July 5, 1906 



575 



American Itee Journal 



When sending "s his photograph on June 16, Mr. Green 

 wrote as follows : 



The bees have not done very well this year so far, having been 

 generally in rather poor condition to start the season. Three of my 

 apiaries are doing very fairly, but the other S not nearly so well. 



Prospects are not of the best either, as grasshoppers are very 

 numerous and may eat up the sweet clover. 



The first crop of alfalfa has been cut, aud but little surplus honey 

 was secured from it. J. A. Green. 

 +-*-**• 



J. C. ACKLIN 



Several weeks ago we announced the sudden death of 

 Mr. Acklin, at St. Paul, Minn. Since then we have re- 

 ceived the following - brief biographical sketch from one of 

 his most intimate friends, the Rev. Chas. D. Blaker, pastor 

 of the Richfield Baptist Church, near Minneapolis : 



The death of Mr. J. C. Acklin came as a great surprise to his 

 many friends. On May 25 he was apparently as well as usual. He 

 ate a hearty supper, after which he went to deliver a colony of bees to 



a customer living at Highwood— a 

 suburb of St. Paul. After he had 

 put the hive in place, and was 

 about to leave, he was stricken 

 with apoplexy. He became uncon- 

 scious before Mrs. Acklin could 

 reach his side. He was taken to 

 the hospital, where he passed away 

 the next morning (May 26), not 

 having regained consciousness. 



Mr. Acklin wa6 born in Fayette 

 Co., Pa., March 22, 1852. Before 

 leaving his native State he was en- 

 gaged in the carriage business with 

 his father. For several years after 

 coming to Minnesota his business 

 was that of general contractor and 

 builder. He was then employed by 

 the Great Northern Railway Co. as 

 lumber inspector. About 6 years 

 ago he relinquished his position 

 with the railroad company in order 

 j. c. acklin to devote his whole time to the bee- 



supply business, which Mrs. Acklin 

 had started T years before. He had charge of the Northwestern 

 Agency of the A. I. Root Co. 



Mr. Acklin has been a member of the Minnesota Bee-Keepers' 

 Association since its organization, and an officer of the Association 

 for the past 6 or 7 years. He will be greatly missed by all the friends 

 of the Association. He devoted much time each year to the prepara- 

 tion of the annual program and in looking after the interests of the 

 Association in general. He was absent from only one of its sessions, 

 at that time he and his family being in California. 



Mr. Acklin was a man of ste.'liDg character, a devoted husband 

 and father. He was an active member of the People's Church of St. 

 Paul, and the Treasurer of its Sunday-school. He leaves a wife, who 

 has been indeed a true helpmate to him, and a daughter, Ethel, who is 

 13 years of age, to mourn his loss. They have the sympathy of a 

 large circle of friends who mourn with them in this hour of bereave- 

 ment. Chas. D. Blaker. 



In a private letter to us Mr. Blaker writes this para- 

 graph : 



"A good man has closed his labors here to enter upon 

 the life eternal. He was a man who was not ashamed to be 

 known as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. His death is 

 a great loss to us all." 



As mentioned in connection with the announcement of 

 Mr. Acklin's death in a previous number of the American 

 Bee Journal, we were personally acquainted with him for a 

 number of years, as well as with Mrs. Acklin and their 

 daughter Ethel. We had met the family at various State 

 and National conventions of bee-keepers, and also at the 

 Minnesota State convention held in Minneapolis a year 

 ago last December. We also have had the pleasure of meet- 

 ing the Acklin family in their pleasant home in St. Paul, 

 where their friends and guests were given the widest kind 

 of hospitality. Ever since meeting Mr. Acklin we have 

 counted him as one of our strongest friends, and so feel the 

 loss perhaps as keenly as any one outside of his immme- 

 diate family or relatives. 



We are glad to know that Mrs. Acklin will be able to 

 continue their business with the assistance of the young 

 man who has been with them for many years. 



The Minnesota Bee-Keepers' Association will miss the 

 active help aud interest of Mr. Acklin, as he was one of the 

 moving spirits of that organization. 



As all of us grow older, more and more our friends 



of many years are rapidly passing away. Perhaps this is 

 more noticeable in an office like ours where so many deaths 

 of those prominent in beedom are reported. As it becomes 

 our duty in many cases to announce these sad events, of 

 course they are impressed upon us more, perhaps, than on 

 any one else outside of relatives and intimate friends. As 

 it has been our privilege to meet so many of the leaders 

 among bee-keepers at various conventions during the past 

 12 or 15 years, we have come to know them personally in a 

 way that makes us feel doubly their loss when any of them 

 are taken away. We recall quite a number who, during- 

 their lives, helped to make bee-keeping arid bee-literature 

 what it is to-day. There was Langstroth and Newman ; 

 Chas. Dadant and Dr. A. B. Mason ; Capt. Hctherington 

 and Dr. Gallup ; and many others who might be mentioned. 

 And likely during the next 10 years there will be added to 

 the increasing list of departed ones many who to-day are 

 leaders in our chosen field of apiculture. 



Perhaps in no other field of human endeavor are there 

 so many good, clean men and women as are to be found in 

 the ranks of bee-keepers. We know that nowhere outside 

 of the conventions of religious organizations do we find as 

 high and noble a class of people as at bee-keepers' conven- 

 tions. It certainly means a good deal to be able to say so 

 much as this ; and yet why should it not be so ? There is 

 certainly no other business more cleanly and elevating in 

 every particular than that of the care of bees and the pro- 

 duction of honey. Whether or not bee-keepers are a 

 " sweet " people, they ought to be such, if they partake of 

 the nature of their business and product. Surely, they 

 ought to be clean in habits and character, for the inspira- 

 tion to such qualities should come from the lessons to be 

 learned from the life and work of the bee itself. 



14— Dadant Methods of Honey-Production 



BY C. P. DADANT. 



IT seems as if we would have a very good chance to talk 

 about harvesting honey and removing the surplus this 

 year, for we will not be very busy, and there will be no- 

 surplus to remove, if the summer continues as dry and cool 

 as it is at present. But these are the very days when it is 

 well to talk it over. Another season may keep us so busy 

 doing work that we will have no chance to talk about how to 

 do it. 



By the way, just let me say that I have seen the real 

 honey-dew without aphides, on acorns, lately. This morning I 

 passed under an oak-tree which had dripped the dew in large 

 drops to the sidewalk, and the bees \vere exceedingly busy 

 on that tree, around the acorns. The days are warm, the 

 nights are cool, and this proves the correctness of the state- 

 ment made, some years ago, by Gaston Bonnier, of Paris, 

 in his work, "Les Nectaires," that "honey" is often produced 

 by what he calls "extra-floral tissues" in some trees; this 

 production of extra-floral honey is hastened and increased 

 by sudden changes of temperature that prevent the flow of 

 the sap to the end of the buds. It is thus caused to ooze out 

 through unusual channels. 



Let us return to the removal of the surplus honey. Many 

 apiarists arrange to have their colonies located above the 

 honey-house, so that there may be no necessity of carrying 

 or dragging the crop uphill ; others — but they are not very 

 numerous — have arranged a system of rails upon which they 

 run little cars to take the honey from the apiary to the honey- 

 house. I confess, we have never yet practiced bee-culture on 

 so modern a scale. We have, however, always aimed to 

 keep our hives in an accessible place, and have tried to 

 keep our honey-house on a level with the apiary. But in 

 our home apiary the honey-house is a few feet above the 

 apiarv, and we find no difficulty in transporting a large 



