854 



GLEANtXGS IK BEK CULTURE. 



Dec. 



birthplace. Father takes Gleanings, and I like to 

 read the lettei's In It. I have two rabbits, and we 

 have 7 fowls; 3 chickens hatched in May; 3 old hens 

 and a coek, and an old tortoise-shell cat that is a 

 good jumper, and a kitten. I g-o to school at Hun- 

 ning-ham, which is a mile from our house. I g-ot the 

 first prize in our standard. This is Ouj' Fawkes' 

 day— gunpowder plot. This is the third letter I have 

 written to you. I thank you very much for Silver 

 Keys and Sheer Off, which you sent me before. 



Percv Walton, ag-e 9. 

 Weston, Leamington, England, Nov. .">, 1884. 



We are always glad to get letters from the 

 little friends over in England. 



THE GOLDEN BEE-HIVE, AND SOME OTHER MATTERS. 



I have just got done reading the last journal. I : 

 love to read them to g-et information, so I can work 

 with the bees when pa is gone. My pa has some 72 ; 

 or 73 colonies; he has one Holy-Land colony. They | 

 are very strong; we think a great deal of them. \ 

 They are very cross. The Golden bee-hive, that I ; 

 spoke to you about in my last letter, has proven to ; 

 be no bee-protector, but we find they are living iu j 

 the Simplicity hive. We have our bees fed, packed, i 

 and made strong, for winter. 



I have 5 sisters_and 2 brothers. One of my sisters 

 lives in Iowa, and both brothers live there. I have a 

 sister, Lessie, 2 years old. She comes out to the 

 hive factory where we are at work and says, "Din- 

 ner is ready!" She is quite a little bee-g-irl, but 

 rather a "honey" girl, as she asks for butter, bread, 

 and honey, every little while, and the baby is about 

 i) months old. She tries to stand alone. These are 

 the most precious pets; but I have a great big Mai- j 

 tese eat. I think he is the "brag" of the Maltese j 

 cats. I would not give him for any dog- 1 know of. ! 

 He will scratch the door to get in the house; and 

 when I tell him, he will jump up in my lap. 



I want to work with the bees, and be able to get 

 one of your watches, and I think I will start out be- 

 fore long and get up a club, and get one of your 

 premiums. Albert Mendenh.4ll. 



Sylvania, Ind., Nov. 23. 1884. 



THE C.\^BP-POND. 



My father has a carp-pond. It covers about one- 

 third of an acre. Three years ago he sent to the 

 flsh commissioner at Washington, and received 

 twenty German carp, about six Inches long; four 

 of them were dead when received. There were oth- 

 er flsh in the pond when we put them in. These 

 ate the eggs of the carp, for we have seen no little 

 carp. We seined the carp out, and threw dynamite 

 in the pond, and thought we had killed the other 

 fish, but they were only stunned. The carp were 

 eighteen inches long when two years old; they are 

 now over two feet long, and no little carp yet. 



We are making another pond to put the carp in. 

 It is twice as large as the other one. We feed our 

 carp crumbs from the table, and corn bread. They 

 are very fond of curd, and will eat pumpkins too. 

 We brought aquatic plants from the creek, and set 

 out in our pond; we also planted water-lilies, but 

 they didn't grow. I don't know whether the flsh 

 harmed them or not. .Tessie Carson, age 14. 



Cicero, Ind., Nov. 23, 1884. 



Thank yon, Jessie. Yonr letter is very 

 interesting to me just now, and probably 

 will be to many others. We credit you 25 

 cents for the information, and you can have 

 the amount in cash, or something from our 

 price list, just as you choose. We sliould 

 like a good many more letters about carp- 

 ponds. And while I think of it, 1 want to 

 raise some cranberries around near the carp- 

 pond. If any of the little folks can tell us 

 something about cultivating cranberrries, I 

 will willingly pay them for their letters. 



HATTIE'S biography of A LITTLE WHITE MOUSE. 



I am a little white mouse, and do whatever I want 1 

 to. When I flrst came I had to stay shut up in a i 

 cage; but after a time, I think it was a week, the 

 boy came and said he thought I would stay, so he 

 let me out. I played with some other brown 

 mice, but the hoy scolded me, and told me I must 

 not play with them, because they were bad, and 

 stole cheese, so I have played with the rabbits since ! 

 then. The other day the little girl had company, 

 and I thought I should never come out alive. They 

 would hold me, and saj' I was the prettiest thing 

 they ever saw. I saw a black eat catch one of the 

 bi'own mice, and I ran away, because I thought he '• 

 might catch me; but the boy said he would not, be- i 

 cau?e he told him not to, so I guess he will mind, i 

 When I was playing the other day I fell off the | 

 table and hurt myself, and I am dying now. | 



Anderson, Ind. Hattie Mohan, age 10. j 



Very well done, Ilattie. for a juvenile at- j 

 tempt at fiction ; but it seems to me your | 

 tragic wind-up is not in keeping with the ; 

 former part of the biography ; that is, I 

 should liardly expect a dyiny mouse to tell 

 all those other things that happened, in such 

 a life-like, cheerful tone. 



FRANK'S letter, AND SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT 

 BEES. 



We have 12 swarms now, but we had poor luck 

 with the honey business. We had only .56 1-lb. box- 

 es this fall, and that came from a swarm of half- 

 bloods which robbed the swarm of a neighbor who 

 lived a little way off. My father says It has been a 

 poor year for bees any way, and if they don't die 

 this winter we shall probably have pretty good luck. 

 The honey was made of white clover, and is nice 

 and white. Mr. Day, one of our neighbors, gather- 

 ed 416 lbs., and has made 50 or 60 dollars on it, and 

 has 30 swarms. I stayed at home a number of days 

 watching the bees, for fear they would swarm and 

 go away; so one of the swarms, on Sabbath morn- 

 ing morning, took for a tree, and we never succeed- 

 ed in getting them, for we didn't know which tree 

 it was. Sometimes I get too near, and I get stung. 

 I go to school, and sometimes the teacher says some- 

 thing about bees. This is what she told us she had 

 heard, but she said she believed it was not true. She 

 said that when anybody is dead in the house, to rap 

 on the hive and tell them, or they would all die. 



Frank B. Starr. 



Cambridge, N. Y., Nov. 10, 1884. 



Frank, I am glad your teacher told you 

 that tliat old superstition about bees is not 

 true. It seems to me that any little boy or 

 girl old enough to read a bee-jounial ought 

 to know that it is all foolishness to talk 

 about telling bees when anybody dies. It is 

 true, there are a great many strange and 

 funny things to be learned about bees ; but 

 these are all consistent with natural history 

 and common sense, while the foolish story 

 about the bees dying if they were not told, 

 etc., has no common sense about it. 



