I907-] 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



245 



become confused with "Col." for 

 Colorado, which is also wrong. The 

 official abbreviation is ''Colo." I al- 

 ways write the name of my state in 

 full, but editors don't always print 

 it that way. If Teddy Roosevelt ever 

 finds out about it, we may hear some- 

 thing interesting. 



The opening chapter of my new 

 l;oo!.-, "How to Keep Bees 40 Years, 

 or the X. Y. Z. of Advanced Bee 

 Culture, a Complete Guy of the 

 Apiary," will be as follows: "Bees 

 are hard to keep; it is better not to 

 try to keep them, and best to raise 

 hay. There are different ways to keep 

 bees. But chickens or strawberries 

 will pay better. One way, practiced 

 by the hopelessly ignorant, is to put 

 them in boxes and let them alone; 

 another is to put them in 8-frame 

 hives and then contract them, feed 

 them and tinker them to death. Both 

 methods are usually unsuccessful. A 

 third way is to keep them in good 

 hives, with room enough in which to 

 rear their young and store surplus 

 honey; never to rob them so closely 

 that they will sufifer for lack of food; 



what supply house is offering the 

 article for sale. 



The one regrettable feature of Cali- 

 fornian apicultural journalism was 

 the swift meteoric flight and sudden 

 extinguishment of Bro. Horn, of the 

 Far-Western Bee-Keeper. He start- 

 ed out well, did well, and then died 

 and returned to Missouri, whence he 

 came. May he rest in peace. But 

 let no one else try the experiment 

 of printing a bee paper in the West. 

 It can't be successfully done. Better 

 subscribe for The American Bee- 

 Keeper, and let it go at that. 



"After years of observation, ex- 

 perience and experiments," I am pre- 

 pared to blazon forth the one un- 

 equivocal fact that I have learned 

 about bee-keeping, which is that bees 

 can kill toads. There is a super- 

 abundance of these greasy, fat, crawl- 

 ing things about my premises, and 

 one which I held squirming at the 

 entrance died happily in half an hour, 

 of paralysis. Another expired in an 

 hour. The other morning I found 

 one little fellow dead and filled with 

 stings, the result of his own greedy 

 heedlessness. I have found dried 



to protect them from inclement weath- , , . , 



er; to see that they always have a excrement of toads to consist almost 



good queen, without any interval of 

 queenlessness at all; and, further- 

 more, to keep them in a place where 

 there are flowers from which they 

 can store a surplus crop. These rule.- 

 being observed, it will not be neces- 

 sary to read further in this book. 

 But I have added other chapters in 

 order to be orthodox and that the 

 purchaser may get lots of words for 

 his money." 



The man who advertises bees for 

 sale without a queen reminds me of 

 a real estate dealer who would be 

 foolish enough to advertise a house 

 for sale without a roof. Surely I 

 can do better by placing my patron- 

 age elsewhere. 



A learned orthodox writer in a blase 

 Eastern bee paper recently spoke 

 about the necessity of hiving bees in 

 a jiffy. I have searched all the "cata- 

 logs" diligently, but can find no men- 

 tion of. nor price fixed on "jiffies." 

 I am experimenting and spending 

 money on all the Eastern plans and 

 appliances, and would be willing to 

 try this method if I could only learn 



entirely of bee skins. Yet, a good 

 word for them is that they catch 

 moths, ants and other marauding in- 

 sects about the hives. If I were to 

 "start anew again," I should set the 

 hives up where the clumsy toads 

 couldn't reach them, and then let the 

 animals alone. But I should look out 

 for skunks. 



Stent, California. 



FROM SANTO DOMINGO. 



Sabanala Mar, Santo Domingo, 

 June 22, 1907. 

 Editor American Bee-Keeper: — 



Your kind answer in June B. K. 

 contains some mistake, so I'll ask 

 again, leaving it to your discretion 

 to answer or not. 



The question was: "How can pol- 

 len be extracted regardless of comb 

 ^pollen to be used." No, not to be 

 fed. Some Frenchman here claims he 

 can make a good drink of which pol- 

 len is one of the ingredients. There 

 is some pollen here all the year 

 around. 



About the stingless bee I said : 



