174 



Feb 28, 1907 



American Hee Journal 



The 





' Old Reliable " as seen through New and Unreliable Glasses, 

 By E. E. Hasty, Sta. B. Rural, Toledo, Ohio. 



Preserving the Forests. 



As to the latter part of his article on 

 page 27, we may thank Prof. Cook for 

 showing us the grindstone which we 

 will have to put our noses on not far in 

 the future. Individual initiative is 

 sweet to us, but we can not continue 

 indefinitely to be such utter fools in the 

 matter of forest destruction as we have 

 been. The hold-up will be a law which 

 will say : No cutting of any consider- 

 able number of trees (no matter to 

 whom they belong) without a permit 

 from the State Bureau of Forestry ; 

 and no permit without satisfactory as- 

 surance that the forest area is to be 

 kept good by replanting. I suppose it 

 will eventually be found best to divide 

 each large forest which occupies level, 

 arable ground into a large number of 

 small sections — cut one section at a 

 time, cut it clean, and replant — either 

 with or without a few years of cultiva- 

 tion. Very much more lumber can 

 thus be raised on the same area than 

 in Nature's higglety-pigglety way — 

 an3 probably more than in any mere 

 modification of Nature's way. (If this 

 is objected to as not bee-matter, I'll 

 claim that basswood for sections is 

 what we're after.) 



Chickens Eating Young Ants. 



The chickens of Pacific Coast " Mur- 

 murer," that we hear of on page 16, 

 surprise me. I had supposed that the 

 young of ants, so long as they remain 

 white, are destitute of the biting acrid- 

 ity we are so familiar with. That 

 might well prevent almost any creature 

 from wanting to eat them. I had sup- 

 posed they were regularly raised as 

 food for high-priced young birds. 

 Quite a backset to find chickens that 

 won't eat them. Still, I can't say off 

 hand that I ever saw chickens eat 

 them. And, scratching out ants in a 

 natural way, chickens would probably 

 find an adult ant clinging on to each 

 pupa. They might honestly enough 

 decide that the white one was not good 

 enough to pay for eating a black one 

 along with it. 



Wintering Bees in a Trench. 



Mr. Whitesides found a few colonies 

 to winter well in a trench. Couldn't 

 be " aisy ' till he had crowded some 

 into a trench two tiers deep. That time 

 the lower ones all died. The look 

 of that sort of thing is that the number 

 of bees was too great for the amount 

 of air percolation the pit afforded. The 

 befouled air was heavier than the rest, 

 and so the lower colonies naturally got 

 an overdose of it. Page 13. 



Home-Made Hives, Etc. 



A factory-made hive with a quarter- 

 inch bottom-board — it does seem as if 

 stale vegetables and things ought to be 

 flung at it — if not at its maker. And 

 Dr. Bohrer's experience, that even car- 

 penters do not make hives sufficiently 

 exact in dimensions unless one watches 

 them closely, is worth noting. We'll 

 agree with him as to the rest. Occa- 

 sionally men make their own hives 

 profitably, and very well. But the 

 usual rule is that the work is poor, and 

 dimensions not exact enough. Page 28. 



Enduring Beb-Stings. 



Mr. Wm. W. Green seems to be a 

 rare bird — in his ability to go through 

 so frightful a case of bee-poison with 

 almost no treatment. Better for peo- 

 ple like him not to keep bees. But his 

 notes ought to be valuable for compari- 

 son with other bad cases — decidedly 

 more valuable on account of his ab- 

 stention from treatment. That 6 hours 

 after the stinging the skin exuded odor 

 which suggested bees is one of the 

 points of interest. Page 28. 



Short on Storks and Less Pollen. 



Mr. McGuire thinks Paul's "Lay 

 aside every weight, and the sin," etc., 

 is good for us. If the "weight" is 

 useless fixtures, I suppose the " sin " 

 would be useless manipulations — or is 



the habit of writing for the bee-papers 

 the sin 7 Not sure the application is a 

 good one. At least, he evidently 

 doesn't care for the "cloud of wit- 

 nesses," but only for the coppers. 



At first I thought it was a mere no- 

 tion of his that colonies short of stores 

 brought in smaller pollen-loads. After 

 a while a reason why it should be so 

 occurred to me, and then I was more 

 ready to think it might be a fact. 

 Where there is plenty of honey at home 

 very likely a bee going out for pollen 

 would take some along to be used in 

 making up the pellets. Where there is 

 famine at home the gatherer would go 

 out empty, and trust to finding in the 

 fields some nectar to be used in mak- 

 ing the pollen cohere. If little or no 

 nectar was to be had in making up the 

 pellets would be difficult, and they 

 might be small as a result. Page 28. 



Honey from Oak-Galls. 



Wonder if it's always the case that 

 honey from oak-galls is too dark and 

 poor for human eating, as Prof. SchoU 

 finds. It half-way seems to me that 

 some one has reported eatable honey 

 from that source. Page 29. 



Gloves and Bees. 



" Between gloves and defeat, wear 

 gloves." Don't think I ever saw that 

 side of the argument better put than 

 Miss Trevarrow here puts it. Some 

 might add, And get a better tempered 

 strain of bees as soon as you can. 

 Page 30. 



Political " Bee-Keepers." 



And that Murmurer, with most atro- 

 cious parody of logic, wants to call the 

 politician a bee-keeper because he has 

 a bee in his bonnet ! Why, the bee 

 in the bonnet is rampageously trying 

 to keep the man. Man can't keep 

 the bee till he can get the bee away 

 from the region behind his ample 

 ears. If the politicans were all bee- 

 keepers we'd have had all the legis- 

 lation we could make any use of long 

 ago. Page 3S. 



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Send Questions either to the offlce of the American Bee Journal, or to 



Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



U^° Dr. Miller does not answer Questions by mail. 



Colonies in Hives Under Snow 



On page 67 Mr. Doolittle says, " If the hives 

 are buried in snow .... the obstruction 

 should be removed, for an occasional winter 

 (light is a great benefit," Would it be an ad- 

 vantage to remove the snow in a country 

 where a chance tor a winter flight is almost 

 never known ? I have experimented to a lim- 

 ited extent with 7 ways of handling the en- 

 trances, and have come to the conclusion that 



I lose less bees during the winter with the en- 

 trances closely covered with spruce boughs 

 and the hives buried in straw or snow. In 

 one instance, a colony came through all right 

 after having been buried for over 2 months in 

 6 feet of snow. I have not been able to come 

 to any conclusion as to which will build up 

 best in the spring. P. E. Islakd. 



Answer. — For a certain lime there prob- 

 ably could be nothing better than to have a 

 colony covered with 6 feet of snow or more. 



