Weevil.— R. R. Stukesberry, Clinton, 

 Ind., sends us one of these, which he 

 found working on an apple tree, where 

 the young growth starts, and asks 

 -'what is it;'' they cut it off entirely? 

 We sent it to Prof. Cook, and the fol- 

 lowing is his reply: 



These beetles are the New York wee- 

 vils (Itkycerus noveboracensis — Forester). 

 I have received several of them, and 

 described them in State papers. Then- 

 lengthened snout shows them to belong 

 to the curculionicke or weevil family. 

 This species was named by Forester 

 itiin-boracensis, or New York Weevil, 

 doubtless because he received it from 

 New York. It is, however, widely dis- 

 tributed throughout the northern 

 United States. It is about 15 milime- 

 ters long (6-10 of an inch) to tip of its 

 snout. It is gray in color, lined above 

 with dashes of white and dots of black. 

 Though resembling the curculio, seem- 

 ing somewhat like a large edition of 

 the " Little Turk ;" it differs in having 

 straight, not elbowed, antennae. It does 

 not go through its early stages in the 

 earth, but is a borer in the hickory, oak 

 and other forest trees. 



The evil it does by girdling and thus 

 destroying the twigs of the apple and 

 other fruit trees is sometimes very 

 great, and when numerous it is a seri- 

 ous pest. The only remedy I can sug- 

 gest is that used in capturing the cur- 

 culio — the sheet and the mallet. Their 

 habit of falling and feigning death 

 when frightened or disturbed makes 

 this equally effective in capturing these 

 Larger pests. 



Please send me 15 or 20 of these fel- 

 lows. A. J. Cook. 



Bees in Kansas.— The first quarterly 

 report for 1880 of the Kansas State 

 Board of Agriculture, has the following 

 regarding apiculture in that State : 



Seventy-five per cent, of the number 

 of stands of bees in the State are in the 

 19 counties nearest the Missouri line. 

 The reports from these counties are 

 unanimous that apiculture is profitable 

 when it is made a specialty and the 

 proper time and attention are paid to it ; 

 otherwise it is not. This industry is not 

 profitable in the western counties, the 

 absence of timber and honey-producing 

 {lowers and grasses being the chief 

 cause. 



. €g° Italian breeders of bees are pro- 

 curing the Cyprians to breed from. This 

 is a confession that they are superior. 



Importance of the Bee to the Ancients. 



From an essay read before the Lin- 

 nean Society of New York, by Wm. C. 

 Wyckoff, in January last, we extract 

 the following : 



Of the insect tribes the most directly 

 useful to man have been the producers 

 of honey, silk and cochineal. The im- 

 portance of the bee to the ancients will 

 be realized when we consider that they 

 had to rely on honey alone for the means 

 of sweetening food. Plato and Sopho- 

 cles were honored by being called re- 

 spectively the " Athenian Bee" and the 

 u Attic Bee," in allusion to the dulcet 

 style of their writings. The great at- 

 traction of the land which the chil- 

 dren of Israel struggled so hard to at- 

 tain, was due to its reputation of flow- 

 ing with milk and honey. In the para- 

 dise imagined by Lucian, honey spouted 

 from some of the fountains. Sugar was 

 then little known, except as one of the 

 rare and curious things from the far 

 east, and Strabo probably refers to it in 

 a description of certain stones that had 

 the color of frankincese, and a sweet- 

 ness greater than that of figs or honey ; 

 they were obtained in India. Pliny is 

 more precise ; he says : " Arabia pro- 

 duces sugar, but that of India is pref- 

 erable. It is a kind of honey, collected 

 within reeds— a gum, almost white, 

 brittle to the teeth, the largest (pieces) 

 of the size of a hazel-nut, used only in 

 medicine." 



Let us imagine, for a moment, that 

 sugar should become equally rare at the 

 present time. Would not the sweetness 

 of life seem to have departed ? In the 

 regions beyond the Ister, according to 

 the story told to Herodotus, the land 

 was so completely possessed by bees 

 that travel was impeded. But even if fa- 

 vored with such a source of supply we 

 would find the Tracian honey a poor 

 substitute for the $80,000,000 worth of 

 sugar now annually imported into the 

 United States. 



igTMr. G. M. Doolittle in a letter re- 

 marks as follows : " That I believe in 

 practicing what I preach you may know, 

 as I have received 503 subscribers for 

 the American Bee Journal. This is 

 just 19 more than 1 have received for all 

 the other bee papers combined." This 

 is a good showing when it is remem- 

 bered that Mr. Doolittle advertises all 

 the bee papers side by side at club rates, 

 and is very flattering for the American 

 Bee Journal. 



