104 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



submitted during tlie honey 

 to severer tests, it prove equally- 

 satisfactory, it will surpass all 

 others in value. 



— For some time past, Mr. J. 

 E. Pond of Foxboro, Mass., has 

 been rather unwell, and we regret 

 to learn that he is now confined to 

 his bed by rheumatism and heart 

 disease. 



Still later. "We are pleased to 

 learn that Mr. Pond is improving 

 and is able to be about. 



— We would acknowledge the re- 

 ceipt from Mr. A. E. Bonney, 

 Adelaide, South Australia, of the 

 fifteenth annual report of the com- 

 mittee of the South Australian 

 Chamber of Manufactures, from 

 which we have taken the report on 

 bee farming, that appears on an- 

 other page, together with the report 

 of the committee on the same sub- 

 ject, and also the following interest- 

 ing note from the address of the 

 chief secretary. 



"I am very pleased to find that a 

 considerable amount of attention is 

 being paid to the industry of bee- 

 farming, and I hope that the enter- 

 prise will be a successful one. I 

 believe that this is a fine country 

 for bees, and that the insects thrive 

 well here. There is a large quanti- 

 ty of honey to be gathered in the 

 colony, and v^hen we have an in- 

 dustry of this kind it is very 

 desirable that we should encourage 

 it." 



— A London publication has a 

 paper on "The Emotional Language 

 of Bees." We had always supposed 

 the language of bees to be very 

 humdrum, though we were aware 

 that there was generally a good deal 

 of emotion when they began to 

 gesticulate. 



[Yes : and their remarks are gen- 

 erally pointed and bear consider- 

 able weight. Ed.] 



— Dr.C. Spencer has been prying 

 into the business secrets of the bee, 

 and thus tells of what he has 

 learned : "In ni}-^ observatory hive 

 one cell was built against the glass, 

 and that afforded an excellent op- 

 portunity of seeing how bees 

 deposit honey in the cell. First, 

 a bee deposited a thin coating of 

 honey upon the base of the cell, 

 making a sort of varnish, as it were, 

 to the base of the cell. The next 

 bee that came with honey raised up 

 the lower edge of this film of honey 

 and forced its hone}^ beneath ; the 

 next bee did the same, and this film 

 acted as a kind of diaphragm, keep- 

 ing honey in the cell. When the 

 cell is full enough to be sealed, the 

 bees commence contracting the 

 opening with wax until there is 

 only a small hole left in the cen- 

 tre, when they appear to take one 

 little flake of wax and pat it down 

 over the opening. At any time 

 during the process of filling the 

 cell the honey could be withilrawn 

 with a hypodermic syringe, and the 

 'diaphragm' left hanging in the 

 cell." — Transcriin. 



— It may be interesting to bee 

 masters at this season of apiarian 

 activity to know that M. Jonas de 

 Gelieu, a pastor at Neufchatel, 

 Switzerland, in a work translated 

 into English long ago under the 

 title of "The Bee Preserver, or 

 Practical Directions for Preserving 

 and Renewing Hives," affirms "that 

 when two or three distinct hives 

 are united in autumn they are found 

 to consume together scarcel}'^ more 

 honey during the winter than each 

 of them would have consumed 

 singly if left separate." In i)roof 

 of this singular result the author 

 sets fortli a variety of experiments, 

 all of which led uniformly to the 

 same conclusion. He shows posi- 

 tively that of upward of thirty 

 hives six had their population thus 

 doubled, and consumed no more 



