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THE AMERICAN APIGULTURIST. 



nals which they will kindly fill out 

 promptly and return to us so that 

 we may not be delayed in making 

 out our list for 1885. Should there 

 be any mistakes, please inform us 

 promptly. 



Now, it will not be a hard task 

 for most of you to send at least one 

 new name with your own. Just 

 try and see what you can do. Ex- 

 amine our club-listcarefully. Those 

 who wish to place their card in our 

 dealers' list for 1885 must reply this 

 month. Let us hear promptly 

 from each one of you, as it is by 

 your support and your subscrip- 

 tions that the Apicultueist lives. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



This department belongs to the 

 beekeepers wholly and we in no 

 way hold ourselves responsible for 

 any communications that may ap- 

 pear here. 



All that we ask is that our cor- 

 respondents be frank, manly and 

 just in all their statements and 

 criticisms keeping in view the best 

 interests of the largest number and 

 remembering that the plain, unvar- 

 nished truth, spoken in a gentle- 

 manly way, will always cut its way 

 through error and needs not to be 

 forced with unkindly statements. 

 We require that all communica- 

 tions have the signature and ad- 

 dress of the writer attached, not 

 necessarily for publication but for 

 our own protection. 



Toungoo, Burmah, Sept. 27, 1884. 

 My Dear Sir: 



There lie before me two beauti- 

 fully printed copies of the "Ameri- 

 can Apiculturist" which I have 



read with much interest. I pre- 

 sume I have you to thank for these 

 specimen copies. I confess to a 

 growing interest in this most fas- 

 cinating study. I do not know 

 that there is one hive of bees kept 

 in this great province of Burmah, 

 except it be tliat some native has 

 found a bee tree and marked it as 

 his, when the time for taking the 

 honey comes. Yet there are thous- 

 ands of acres of wild flowers ; im- 

 mense trees covered with a bloom 

 so rich, as to send out its odors 

 for distances about it ; giant creep- 

 ers climbing from tree to tree full 

 of tasselled bloom, and booming 

 with bees. One can hardly go a 

 mile in an old forest, without see- 

 ing bees flying in and out of some 

 tree, busy storing up the sweets so 

 bountifully supplied them by a 

 kind Creator. 



Even missionaries may fall into 

 the worse kind of ruts, and the 

 routine of mission life among a 

 barbarous people sometimes is al- 

 most unbearable. 



As a break one finds the study 

 of the fauna and flora of the coun- 

 try a pleasing diversion. I rejoice 

 that my attention has been turned 

 to a study of the bees of the coun- 

 try, and I hope in the future to 

 reduce my study to practice as I 

 can get time from my many duties. 



The bee of this country is small- 

 er than that of America. It builds 

 about six cells to the inch ; is very 

 active and gentle. As a rule large 

 swarms of the A-pis Inclica are not 

 found, but doubtless they could 

 under favorable circumstances be 

 built up to any size. 



There are many varieties of bees 

 here. The Apis dorsata is a mag- 

 nificent bee and builds an immense 

 sheet of comb, sometimes several 

 feet across under the limbs of very 

 high trees. I have seen as many 

 as thirty or forty of these sheets 

 of comb on a single tree. I sus- 

 pect that this bee has no more than 



