony for an hour. 



The business ot queen-rearing is, in 

 America, more entensively practiced than 

 here ; apiarists proper, or persons who cul- 

 tivate bees as a sole source of income, being 

 quite numerous as compared with this 

 country ! We have but little notion of the 

 number of- queens required for the trade de- 

 mands of a regular queen-breeder like Mr. 

 Doolittle. To meet these requirements, the 

 skill of the breeder is taxed to the utmost ; 

 and in the book before us the details of each 

 operation is described with such careful ac- 

 curacy, and in such simple, homely lan- 

 guage, that any one with time and equal 

 skill may work on the same lines as the 

 author, and hope for equally successful re- 

 sults. We have not space for saying as 

 much as we could wish on Mr. Doolittle's 

 work, but can promise anv one interested 

 in the subject a full dollar's-worth for their 

 money, should they invest that sura in 

 "Doolittle on Queen Rearing.'' 



A LITTLE FORESIGHT. 



Why It Is of M re Use Than An UnUm- 

 ited Quant ty of Afterthought. 



A little foresight is of more value than 

 much aftersight, says the Sunday-School 

 rimes. Foresight is the planner, aftersight 

 is the critic, of our deeds. What painful 

 scenes, embarrassments, regrets, disap- 

 pointments, self-accusations, the habit of 

 looking ahead and planning to meet and to 

 arrange the future will avoid? Time and 

 money spent in designing a building perfect- 

 ly, in definitely predetermining principles 

 and rules of action, and marking off limits 

 before embarking in any new project, in 

 mapping out work, in arranging engage- 

 ments, in avoiding conflicts of duly and the 

 impossible demand to be in two places at 

 one time, are well spent. But the fore- 

 thought is more difficult than the after- 

 thought. The one requires intense applica- 

 tion to s.vstematic consideration and search 

 of the field of the possible ; the other sug- 

 gests itself instantly and naturally. Any 

 body can see that the door is in the wrong 

 place after the house is built, or can say 

 that the speech was a mistake after it had 

 been delivered and its effect noticed. It is 

 easier to criticise well than to construct 

 well; but it is more useful to construct a 

 plan perfectly beforehand, than to criticise 

 it afterwards. 



Convention i>'otices>. 



il?" The Northern llUnoi.4 Bee-Keepers' Associa- 

 tion will hoM Its next meetintf on Auir. "io. l^sy, at 

 R Marsh's, in (Juillord Township. 4 miles northeast 

 of Rockford. Ills. l>. A. KULLEK. Sec. 



Z3f~ The Internationa! Bee-Iveepers' Association 

 will meet in the court-house, at Brantford. Ont., 

 Canatla t>n I>c< ember 4. .5, anil »?. 1ms;». All bee- 

 keepers are invitee! to attend, antl Stale and District. 

 bee-keepers' societies are reuuested tt) appoint dol- 

 eKates lo the convention. Full particulars of the 

 meetink' will he «lven In due time. Anyone desirous 

 of becoming a mcinher. and receivlnti the last Annu- 

 al Report bound, may do so by forwnrdinK ll.tio to 

 Ibe Secretary. - K. F. lloLTEU.MAXN. Sec. Brant- 

 ford. Ont. Canada. 



