THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



and because some queens might do twice 

 this, I see no advantage in allowing them 

 the privilege. We need colonies large 

 enough to protect themselves and their 

 combs and stores, to generate sufficient 

 heat to keep themselves warm and to rear 

 brood and work wax, and to furnish bees 

 in sufficient numbers to go up into the 

 sections when the main harvest comes 

 and work wax and build comb. When 

 this can be done I can see no advantage 

 whatever in having a colony still more 

 populous. It might be an advantage to 

 have more bees in the field, but, if so, I 

 would be in favor of giving them another 

 hive and another queen. When working 

 for extracted honey, where there is little 

 need of comb building in the supers, I 

 agree most fully with the idea expressed 

 by Mr. J. E. Crane in this issue of the 

 Review, that Italian bees often store more 

 honey, in proportion to their numbers, 

 when in colonies that are not so very 

 populous. 



There is one point in all this matter 

 that ought not to be overlooked; and 

 that is this: If a man has tried both 

 large and small brood chambers, or, per- 

 haps, I better sa}', brood chambers of 

 different sizes, and found that some par- 

 ticular size brings him in greater profits, 

 then that is the size for him to use, 

 regardless of the theorizing of editors. 



Department of 



riticism 



R. L. TAYI^OR. 



Ulamo wluToycu must, Iip candid wlierf> you < an, 

 Aud be oacli critic tlic (rood-naturod M ui. 



GlLDSMITH 



THE SEARCH FOR DR. MII^I^ER S LOST 

 CHILDREN — THEY ARE FOUND! 



I little thought what I was contracting 

 for when I undertook to write for this 



department. Here it is in the beginning 

 of the honey season, the bees swarming, 

 the weeds growing, and all manner of 

 other work pressing, and Dr. Miller ap- 

 parently frantic to have me stop in the 

 middle of it all and hunt for some of his 

 own children whom he cannot find; 

 though they are exactly where he left 

 them, and whose whereabouts I think he 

 ought to remember, as but a few weeks 

 have supervened. He has failed to find 

 them, yet he expects me, a stranger, to 

 look them up. The printer and the proof- 

 reader of the Review have also, apparent- 

 ly, entered into a conspiracy to make the 

 burden as galling as possible by confound- 

 ing the record I made of the hiding place 

 of the doctor's offspring. Among them 

 they have a heavy bill to settle for the 

 great amount of time I have spent in the 

 ^search. 



The doctor no doubt might have found 

 them — the lost ones — but he was full of 

 doubt as to their existence; and, instead 

 of putting confidence in my statement of 

 their existence and character, and mak- 

 ing a hopeful search, he falls upon me 

 with a stream of polite charges of misrep- 

 resentation. ( Review 171-173 ) I, on 

 the other hand, knowing that my state- 

 ments were correct, made the search, ex- 

 pecting to find, and was successful. 



THE WINTERINCr PROBLEM — THE PARTS 

 PLAYED BY COLD, CONFINE- 

 MENT AND FOOD. 



The first topic to which the doctor re- 

 fers in which the reference is wrong in 

 my article in the May Review is my crit- 

 icism of his discussion of the wintering 

 problem. The reference should be A. B. 

 J., 194, instead of 149. Let the doctor 

 produce proof of misrepresentation. I 

 trust he will be able to control his feel- 

 ings sufficiently so as not to be unfair. I 

 say this because in his onslaught on me 

 in this matter he falls into some bad 

 errors. He says that the plain teaching 

 of my quotation from him would seem to 

 be "if your bees have a good flight Nov. 

 15, they will winter perfectly no matter 



