THE JSIVIJEIRICKIH BE® JOPRNaiL. 



619 



would have been as yet in thu sloiigli 

 of fogjism when box-hivos reigned 

 supreme, and had bee-niolhs by the 

 thousands. Tims we see tlie salient 

 importance of a i-evolutionizing inven- 

 tion or diseoveiy in being brought be- 

 fore the public. 



SUPERSTITIONS OF THE OLDEN TIMES. 



Do j'ou think that if the men of this 

 age had to fight like Galileo, in bring- 

 ing their inventions or discoveries be- 

 fore the public, that the land would be 

 in such a prosperous condition as it 

 now is ? 



To show how superstitious people 

 were toward the close of the last cen- 

 tury, let me quote a little incident : 



Lord Campbell made the journey 

 from Edinburg to London in three 

 days and three nights ; but judicious 

 friends warned him of the dangers of 

 it, and said to him, that some people 

 who were so rash as to attempt it had 

 really died from the mere rapidity of 

 the motion. People now-a-days need 

 not be afraid of the telephone, electric 

 street railway, etc., but should remem- 

 ber that many of the arts employed by 

 the Egyptians are lost arts. 



The pyramid of Cheops — which 

 covers a surface of nearly eleven acres 

 — and is 487 feet high, stands to-day 

 in gloomy Egypt, the dunifounder of 

 all modern mechanical powers. The 

 art, whereby the human body can be 

 preserved for six thousand years, is 

 unknown tons ; hence these things are 

 to us as lost arts, and for any one to 

 be averse to patents in bee-keeping, is 

 simply nonsense. I saj' Jiat lux — let 

 the light shine — for our pursuit. And 

 I hope th^ saying, uhi apes. Hi mcl, will 

 become truer and truer with respect to 

 men, ('. e., where brainy men are, there 

 may be inventions that will be pat- 

 ented and not stored awa}', like the 

 miser does his money, by^ some gor- 

 mandizing snouser for his own use, 

 being too lazj- to get his inventions 

 patented, antl purvej' a good to 

 humanity. 



DEMONETIZATION OF OLD INVENTIONS. 



And, if by their inventions — so long 

 as thej' render a good to humanity — 

 the demonitization of older inventions 

 is eftected to a greater or less degree, 

 by all means let us have tliera. Who 

 would think of giving up an elegant 

 mansion for an old log-hut. where the 

 hyperborean blasts whistle in and chill 

 you to the marrow ; the watch for the 

 sun-dial, the clock fo^- the clep3'dia, 

 the telegraph or the telephone for the 

 ancient wajs of sending news, or the 

 quick short-hand for the slow long- 

 hand writing, when rai)idity is wanted. 

 Then why is it, that some peoi>le are 

 averse to patenting? It must be their 

 idiosyncracies. 



Pleasant Ridge, O. 



QUEEN-REARING. 



Tbe Rearing «>(' I'crfecl QiiccnK 

 tor Home Use. 



Tl'i-itteii f<ir the American Bee Journal 



BY FRANK COVERDALE. 



There has been considerable written 

 on this suliject, yet there will perhaps 

 always be room for discussion. This 

 rearing of perfect queens has always 

 (ever since I have kept bees) been of 

 very much importance to me, for it is 

 my belief that we should have queens 

 reared under the best of circumstances 

 — that means, a plenty of queen-food 

 or royal jelly, even so much so as to 

 have a large amount left after the 

 queen has hatched. 



My first experience was to take a 

 frame of brood from one colony and 

 place it in a hive by itself, leaving the 

 few bees that would stay, build there 

 cells and care for them until ready to 

 hatch. These queens were the poorest 

 I ever saw, and their average life was 

 not over one year, and they would be 

 very apt to fail before the next year's 

 honey harvest was gathered. 



These queens would lay very small 

 eggs ; still I have not noticed any dif- 

 ference as to the working-quality of 

 their ofi'spring. It was the small 

 amount of royal jelly that spoiled tny 

 queens. 



I next adopted the Alley method, 

 which proved to be much better, but I 

 was not entirch' satisfied Avith this, for 

 the queens were not vigorous enough, 

 or, in other words, they were stinted 

 from the proper amount of royal jelly 

 required to the development of a fine, 

 large queen. So I left this, and went 

 to work rearing (|ueens (whenever 1 

 had a chance) under the swarming 

 fever. In this way I got some fine 

 queens to stock my apiary with — good, 

 prolific queens. 



This season I have been rearing 

 some queens by the Doolittle method 

 of " Scientific tjueen-Rearing," which 

 al.so gave me good, vigorous queens. 

 One thing I did not like was, that so 

 many of the cups would be respected, 

 and then again the royal jelly placed 

 in the cups would all be sipped up or 

 removed by the bees, even so clean as 

 to leave the larvai for a time without 

 nourishment. Of course, after this 

 they were fed liberally, and the devel- 

 opment went on finely. This being 

 the state of affairs, I began to think 

 over the matter thus : 



Why can I not have queenless bees, 

 or bees prepared under the Alley 

 method, to build cells, and just when 

 they get the cells ready to cap over, 

 take out the large larva;, and place in 

 the same cells small lai-vas, not over 30 

 to 40 hours from the egg ? These I 



found to be well accepted, and the 

 royal jelly was not removed. Here I 

 had a good start in queen-food. This 

 suited me very much. 



It soon came to me, that the bees 

 would have double the time to feed 

 the cells, and so they did to almost 

 double the amount of I'oyal jelly, thus 

 causing the bees to build the cells 

 longer, for it is the filling up of the 

 cells at the base, that cau.ses the bees 

 to build long queen-cells ; so when the 

 (jueens hatch, I find in almost every 

 instance, J to .1 of the queen-food left 

 in the bottom of the cells. 



This plan has not failed in produc- 

 ing queens which are, in my opinion, 

 of the best type in all respects, if bred 

 from good stock. There need be no 

 pains taken as to the stock, when the 

 cells are started. I can get double the 

 number of cells well supplied in this 

 wa}', and am detained only about three 

 days longer for my queens ; so I will 

 have gained time. 



Welton, Iowa. 



CONVENTION DIRECTORY. 



1889. Time and Place of Meetint. 



Sept. —.—Maine, at Livermore Falls, Me. 



J. V. Fuller, Sec, Oxford, Me- 



Oct. 3.— Progressive, at South Newbury. Ohio. 



Miss Dema Bennett, Sec, Bedford, O. 



Oct. 11— 12.-Northwestern, at Chicago, Ills. 



W. Z. Hutchinson, Sec, Flint, Mich. 



Dec. 4-ti.— Intern.it'onal. at Brantford.Ont., Canada, 

 1;. K. Hultermann, Sec. Romney, Ont. 



tSF" In order to have this table complete. Secre- 

 taries are requested to forward full particulars of 

 time and place of future meetlnKS.- Bd. 





Robbing and Carboiie Aeid — 



P. L. Forgan, Sloan, low'a, on Sept, 16, 



1889, says : 



I find it is not generally known, 

 even amongst experienced bee-keepers, 

 that a few drops of carbolic acid, on 

 wet grass or hay, ])laeed in front of a 

 hive that robbing has begun on, very 

 quickly dispels the robbers ; and where 

 confusion and riot formerly prevailed, 

 order and quiet reign again. 



^Vcll Sati§ned willi Results. — 



W. B. Thorne, Glenn, Kans., on Sept.- 



16, 1889, writes : 



I am not willing to give all the credit 

 of a fair honey crop to the Amercan 

 Bee Journal, but I will divide the 

 honors. I was advised by the Bee 

 Journal to keep my bees in the cellar 

 as long as danger of cold weather ex- 



