1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



27 



son progresses till at last it becomes 

 almost unendurable. I think I am 

 quite within bounds when I say that 

 (except when the honey flow is not so 

 great that the bees will not cease 

 their work on the flowers to notice 

 honey standing uncovered in the 

 apiary), the work of removing honey 

 from the hives will progress twice as 

 rapidly with hybrids as with Italians, 

 This is no small item when there are 

 several tons to be remoevd. 



Third : comb honey produced by 

 Italians is never so regular in shape 

 nor otherwise so fine in appearance. 

 They never fail to bulge it or bridge 

 it or fasten it to the separators on the 

 slightest porvocation, and such de- 

 fects not only cause much leaking and 

 injure its sale, but cause much more 

 time to be consumed in crating, 



Fourth : Italians gather much lar- 

 ger quantities of propolis and dispose 

 of it so as both to injure the appear- 

 ance of the sections, and to interfere 

 with the rapid manipulations of the 

 different parts of the hive. 



Fifth and the finally : in my some- 

 what extensive experience I find that 

 the hybrids can be relied on to pro- 

 duce from twenty-five to forty per 

 cent, more comb honey than Italians. 

 The hybrids are always the ones from 

 which I get my largest yields and all 

 through the season they exhibit the 

 more push, courage and enterprise. 



And in my opinion there is but one 

 point in which tha hybrids suffer in 

 comparison with the Italians and that 

 is the irascibility of their temper. 

 By the amateur and the beginner, this 

 trait is greatly magnified and for such 

 no doubt the Italian is the preferable 

 bee. But for the experienced apiarist 



who has lost all concern about stings, 

 1 am forced to the conclusion, though 

 formerly greatly prejudiced in favor 

 of the Italians, that the hybrid is very 

 much to be preferred. — R. L. Taylor 

 in American Apiculhirist. 



FATE OF THE FAKMER. 



. The American farmer lias long held a 

 place greatly above that of the peasant of 

 Continental Europe in his income and style 

 of living, because he has been able to pos- 

 sess a larger tract of land, and greatly 

 above the English tenant-farmer in his in- 

 dependence, because he has been able to 

 own the ground he tilled. He will not con- 

 tinue another half century to hold this 

 enviable position. The economic forces 

 that have been at work in Europe have also 

 been at work here, but not so long, and 

 therefore they have not yet matured so 

 much fruit. Thtre have been Americans 

 who imagined that our political constitution 

 would protect us from the fate of the Old 

 World. It would be as rational for a man 

 to expect his knowledge of arithmetic to 

 keep him dry in a thunderstorm. 



Sometimes we find tlie American farmer 

 slipping away from his acres, and some- 

 times we find his acres slipping away from 

 him; as a result of both tendences there is 

 a separation, widening with the lapse of 

 time, between ownership and cultivation. 

 The American farmer is following the Eng- 

 lish yeoman into extinction, and the creation 

 of landlord and tenant classes has already 

 made considerable progress here. Special- 

 ization is one of the incidents of evolution, 

 and evolution in agriculture is giving us, 

 instead of one class of farmers, who were 

 simultaneously landlord, tenant and laborer, 

 farmers of the three classes, permanently 

 distinct. — Fred Perry Powers, in February 

 Lippincott's. 



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