

OtSt BE E:PA Pc^. 



42dYEAR. 



CHICAGO, ILL, JUNE 19, 1902, 



No, 25, 



^ Editorial Comments. ^ i 



General Manager of the National. — We have received 

 the following- announcement from Acting Chairman E. R. 

 Root, which is self-explanatory : 



BUGENE SECOR STILL GENERAL MANAGER OF THE NATIONAL 

 BEE-KEEPKRS' ASSOCIATION. 



Some little time ago it was announced that Mr. Eugene 

 Secor, General Manager of the National Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation, had sent in his resignation, and that the Board of 

 Directors had selected E. T. Abbott, of St. Joseph, Mo., to 

 fill out his unexpired term. But the Board, in reviewing its 

 work, after a great deal of writing back and forth, during 

 which valuable time has been lost, finally discovered that 

 Mr. Secor's resignation was never formally accepted ; that 

 the procedure was irregular and out of order by which 

 Mr. Abbott was supposed to be elected. Some complica- 

 tions having arisen, it was decided by the Board not to 

 accept Mr. Secor's resignation, and to request him to fill 

 out the unexpired time, or till the next general election. To 

 this Mr. Secor has agreed. All dues and membership fees, 

 hereafter, should be sent, as before, to Mr. Eugene Secor, 

 Forest City, Iowa, who is still the General Manager, and 

 will continue to be such till his successor is elected and 

 qualified. E. R. Root, 



Acting Chairtnan of Board of Directors. 



The Honey Crop of 1902. — Editor Root says in refer- 

 ence to this : 



From various letters that we have received from the 

 southern counties, I am now convinced that this will be an 

 off year, and that California will not cut much of a figure 

 in the Eastern markets. There will be some honey, of 

 course : but it will make no great flurry, and therefore 

 prices all through the United States ought to be and will be 

 reasonably firm. 



There are some other reports from the East that indi- 

 cate that the season has been very backward. It has been 

 very much so in this locality. It has been cold and chilly. 

 Brood-rearing has been held in check, and the bees are 

 "snappy." Mr. Doolittle says the season has been very 

 discouraging In his locality ; and so, taking it all in all, 

 there ought to be a general toning of prices. East as well as 

 West. 



Hon. J. M. Hambaugh, Foul Brood Inspector for San 

 Diego Co., Calif., wrote June 4 as follows concerning the 

 honey crop prospects in his locality : 



"There has been no rain since my last. Bees are doing 

 practically nothing. The crop is paralyzed, and our coun- 

 tenances elongated. Barber's fees exorbitant 1 Send us a 

 fan 1 I am very confident if you were depending on this 

 locality for your honey to speculate on. the demand would 

 exceed the supply, and the ' bulls ' would be on top." 



The foregoing is certainly discouraging for some Cali- 

 fornia bee-keepers. We hope it is not general throughout 

 the State. We would like to see California have a good 

 average crop this year. Of course, we wouldn't want her 

 to have so much honey that the price would be lowered to 



almost nothing — she wouldn't want that herself. But it 

 would be encouraging to her many excellent bee-keepers if 

 they could all average say 100 pounds to the colony. 



There is no disputing the fact that in northern Illinois 

 the season up to the first of June has been one of discour- 

 agement ; and now when white clover has been in bloom 

 a number of days, and honey should be going into the 

 supers at a lively rate, the bees in some cases must be fed 

 to prevent starvation. But there is no need to give up in 

 despair, if only the colonies are strong. There have been 

 seasons when bees were starving in the first half of June, 

 and yet conditions changed and a good crop was secured. 

 It must be admitted, however, that there have been seasons 

 in which white clover abounded, and yet the bees seemed to 

 get no nectar from it. 



Cutting Out Drone-Comb has been recommended to 

 aid in preventing swarming. On the contrary, Rud. Dathe 

 (Centralblatt) says it hastens swarming, for the vacancy 

 thus made gives a^more convenient place for starting queen- 

 cells. 



Quality of Queens Reared In Cell-Cups.— Arthur C. 



Miller having said in Gleanings in Bee-Culture that since 

 the introduction of the cell-cup plan there were increased 

 reports of inferior queens, G. M. Doolittle replies in the 

 same periodical : 



"Yes. I noticed what Mr. Miller had to say in this 

 matter ; and my mind went back to the early 80's, when Mr. 

 Alley's book on queen-rearing came out. I ha%'e been a 

 careful reader of our bee-papers, and have noted many 

 things ; and one of the things which I have noted is that, in 

 proportion to those buying queens, there are not nearly so 

 many reports of poor queens to-day as there were during- 

 the 80's. In other words, the reports of poor queens are 

 little if any greater now than were such reports during the 

 80's, while the queen-traffic of to-day has reached gigan- 

 tic proportions beside what it was then. This shows that 

 the cell-cup plan has been a success beyond anything- pre- 

 viously known, does it not ?" 



Hiving Swarms With Dynamite — Mr. Adrian Getaz 

 sends us the following sad account of an attempt to hive a 

 swarm of bees with the use of dynamite, as given in a 

 Knoxville, Tenn., newspaper, dated June 6 : 



While attempting to hive a swarm of bees at his home 

 on the Sevierville pike, six miles southeast of the city, 

 Thursday afternoon, Matt Lopasser, a farmer, sufl^ered the 

 loss of his right arm near the elbow, several injuries about 

 his face and body, and internal injuries which may result 

 fatally. 



Lopasser had been experiencing- some difficulty in hiv- 

 ing a large swarm by the usual methods of beating on tin 

 cans, ringing bells, throwing water on the bees, and others 

 commonly in use. He secured several sticks of dynamite, 

 and had been exploding these near the bees, thinking that 

 the jar would cause them to settle, and hiving them would 

 then be an easy process. A stick of dynamite which Lopas- 

 ser was intending to throw among the bees, exploded pre- 

 maturely before leaving his liand, and his right arm and 

 hand were blown off below the elbow. His face was badly 

 bruised and torn by the explo-iL'n. and it is believed that he 



