1891 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



395 



without it in any case, as Dr. Miller usually 

 roaches for the book before we have gone fai'. 

 Then he looks over the record for' the whole 

 apiary; and by the time we get there he has 

 our day's work planned. Those colonies that 

 must surely be seen to are done first; then in 

 case a shower comes up. or any thing else in- 

 tei'rupts, the most important ones ai'e done. 



We can pick up oui' record-book, turn to any 

 colony we have, whether in the out-apiaries or 

 at home, and tell the condition of ailairs. and 

 it is often very handy to be able to do this. 

 For instance, suppose you have a number of 

 queenless colonies in one of your out-apiaries, 

 and extra queens at home; all you have to do 

 is to take your book, find out how many queens 

 are needed, put them in candy-cages, and take 

 them with you. 



One advantage the book hasover other meth- 

 ods is, that you can refer back five or ten yeai'S. 

 as we keep all our' books. A gi'eat deal of our 

 planning and deciding what to do with our 

 bees — in fact, the most of it — is done away from 

 the hives, at a time when we are not able to 

 work, and our record-book Is most faithfully 

 studied. 



In making our records we abbreviate as much 

 as possible. I will give some of the abbrevia- 

 tions used; cl q (clipped queen); dqc (destroyed 

 queen-cells; ecj (eggs present); sw/ (saw virgin 

 queen); gybi- (gave young brood); t2hr tt- h (took 

 two frames of brood and adhei'ing bees); 8hr 

 (the colony has 8 frames of brood); s<ir (sealed 

 queen-cells); keg (desti'oyed eggs in queen- 

 cells); <ih (queen hatched), etc. You can readily 

 see we take very little space for our I'ecords— 

 very little time to make them or read them. 

 Our book is about 13x() inches, contains 180 

 pages, and costs 25 cents. You hardly need so 

 large a book; but it is very nice to have a few 

 pages for miscellaneous entries, such as date of 

 first clover-bloom; when bees were taken out 

 of cellar, etc. It makes interesting reading 

 in later years. - Emma Wilson. 



Marengo, 111., July (i. 



A PROTEST FROM ONE OF OUR WOMEN-FOI.KS. 



Friend Root: — I have a crow to pick with 

 you. I don't think you half treated us right in 

 your answer to the complaint on page 517. You 

 have there made it appear to the readers of 

 Gleanings that no one can send queens by re- 

 turn mail unless he charges a dollar — or, no 

 one but you can do so. Now, I have sent over 

 three hundred queens this season, and all have 

 gone by return mail when requested. You have 

 overthrown our advertisement, and still we 

 have you to pay. I can send queens by return 

 mail at .50 cents justas easily asyoucan foradol- 

 lar, as long as they last. But. of course, I shohld 

 not make as much; and at the same time my 

 queens could be just as good as yours. I hope 

 you may see the point, and correct it. 



Jennie Atchley. 



Farmersville, Tex., June 27. 



[Well done, my good friend Jennie. I sup- 

 pose you see that, by publishing your letter, we 

 have redeemed ourselves froni a large part of 

 our charge, for we have given you a tiptop ad- 

 vertisement ; and if you have filled all or- 

 ders by return mail when so requested, you 

 have done better than anybody else I know of 

 in raising queens. If you will n^fer again to 

 what I said in regard to raising queens for less 

 than a dollar, you will notice that it is not 

 quite as you state it. In fact, your own state- 

 ment above settles the question. Queens can 

 be raised so as to make it pay, for only .50 cents 

 each. Hold on! your experience does not prove 

 that a rnan can do it, but only that a ivomnn 

 can. Now, then, if our queen-breeders do not 



look out we shall be in a tight place. The only 

 point I wished to niak(^ in what I said was this: 

 That thei'e is no adv(>rtisement in the world 

 that can equal prompt habits in business; and 

 I judged that the reason why we had so many 

 orders while we charg(> a dollar, was because of 

 our promptness in shipping. One of our mails 

 comes from the office, and is opened after four 

 o'clock; and the mail train passes our doors at 

 5:1.5. AVell, we manage nowadays to pick out 

 all the queen orders from this four-o'clock mail, 

 and get queens on the train at 5:15. It makes 

 us skip around lively to do it, and I am afraid 

 that I sometimes " yank on the lines" a little 

 when the queens there on the table do not go 

 off on this evening train. If I have inadvertent- 

 ly not treated any of our advertisers right, I 

 shall be very glad to correct it.] A. I. R. 



Pn^Baeg JiJiJ) ^WIJMDLEg 



A FRAUD. 



Brother Root: — I wish to call the attention of 

 your readers to a fraud or swindle. It is the 

 Kaweah Cooperative Colpny, of Kaweah, Tu- 

 lare Co.. Cal. It is being advertised considera- 

 bly all ovei' the U. S. as well as in England and 

 Germany, and othei' countries. I have recent- 

 ly thoroughly investigated its workings and 

 management, and do not hesitate to brand it as 

 a base swindle. Many of its members have put 

 in one hundred to one thousand dollars, and 

 one to five years' work — hard work— and can 

 not get a ten-cent meal out of their " time- 

 checks." I have a host of plain facts and fig- 

 ures — reliable documents and indisputable evi- 

 dence — which I will gladly give to you or any 

 other publishers who will give the space in 

 their columns. To one and all, I say, don't be 

 misled by their scheme. If you do you will 

 surely lose your money. All inquiries cheer- 

 fully answei'ed. J. G. Gilstrap. 



Last, Fresno Co., Cal.. July 1. 



[That is right, friend G. Show them up. In 

 these times, when there is so much truth in the 

 familiar saying that " farming does not pay," 

 and when a good many other things, by the 

 way, do not pay either, it seems a little sad to 

 think of the amount of money that is scraped 

 up to support blacklegs and swindlers. The 

 Bohemian-oats fraud is pretty well killed out; 

 but the same spirit is noc killed out by any 

 means; and pretended co-operative institutions 

 are being worked all over our land to swindle 

 those who can be drawn into them. It is well, 

 as a rule, to be careful about investing in any new 

 enterprise that suddenly springs up, especially 

 if it has a high-sounding name. Several things of 

 that sort have recently been worked in our own 

 community. One in particular claimed that 

 everytrody who pui in his money could get from 

 12 to 15 per cent interest, and they went through 

 a lot of figuring to demonstrate to an absolute 

 certainty that there was no possible hook or 

 crook about it. The absurdity of such pro- 

 posals ought to be plain to every reasonable 

 man or woman. Put it in this way: If they 

 can ijay 12 to 15 \)(^r cent interest, why in the 

 world don't they go and get money at from (> 

 to 8 per cent? Well, they have a sort of ex- 

 cuse to make by saying that their business is 

 planned to "help poor people." By the way, 

 friends, you had bettei' give a wide berth to any 

 new enterprise that i)i'oposes any thing of the 

 sort; and if you have money to invest, put it 

 into the hands of somebody whom you know 

 personally — some one of undoubted integrity.] 



