THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



129 



appear strange to you in the North, who 

 are compelled to keep the poor fellows 

 buried in cellars half their lives, in order 

 that they should live the other half. I do 

 not know what particular flower here gives 

 the greatest yield, but I guess the bees 

 know, and I suppose the supply is ample. 

 Where the tlowers are so numerous and so 

 buried as they are here, there can be no ex- 

 cuse for idle bees, if there are any such. I 

 can see no reason why the business should 

 not be more protitablc here than farther 

 north, if managed with the same care and 

 skill. " .1. B. Mitchell. 



Hawkinsville, Ga. 



For the American Bee .Journal. 



Bee-ology in Kentucky. 



I will give the readers of the Ameiucan 

 Bee Journal a sketch of Kentucky Bee- 

 ology as practised hereabouts. There is 

 l)ut one scientific bee man in this part of 

 the country. I allude to R. M. Argo, of 

 Lowell. The farmer, the mechanic, the 

 merchant, indeed all hands here, keep — or 

 rather, "keep at" — a few stocks of bees, 

 but pay little or no attention to them. If 

 one or two stocks, say out of ten or a dozen, 

 happen to do pretty well, the owner will 

 say he had "good luck," if not, "bad 

 luck." 



Kentucky until the last two or three years 

 was, perhaps, as good a State for bees and 

 honey as any. Our principal dependence 

 for honey here is upon the white clover and 

 liasswood, or rather, as aKentuckian would 

 say, " Linn." 



In 1872 we had a short crop of both, 

 last season scarcely any of either ; conse- 

 quently our bees did no good whatever. 

 Out of a dozen good, strong hives I did not 

 get over twenty-five pounds of cap honey. 



I imported the first Italian bees brought 

 to the State. In the year 1861 I purchased 

 two queens, one of Rev. L. L. Langstroth, 

 and the other of Mr. K. P. Kidder of Bur- 

 lington, Vt., I received the one from Mr. L. 

 all right, and with the aid furnished by his 

 instructions had but little difficulty in get- 

 ting her safely introduced into a stock of 

 common black bees. When I received the 

 one I ordered of Mr. Kidder, the comb in the 

 box had been broken down and the queen 

 crippled. I introduced her, but she soon 

 died. I informed Mr. Kidder, but he would 

 not replace her. 



I watched the progress of the other with 

 much interest, and in about lifteen days 

 saw her progeny begin to come forth. As 

 no one in the county had ever seen an Ital- 

 ian bee it was (juite a curiosity, and many 

 persons came expressly to see it. I after- 

 wards ordered some queens from Mr. L. 

 for some friends, but owing to the great 

 quantity of full-blooded black bees in the 



county it was impossible to keep them pure, 

 and until Mr. Argo, of Lowell, went into 

 the business, some years afterwards, and 

 purchased all the black bees in reach of his 

 apiary it was impossible to raise anything 

 like pure queens. Finnell. 



Kirksville, Ky. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Pleasant Remarks. 



On page 41 " Novice " intimates that we 

 have hard feelings toward him, because on 

 page 143, Vol. ix. we resented his imputa- 

 tion that we sought to advertise our sim- 

 plified Simplicity Hive and frame in the 

 pages of the .Iournal. We are certainly 

 pleased to learn that he was only indulging 

 in one of his pleasantries. We are frank 

 to say that the aforesaid "pleasantry" 

 touched our sensitiveness, and we wrote 

 the answer on the spur of the moment, and 

 when it appeared in print we were sorry. 

 If Novice feels hurt, let him consider the 

 hard raps he has given others who have 

 feelings as well as he. Those free criti- 

 cisms have produced wounds that mere 

 explanations will never heal. 



We rejoice to see a difterent tone in the 

 writings of some of our bee men, and in the 

 conduct of our Bee Journals. Instead of 

 being conducted for selfish interests, and 

 utterly ignoring each other's existence, there 

 has arisen a brotherly feeling and a dis- 

 position to lend a helping hand. We ob- 

 serve that since the birth of Oleanings, 

 Novice has come down to a milder way of 

 expressing himself than formerly. We are 

 happy to see it, and if we have written any- 

 thing not in accordance with kindly feel- 

 ings we crave pardon. We will accept 

 "pleasantry" as an explanation, and trust 

 Novice will treasure up nothing against us 

 for our hasty remarks. 



Hartford, N. Y. Scientific. 



For the American Bee Journal, 



Bees' Breathing. 



"In your April number, page 84, second 

 column lower half, Mr. Adair makes some 

 assertions which have often been made by 

 others, but which appear to me so foolish 

 that I cannot help noticing them. He says: 

 "The last paragraph is the statement of a 

 fact that has been settled among naturalists 

 for a long time, i. e. that the bee inflates its 

 body with air when about to fly, so as to 

 decrease its specific gravity when flying. 

 This is not only applicable to insects, but 

 ornithologists state that birds do the same 

 thing, even filling the hollow barrels of 

 their feathers and quills with heated air or 

 gas." Now I want Mr. Adair to explain. 

 I will grant for the sake of argument only 



