282 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOUBNAL. 



[June, 



and got it from Mr. King, either on the 19th 

 or 20th of December, the date of the letter Mr. 

 King wrote to me. 



Mr. A. F. Moon wrote to me, inquiring about 

 the report, and I answered him substantially as 

 above, except that I was not then aware of the 

 transfer to Mr. Clarke. Mr. Moon published a 

 part of my letter. I received a letter from Mr. 

 King, dated January 30th, complaining of what 

 Mr. Moon published of my letter, in which he 

 says : 



You ought to have Mr. Moon correct the 

 impressions he gave by publishing your letter 

 about the delay of the report in reaching him. 

 Mr. Clarke took your letter and ought to have 

 written the editors of the different Bee Journals, 

 and sent them and you the proofs you asked for. 

 It was on that condition I gave it up to him. I 

 was not in the slightest degree blamable for the 

 delay, and do not propose to be imposed on by 

 such misrepresentations. 



Yours respectfully, H. A. King. 



After I mailed the full report to Mr. King, I 

 wrote out another shorter or abbreviated report, 

 and on the 14th I sent it by mail to the South- 

 ern Agriculturist, in the January number of 

 which it was published in full. Major Key, 

 the editor and publisher, sent me fifty proofs, 

 which I mailed to as many agricultural papers. 

 Shortly afterwards Mr. Clarke sent me 100 

 proof copies, eighty of which I mailed to other 

 papers I wrote a separate letter to each paper 

 to which I sent a copy, drawing their attention 

 to it and soliciting its publication in whole or 

 in part, or a favorable notice. A large number 

 of them published selections from it ; some pub- 

 lished the condensed report entire, and all that 

 I saw gave the Society complimentary notices, 

 and many of the editors wrote me letters of in- 

 quiry or for further information. 



I do not write this to reflect on any one, but 

 to defend myself from the charge of " misrepre- 

 sentation" as Mr. King is pleased to call my 

 letter to Mr. Moon. What I undertook I per- 

 fofcmed as promptly as was consistent with 

 accuracy. Mr. King wrote to me on the 19th 

 that he had not received the MSS., but when 

 called on on that day, or the next, he did have 

 it, and there was still eleven or twelve days in 

 which to set up the type and print it, and all of 

 the papers delayed their publication some time 

 after that, waiting for it. He promised to set 

 it up as soon as he received it, or I would not 

 have sent it to him,. 



In the- January number of his Bee Keeper's 

 Magazine I find the following: 



"We expected to present the report of the. 

 recent meeting of this Society in this number, 

 but it wn.s over two weeks after the Society ad- 

 journed before the report was received." 



Now, the Society adjourned on the 6th, and 

 over two weeks must have been fifteen days at 

 least, and still we find him delivering the report 

 to Mr. Clarke in thirteen or fourteen davs. I 



quote further from the same paper: 



" We expected to find it all in type when we 

 arrived here (December 18th), but, instead, 

 nothing had been heard from it." 



Let the reader look at the first paragraph in 

 his letter of the 19th December, in which he 

 says: 



" Yours of 11th was received yesterday, the 

 day I reached my office from the West." 



He will not, certainly, deny that he " heard 

 from it" in that letter, for it informed him that 

 the report had beeD mailed to his address. 



Mr. King accuses either me or Mr. Moon of 

 "misrepresentations;" it is not clear which of 

 us, but would it not look better in Mr. King, a 

 minister of the gospel, to give correct state- 

 ments, and not attempt to give the impression 

 that I was the cause of the delay ? Why could 

 he not state the facts? 



D. L. Adair. 



Hawesville, Ky. 



Eeports, Experiences and Opinions. 



Joshua Arter, of Crestline, Ohio, writes, un- 

 •der date of April 11, 1873: 



"Bees wintered very well here on their natu- 

 ral stores. They had a flight on the 15th Jan- 

 uary, and 6th and 7th February. They did not 

 get to fly much in March. On the 3rd of April 

 they began to fly, and on the 5th they brought 

 in natural pollen. I have not succeeded in get- 

 ting them to carry in flour yet. I have tried 

 every year as soon as they fly. In this locality 

 they soon gather natural pollen, unless, I sup- 

 pose there were to be a very early spring. I 

 must say that the silver-hull buckwheat is the 

 best for bees that I ever used. I raised the 

 black variety, but the bees would not work on 

 it, nor it would not yield much seed. I have 

 raised a bushel and three pecks from a pound 

 of silver-hull seed. While it is out in bloom 

 there can scarcely a bee be found on any other 

 flower till about ten o'clock on bright days. On 

 cloudy days I have seen them swarm over the 

 field till eleven o'clock. It keeps the bees 

 breeding till frost, and the bees go into winter 

 with any quantity of young bees. I have not 

 lost a swarm in winter since I raised it." 



Irving W. Cramer, of Oneida, 111., writes, 

 April 5th, 1873 : 



"Last autumn, I could count up about one 

 hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty 

 stocks in our immediate vicinity, and now all 

 I can count is about twenty-five, all this within 

 a radius of about one and a half miles, and fur- 

 ther out the losses are about the same. I had 

 twenty-four last fall, and reduced by uniting to 

 sixteen, and have only one left, and that the 

 only Italian stock I had. I got a queen about 

 the in h of September from E. M. Johnson, of 

 .Menror, Ohio, and I fed the stock after intro- 

 ducing the queen, ab ut fifteen pounds coffee- 

 sugar, and they strengthened up wonderfully 



