ISl) 



(JLEANINGS IX BEE CULTURE. 



Mah. 1. 



EDI¥@^I^Ii. 



We are nbligod to add eight extra i)ages this 

 issue. 



ESSAYS AT CONVENTIONS. 



Shokt. pithy, well-written essa-ys, suggestive 

 of several good points, are always in place at 

 conventions: long-winded ones, never. A long 

 essay, however, may be valuable in pi'oporti(jn 

 to its length. Rut it taxes the nerves a good 

 deal more to listen to something read than 

 something given ott'-liand. in animated convei- 

 sational style. 



THE president OF THE X. A. H. K. A. 



Mk. Ei-W()()i) is not only a successful bee- 

 keeper, aretined and educated Christian gentle- 

 man, but he makes an excellent presiding oHi- 

 cer for a bee-convent!on. He has a happy fac- 

 ulty of summarizing the l>cst points brought out 

 by the discussion: and when the discussion be- 

 comes a little lopsided he is pretty apt to call 

 out the other side, although that side be 

 against his experience and sympathies. He 

 will make a good presiding of'ticer for the N. A. 

 B. K. A. next fall at Albany. 



he. "So you are interested in lixed frames?" 

 We meekly admitted that we were. " Well, 

 you will find that not all of our York State bee- 

 keepers use them. I don"t. and some others 

 don"t." We were about to ask the reason, when 

 somebody desired a hand-shaking, and the mat- 

 ter droi)]ied \\h(>re it was. 



nXJSED-ENI) FRAMES IN A TIGHT-FITTING CASE. 



On page 1(51 it is suggested that friend Hed- 

 don includes this idea in his patent. I trust 

 this is a mistake. Closed-end frames in a 

 tight-fitting case were exhibited on the Ohio 

 State Fairgrounds more than twenty years ago. 

 Another man had a patent on a similar ar- 

 rangement on the Centennial grounds in Phila- 

 delphia, in 187(), and somebody has been invent- 

 ing it and bringing it out every little while ever 

 since Langstroth brought out movable frames. 

 A. I. R. 



THE GRIPPE AGAIN, AMONG THE BEE-KEEPERS. 



It has had a little run here at the Home of 

 the Honey-bees, but for the present it seems to 

 have released its hold. We are just in receipt 

 of a letter troni Dr. C. C. Miller, and he says: 

 "I am pretty badly used up with the grippe. 

 Mrs. M. has been still worse, and mother Wil- 

 son is getting over the pneumonia. Em is laid 

 up with a sprained ankle." Well, well, doctor, 

 vou have been having misfortune in your 

 household. We extend to you our sympathies. 

 and are glad to know that you are improving. 



I)A1)ANT"s L.\NGSTR0TH in FRENCH. 



We notice, by the \a»t Revue Tntermttlonnle, 

 that this great wt)rk of our esteemed and cel- 

 ebrated co-laborer is at last ready for the 

 French-speaking people of the world. It will 

 be ready for sale on the first of March, just as 

 this reaches our readei's. We are informed that 

 this will not be simply a word-for-word trans- 

 lation, but an adaittation of the book as a 

 whole to the people of France, Mr. Dadanfs 

 native country. We predict that it will create 

 a great stir if not a revolution in at least some 

 districts of France. We have not leai-ned the 

 price of the book here in America. The price 

 is 73^ francs in Nyon, Switzerland, at the office 

 named above. 



MR. THOMAS PIERCE AND FIXED FRAMES. 



It was our special pleasure to make the ac- 

 quaintance at Albany of Mr. Thomas Pierce, 

 an enthusiastic bee-keeper of Gansevort, N. Y. 

 He is a slim six-footer, and quite fills the bill as 

 given us by Rambler on page 437, 188.S. Said 



A CORRECTION. 



Friend Secjeekin, whose article on grading 

 honey appears on page 134, calls attention to 

 the fact that the words "Not white lioney," 

 under the head of "Grading Honey.'" should be 

 "A"o. 7 white honey.'" He says. "No doubt it 

 was the writer's fault :"" and" as it passed the 

 eyes of all here as it appears in print, perhaps 

 tile fault was not wholly ours. A second in- 

 spection of the manuscript shows that the woi'd 

 "not" was plainly written, but the t was not 

 cr(>ss(\d. The omission of the period after 

 "No." is what caused the whole trouble. 



preconceived notions. 



What a lot of troubl(> this commodity in hu- 

 man nature makes us sonietimesi We figure 

 out in advance whether a thing will or will not 

 work. Our experience with bees has been sucii 

 that we are morally certain that we are not de- 

 ceived, and we try hard to make all our experi- 

 m(uits come out so as to favor our views. With 

 enough bias of opinion we can make out a pret- 

 ty straight story for or against the idea: but 

 when such are reported it costs the fraternity 

 much. Let us be unbiased, and ready to have 

 our old notions broken down when facts and 

 subsequent experience wari'ant it. 



HOW TO KEEP BEES AWAY FROM WATERING- 

 TROITGHS. 



Among some of the good things we learned at 

 Keokuk last fall was a little hint worth remem- 

 bering, from A. N. Draper. He is an extensive 

 honey-producer — a man who owns several out- 

 apiaries. Said he, " People have had a good deal 

 to say about keeping bees away from watering- 

 troughs. I will give you a .secret that is worth 

 them all. Take a weak solution of carbolic 

 acid, and paint it around the edges of the 

 trough, and then they won't bother your neigh- 

 bors. If you get them out of the habit of visit- 

 ing such places, they will stay away." We 

 have used enough carbolic acid in the apiary tO' 

 feel pretty tolerably certain that this will 

 work. Put this down in your note-book, and. 

 try it next season and report. 



HEE-KEEPIXG IN RUSSIA. 



The olticial report of the Petrowsky Agricul- 

 tural Academy of Russia has just been sent us, 

 through the kindness of P. Ivuleshoflf, Professor 

 of Agriculture in that institution. The docu- 

 ment is devoted to apiculture, and gives a gen- 

 eral summing-up of bee culture in this country 

 and England, in order to show what the Mus- 

 covites themselves can do if they try. Al- 

 though our early education in Russian was some- 

 what neglected in our school days, we have 

 succeeded admirably in translating some of the 

 pict}i,res into ])lain English; and these, together 

 with some columns of figures, which seem to> 

 add up just the same in both languages, give 

 us a very good general idea of the nature of the 

 book, which is admirably printed — rarely 

 equaled by oiu' own government documents. We 

 see the familia.r name "Root" turns up in 

 Russian as Pyta (what a pity!) but the pro- 

 nunciation is the same as in "English. Friend 

 Graven horst appears under the Jiom c7c plume 

 of FpaBeiiropcT. Seriously, we shall be glad to 

 hear further about the growth of apiculture in 



