1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



69 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Chicago, September, 1873. 

 Acknowledgements. 



Subscribers will find the date at which their 

 subscriptions expire on the printed slip attached 

 to their copies of the Journal. The date given 

 with each subscriber's name, will show the time 

 to which the subscription has been paid, and will 

 constitute a receipt for moneys remitted. 



We regret to learn by private letter from 

 Mr. CowaB, that his father-in-law. Rev. L. L. 

 Langstroth, is still in very poor health. He 

 has, we are sure, the deepest sympathy of his 

 many friends. 



Bees at the Vienna Exposition. 



Our German brethern, it seems, were not dis- 

 couraged by the refusal of the authorities of 

 the Exposition at Vienna to permit living bees 

 to be exhibited at the Exposition. They have, 

 under the auspices of the Vienna Beekeepers' 

 Union, resolved to have an Exposition of their 

 own, in which to exhibit to the visitors the 

 advance made in bee culture. The exhibition 

 takes place at Simmering, in the suburbs of 

 Vienna, and will extend from July 1 to Sep- 

 tember 15. "We regret that the notice of this 

 intention of our German apiaran's was not 

 known here earlier, so that our American bee- 

 keepers could have availed themselves of this 

 opportunity to show in Europe the progress we 

 have made in this country in bee-culture. 



The "He-bees." 

 We have seldom in all our life felt so much 

 like indulging in " cursory remarks," as we did 

 when we opened the August number of the A. 

 B. J., and our eye fell on the unfortunate erratum 

 which disfigures page 29. The worst of it was 

 we didn't know who to blame. If we had only 

 known who was responsible for that egregious 

 blunder, we should have obtained some relief 

 by coupling his name with some uncompliment- 

 ary adjectives and wholesome abjurgations. 

 But we didn't know, and we don't know yet. In- 

 deed we have concluded not to investigate the 

 matter, but to dismiss it with a few general 



remarks and reflections after the following fash- 

 ion: 



Copy is often marred by strange, unaccounta- 

 ble blunders. Printers are thought to be fully 

 "justified" if they " follow copy." Printers 

 are a blundering race of mortals. A fatality 

 seems to haunt them in respect to making mis- 

 takes. Proof readers sometimes blink the eye 

 just as they come to some glaring blunder which 

 it seems as if it were impossible not to see. 

 Some errors are like some criminals. They have 

 a wonderful faculty for escaping detection, and 

 so a mistake will pass through half a dozen 

 hands and remain uncorrected. Finally, acci- 

 dents will happen, not only in the best regulated 

 families, but in the best regulated printing 

 offices. 



After we had got over our first fit of vexation, 

 we began to wonder whether it really was an 

 error, after all. We saw that the article was a 

 translation from the Bienenzeitung, and knowing 

 how far the Germans are ahead of us in the 

 science and art of bee keeping, didn't know but 

 they had succeeded in producing a species of 

 " he-bees " that would gather honey, or try to, 

 but being inexperienced at the business, didn't 

 know exactly the proper time to go out foraging. 

 This " happy thought " soon had to be drop- 

 ped, but it occurred to us to commend this 

 point to our advanced and advancing friend 

 Adair. He has more faith than any man we 

 know in the possibility of changing bee nature. 

 Now here is a " new idea " for him. Let him 

 try his hand on the " he-bees," and train them 

 to search for honey. It would end all our 

 trouble about drone-comb, multiply our working 

 force very greatly, and the apiarian world would 

 pronounce blessings on the man who invented 

 drone-workers. 



Mr. Quinby's Plan of Sending Queens by Mail. 



We have pleasure in testifying that Mr. 

 Quinby's method of mailing queens, described 

 by him in our last issue, is a complete success. 

 The package promised by him duly arrived 

 at the office of the A. B. J., in Chicago, August 

 7. It was remailed to Guelph, and came into 

 our hands all right on Saturday evening, Aug. 

 9. Circumstances compelled our subjecting the 

 little pai-ty of prisoners to a protracted confine- 

 ment, as we were leaving home for an absence 



