478 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 



tiny little seed? And every grain of wheat 

 that goes to makeup the millions of bushels 

 tliat are to be seen in our great grain-eleva- 

 tors, contains all the machinery to make a 

 little plant. Here, again, we have an exam- 

 ple of cheap labor that makes the handi- 

 work of the most successful of the human 

 family sink into utter insignificance. If I 

 am not very much versed in microscopy, it 

 seems to me that 1 have quite a talent for 

 telling wliat I do not know ; or, for that 

 matter, directing thought to these things 

 that none of us as yet know very much 

 about. 



CAT-TAIL POLLEN. 



FKOM 60,000 TO 90,000 SEEDS FROM A SINGLE HEAD. 



fKOM the Science column of Frank Leslie's 3/ay- 

 aziuc I take the following': 

 In a bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, ol 

 New York, the Rev. Thomas Morony furnish- 

 es an account of the well-known cat-tails of 

 our swamps. Their productiveness is enor- 

 mous. He finds that a slng-le cat-tail of averag'C 

 length, say 5 inches, will yield 60,000 perfect seeds, 

 and larger ones may give 90,000. The seeds have a 

 hairy perianth which enables them, balloon-like, to 

 float long distances through the air. The plants 

 often appear In swampy places long-distances away 

 from where they are known to grow, and this has 

 been attributed to seeds being brought in mud on 

 the feet of water-birds; but in view of Mr. Morony's 

 observations, such a guess is not necessary to ac- 

 count for their appearance. There are but three 

 species native to North America: Tj/pfm Ldtifalia, T. 

 angustifolia, and T. Dtimivyentiis. This grows in 

 Mexico and the West India Islands, and is an enor- 

 mous cat-tail. A form found by the Rev. E. L. 

 Greene had stalks 15 to 18 feet high and a cat-tail 

 of three feet. The natives of New Zealand make 

 bread of the pollen of some species of the Typha 

 family; and in the State of New York the leaves 

 have been used for baskets, and for the bottoms of 

 chairs. Mr. Morony does not mention that the pol- 

 len is inflammable, and is used as a cheap substitute 

 for the pollen of lycopodium. 



Here is pollen with a vengeance— enough to make 

 bread of! Well, well! I do not know what will come 

 next. Mr. Doolittle does not mention cat-tails as 

 the source from whence any of his pollen comes. 

 Perhaps it blooms too late in this country to be of 

 any use in spring. I know they are ready to be 

 gathered in September, but I do not know when 

 they are in blossom. Who does? I know, too, that 

 they snap and crackle when held in a blaze. 



I had written this far when. I remembered that 

 Jessie had some cat-tails tied with red ribbt)n and 

 hung up in the parlor. I took one of them, and my 

 magnifier. I rubbed some of the brown dust from 

 the outside, let it fall on white paper, and examined 

 it. At first I thought it must be the seeds; but I 

 pulled out some of the silk, and there in the center 

 of about 40 sprangles of the finest gossamer 1 saw a 

 coarser middle stem, and on it was the seed, resem- 

 bling a small grain of rye somewhat, though with- 

 out the indentation. Tf all these gossamer threads 

 were fastened at the outer end, holding the seed in- 

 closed, it might resemble a balloon somewhat; but 

 none of these do; they all spangle out as soon as 

 pulled loose; and these little brown wing-looking 

 shells, they are the husks that held the pollen, I 

 suppose. I know they can not be the pollen itself, 

 because the shape of pollen grains does show under 

 this magnifier. They look as fine sand does to the 

 naked eye. Mahala B. Chaddock. 



Vermont, Fulton Co., 111., April 21, 1888. 



VEILS FOR BEE-KEEPERS. 



ESPECIALLY VEILS AND THE ACCOMPANYING 



HEAD-GEAR OF OUR APICULTURAL 



SISTERS. 



T^DITOK GLEAN1NGS:-I am very much sur- 

 W4) prised to see that you, as one of the leading 

 Vfr educators of bee-keepers in this progressive 

 "^^ age, should for a moment think of advis- 

 ing in your widely read ,i()urnal the wearing 

 of such a head-gear as is mentioned on page 396; 

 and as for a photograph, you might turn to that of 

 P. Benson, p. 107, 1887. 



Of course, if Mrs. Axtell has tried the straw bon- 

 nets, and likes them, it is all right for her to give a 

 description of them in Gleanings, and people oft- 

 en use something that they do not quite like, as a 

 make-shift in lieu of something better. But you 

 must know that such a rig would prove a " bug-a- 

 boo " in connection with bee-keeping, to most la- 

 dies. Now, lam far from being " stylish " myself, 

 but the very idea of one of those bonnets is un- 

 comfortable to me; and if we had to rig up the 

 visitors who come to look at the bees in "Wel- 

 come Apiary" in that manner, 1 am afraid that the 

 people passing by would think there had been an 

 escape at the insane-asylum, which is not far dis- 

 tant, for some of the inmates arc very fantastic in 

 their dress. It is the almost universal idea, and 

 one which I believe to be erroneous, that, if a lady 

 wishes to engage in bee-keeping, she must dress in 

 a very outlandish fashion. 



On my way home from Chicago I met one of the 

 members of the convention, and he said to me: " I 

 should like to inquire how you dress to work 

 among the bees," and remarked that he had always 

 thought that women who kept bees were inclined 

 to be peculiar any way, and seemed quile surprised 

 when I said that I neither wore gloves nor short 

 dresses. I usually wear a dress made of some kind 

 of cotton goods, both because it will w.-ish and be- 

 cause the bees do not get tangled in it as badly as 

 in woolen goods, and have it made quite plain, so 

 that it will not catch on to things about the apiary. 

 1 used to wear a white sun-hat; but last year, while 

 Mrs. Hains was at Medina she saw the linen hats 

 that you keep, and brought one houic for me to 

 wear. I like it better than any thing else I have 

 ever seen for that purpose. It is light and cool, 

 and 1 hardly realize that I have any covering on my 

 head, even in the hottest days. 1 wear it tipped 

 pretty well back on my head, so that it does not 

 leave a red crease across my forehead; and as I 

 wear a veil made of black netting, long enough to 

 come pretty well down on the shoulders, then draw 

 it rather tightly and tuck it in between the buttons 

 four or five inches from the neck of the dress.it 

 holds the hat in place nicely, even in a windy day. 

 When not needing to use a veil, I draw it up and 

 tuck it around the crown, so that it looks as though 

 it were intended for a lace scarf, for trimming the 

 hat. 



Mrs. Axtell prefers wire cloth because she gets 

 fiir less stings than when she weai-s the brussels 

 net. I have been working among the bees con- 

 stantly in the summer time for seven years, and 

 for two years have taken charge of the queen-rear- 

 ing department of Mr. Hains' apiary, which consists 

 of from eighty to over one hundred colonies, and 

 have never received a sting on either my face or 

 neck, through from the outside of the veil, as the 



