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(Entered at the Post-OlBce at Chicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter) 

 PubUshed IVeekly at 81.00 a Vear by Cieorge IV. ¥ork A Co., 334 Uearbom St. 



QBOROB W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL,, OCTOBER 12, 1905 



VoL XLV— No. 41 



/T' 



(Sbttortal Hotcs ^ Comments 



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Good Seasons Still to Come 



Bee-keepers, as a class, are optimists. Some 

 seasons are good, and some are poor, yet they 

 are always hoping that the next season will 

 be one of the good ones. A few years ago 

 the editor of the Bee-Keepers' Review, how- 

 ever, had a fit of pessimism, and expressed 

 the belief that we could not expect in the 

 future as good crops as had prevailed in the 

 past. He has now recanted, and fully rein- 

 stated himself in the ranks of the optimists, 

 as expressed in the following : 



"Along in the '90's we had very poor honey 

 crops here in Michigan — so poor that I came 

 as near being discouraged as I ever did. I 

 began to feel that, as the country was being 

 cleared up, the honey-plants were disappear- 

 ing, and that the good crops were things of 

 the past, and not of the future. In this I was 

 mistaken. The last three years have fur- 

 nished excellent harvests." 



A Defense of Tanging Swarms 



Some of the younger readers may not know 

 what tanging is. Formerly it was a common 

 custom, upon the issuing of a swarm, for all 

 hands to join in ringing bells, blowing horns, 

 pounding on tin pans, and making noises in 

 any other way that suggested itself. That 

 was tanging. It is not certain that any in- 

 telligent bee-keeper of the present day prac- 

 tices tanging, but nearly two pages of a late 

 issue of Gleanings in Bee Culture is occupied 

 with a sort of defense of the custom. Nor is 

 it a densely ignorant writer who makes the 

 defense, but a professor; Prof. Edward P. 

 Bigelow. 



To the argument that 99 out of 100 swarms 

 would settle anyhow without the noise. Prof. 

 Bigelow replies: 



"This point is weak. The noise is made 

 after the clustering, in my experience, when 

 the swarm has refused to go into the hive or 

 to remain." 



Doubtful if that experience is general. His 

 closing words are ; 



" As a countryman I resent ,the imputation 

 by the so-called funny papers.that ' we farm- 



ers ' have been doing such ' fool things ' for 

 many generations. I guess we know what we 

 are about, some of the time, city chaps to the 

 contrary notwiihstanding." 



If " city chaps " do no worse than to call 

 tanging one of the " fool things," they will 

 steer closer to the truth than they generally 

 do when talking about bees. 



Greasy Waste for Fuel 



Greasy cotton-waste, such as can be found 

 thrown away along the track near any rail- 

 road station, has been highly commended as 

 smoker-fuel. Rev. R. B. McCain, in Glean- 

 ings in Bee Culture, claims as a special advan- 

 tage that when one handles the stuff the 

 fingers become greasy, and as a consequence 

 propolis does not stick to them. Taking his 

 cue from this. Dr. Miller, who has been in the 

 habit of using butter to clean the propolis off 

 his fingers, proposes that hereafter . he will 

 " try the plan of going to the hive with ' but- 

 ter-fingers ' prepared in advance." 



Stand or Colony? 



The following letter has been received : 



Editor American Bee JonRNii — 



Your strictures on page 630, on the use of 

 " stand of bees " in place of the later adopted 

 brat, " colony of bees," are not well sup- 

 ported, and these strictures will give way 

 every time you try to make a "s(a«(/" on 

 them, by them, or tor them. 



The redeeming feature of those strictures is 

 the ending of theiii by, " Perhaps some one 

 can explain." Certainly, some inaiiij can ex- 

 plain. 



Tour ideas of the word " stand " have been 

 evolved by your close environment with the 

 editorial stand. You, therefore, pass over 

 Webster's definitions of the noun "stand" 

 until you come to the 6th — "a small table " — 

 refusing to be comforted by the more general 

 3d definition, "A stop; a halt; as to make a 

 stand ; to come to a stand." 



Now, what more applicable expression can 

 be used when a swarm of bees has passed into 

 a hive and has " made a stand," which every 

 little worker would die to maintain — what 

 more appropriate than "a stand of bees?" 

 The expression, "A colony of bees," com- 

 pares with it as dish-water does to cream. 



" Stand of bees " — a natural linguistic evolu- 

 tion from the Anglo-Saxon " staend." 



" Colony of bees"— a brat midwived into 

 the English vocabulary about 15 years ago by 

 a coterie of dignified apiarists, who. looking 

 with askance upon their plain old Anglo- 

 Saxon "Mother English," were anxious to 

 acquire a cheap linguistic notoriety by dab- 

 bling in French-Latin. Aug. Greenfield. 



It is not easy to decide just how far this 

 letter is to be taken seriously, and how far it 

 may be intended in a humorous ^ein. Cer- 

 tainly, however, the word "colony" is 

 hardly the best word to choose, if we could 

 go back far enough to decide over again. But 

 we would have to go back more than the 15 

 years suggested by our correspondent, for the 

 word " colony " has been in common use for 

 many more years than that, no matter when it 

 may have first appeared in the dictionaries. 

 The bees in a hive form a family rather than a 

 colony, taking the word "colony "as used 

 when speaking of people, yet scientists use 

 the word "colony " as applying to an aggre- 

 gation of individuals in a common household 

 or zooecium, as in corals, polyzoans, etc. 



To take the stand that " stand " is the bet- 

 ter word because bees make a stand, defensive 

 or offensive, is hardly safe. For only a small 

 number of bees make the stand, and the word 

 could properly apply only to that small num- 

 ber making the stand. Besides, when those 

 bees from Caucasus, which are so gentle that 

 they never make a stand, become so common 

 in this country that no others are known, 

 how could the use of the word " stand " be 

 justified to future generations? 



Comb Houey Not Machlne-Made. — 



We have a fair supply of the typewritten 

 letter on this subject, which appeared in the 

 Chicago Daily News of June Jl, 1905. It is 

 just the thing to have published in every bee- 

 keeper's local newspaper. We mail it for a 

 3-oent stamp. Better order several copies, 

 and request as many newspaper editors to 

 publish it. It will certainly be a good thing 

 for both the reading public and the bee- 

 keepers. . ^ 



Maeterlinck's " Life of the Bee."— 



We have a few copies of this book, price, post- 

 paid, $1.40; or with the American Bee Jour- 

 nal one year — both for $2.00, as long as the 

 books last. It is a cloth-bound book, and has 

 437 pages. 



