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(Entered at tbe Post-OtBce at Chicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter) 

 Published liVeekly at 91.00 a Tear by George %V. Tork & Co., 334 Dearborn St. 



QBORQB W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL, DECEMBER 14, 1905 



VoL XLV— No. 50 



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 anb (Eotnmcnts 



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National and Chicago-Northwestern Conventions Next 

 Weelc 



Next Tuesday evening (Dec. 19) the National conven- 

 tion will begin its annual sessions in Brunt Hall, Bush 

 Temple of Music, corner of Chicago Avenue and North 

 Clark Street, Chicago. 



The Revere House, corner of North Clark and Michigan 

 Streets, will be the hotel headquarters of the convention. 



Also, at the Revere House, next Tuesday, at 2 p.m., will 

 be held a business session of the Chicago-Northwestern 

 Bee-Keepers' Association. 



It is hoped that there may be a large attendance of bee- 

 keepers at all the sessions of both Associations. 



Treatment of Bee-Slanders 



Clippings sent in by different persons show that the 

 yarn about the ruin of the grape crop by the bees in Indiana 

 has been widely copied outside that State as well as inside. 

 While items of this kind are always welcomed at this ofBce, 

 it does very little good to refute slanders upon the bee in 

 these columns. The readers of the American Bee Journal 

 do not need informing in this direction ; the people that do 

 not read bee-papers are the ones that need informing. The 

 place to do the most good is where the harm has already 

 been done — in the newspapers which contain the slanders. 

 If each bee-keeper who finds in his paper some incorrect 

 utterance regarding bees would at once send to such paper 

 a correction respectfully worded, such correction would gen- 

 erally be received in a kindly spirit, and much good would 

 result. On page 794 an instance is given. Let others be 

 ready to help on the good work. 



Influence of Larval Food 



During the past few years there has been much interest 

 among Australian bee-keepers regarding what seemed a 

 sort of mysterious disappearance of bees, whole apiaries 

 being almost entirely swept away. Mr. R. Beuhne has 

 been an especial sufferer, and, as reported in the Australa- 

 sian Bee-Keeper, he now thinks the trouble may be traced 



to the pollen consumed. Not that the pollen is at all pois- 

 onous to the older bees, but that it is so deficient in the 

 right kind of material that larvae fed upon it are deficient 

 in stamina, and succumb easily to adverse conditions, both 

 in the cell and after emerging from it. Mr. Beuhne says : 



"Dr. Cherry demonstrated by scientific reasoning that • 

 ill nourishment of the larvK resulted in lack of vigor, and 

 impaired vitality in the perfect insect. It is not a question 

 of quantity of food, but one of quality, a deficiency of nitro- 

 gen. As bee-keepers, we know that a deficiency in quantity 

 of larval food is corrected at once by the worker-bees in re- 

 stricting brood-rearing, or, should it occur suddenly, by 

 throwing out eggs and even lai-vK. We have no proof, 

 however, that bees can discriminate as to the quality of the 

 pollen, and even honey. In fact, we do know that they 

 sometimes have recourse to substitutes ; they occasonally 

 store flour for pollen, and fruit-juice for honey, both of 

 which decompose in the combs under certain conditions of 

 atmosphere. Assuming, however, that bees will use these 

 substitutes only under stress of circumstances, which would 

 be evident even to the bee-keeper, and leaving them there- 

 fore out of consideration, the report of the analysis of pol- 

 len we have received from Dr. Cherry shows that the per- 

 centage of protein, that is nitrogen, in a digestible form is 

 very variable in different kinds of pollen, ranging from 27 

 percent down to 17 percent. 



" As you all know, all larvae under normal conditions 

 are supplied by the nurse-bees with all the food they can 

 absorb, and in the case of queen-larvje with a surplus, so 

 that deficiency in quality could not be made good by addi- 

 tional food. Taking the best sample of pollen and the 

 worst, that with 27 percent of protein and that with only 17 

 percent, we tind the larva; consuming the latter get more 

 than one-third less protein in the same quantity of food 

 than the former, resulting in feeble resistance to disease- 

 germs in the larval stage, and weakness, predisposition to 

 disease, susceptibility to cold, and premature wearing out 

 of the perfect insect." 



Raising the Price of the American Bee Journal 



We have received the following from one of our inter- 

 ested readers : 



Mr. Editor : — Replying to your call for suggestions 

 that will make the American Bee Journal more helpful to 

 its readers, I venture one or more that possibly may not 

 occur to all others, because their bearing is indirect rather 

 than direct. 



I take it for granted that any editor and publisher who 

 has been in the business as many years as you have, and 

 has studied as you appear to have done to cater to the wants 

 of his readers, has dreamed out a number of things that he 

 would like to do, and could do if he had an unlimited bank 

 account on which to draw, without caring how much of it 

 came back again. 



So, instead of hinting at this thing and that which you 

 may have already thoutjht of, or which may be suggested 

 by others, my suggestion is that you put more money into 



