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Vol. XX. 



JUNE 15, 1892. 



No. 12. 



STRjir Straws 



FROM DR. C. C. MILLER. 



Oh for some weather! 



The tops of hills around Marengo are all 

 swampy nowadays. 



I once tried a quill covered with tallow. 

 The bees gnawed it all the same. 



119 bee-keepers' societies this side the 

 water, as shown by an interesting list in ^4. B.J. 



A self-hiver has been invented in England 

 by J. M. Hooker. It works something like the 

 Dibbern. 



I SECOND THE MOTION to have the N. A. A. 

 incorporated in Canada. The old incorporation 

 can be sandpapered off. 



The editor suggests that I buy a pair of 

 2.5-cent specs. ^Yonderifhe thinks I'm a mil- 

 lionaire: 10-cent specs are all I can afford. 



Doolittle says {A. B. J.), " Don't give a 

 newly hived swarm more than 4 or 5 empty 

 combs at first, if you want them to work on 

 sections." 



I'm trying a pile of Miller feeders off the 

 hives. Bees work on them wet days (and that's 

 pretty nearly all the days) when they can't do 

 any thing on fruit bloom. 



The laziest feeding I have ever known 

 has been this spring. Feeders that ought to 

 have been emptied in 24 hours have stayed on 

 the hives for three weeks. 



Don't forget that you can keep the chick- 

 ens off the flower-beds by putting around them 

 poultry netting only two feet high. Hens can 

 fly over it. but they never do. 



For some of us it will be a comfort to read 

 the report of losses of twenty bee-keepers given 

 by Benj. E. Rice, in A. B. J. The losses range 

 from 25 to KKJ per cent, the average b(!ing '*{). 



After reading Prof. Cook's words on pages 

 404 and 429, all that saved him from having his 

 right hand shaken nearly to pieces was that I 

 couldn't reach all the way from here to Michi- 

 gan. 



Now look here. A. I. Root must be stopped 

 from writing so nuich about gardening or we'll 

 all get the gardening fever and give up keep- 

 ing b<'es. I iust, ache to get at some of the 

 things he tells about. 



Emma HAS seen a number of laying queens 

 go through excluders. I asked her whether 

 the thorax or the abdomen seemed to hinder 

 them most about going through. " Well." she 

 replied. •■ they kept trying and trying: and 

 when they did go through they went so quick 

 you couldn't tell how they did go." 



Doolittle's article in a late Gleanings is 

 a very mild plaint compared with the rough- 

 shod manner in which Chas. L. Strickland goes 

 for "'he sponger of bfee-knowledge," in The 

 ATnerlcan Homestead. 



I'll leave it to friend Larrabee to settle 

 about queens going through excluders, Ernest. 

 What cases I have known about, as soon as the 

 thorax passed, the rest went like a streak. 

 Laying queens, mind you. 



The new paper. National Bee Gazette, St. 

 Louis. Mo., like all Missouri bee- journals, is 

 beautifully pi'inted with clear type and good 

 paper, and shows a good spirit. Might do well 

 for the proof-reader to get a new grammar and 

 spelling-book. 



Oh: but won't some of those Canadians just 

 go for editor Newman! He's gone and included 

 half a dozen Canadian bee-keepers' societies in 

 a list of those belonging to the United States. 

 Clear proof that he wants to incorporate Can- 

 ada into the U. S. on the sly. 



In the discussion as to whether bees make 

 or merely gather honey, the advocates for mak- 

 ing have a strong argument in the report of 

 the government chemist, when, referring to 

 nectar, he speaks of " the extent of inversion to 

 which it is subjected in passing the organism 

 of the bee." 



It's well alway'S to be on good terms with 

 the vvomen. The printing-press that has print- 

 ed the A. B. J. for 15 years was burned May 13; 

 but friend Newman, being on good terms with 

 the W. C. T. U.. their largest press was at his 

 disposal, and "the old reliable" kept up its 

 record for being always on time. 



" Some YE.\Rs we have the whitest kind of 

 honey from buckwheat," says S. Nelson, in 

 National Bee Gazette. I've seen tolerably light 

 honey with a buckwheat flavor, but I always 

 supposed it was mixed. The flavor of buck- 

 wheat is so strong that a very little will give a 

 decided flavor without giving much color. 



A good one is told in (Jreen's Fruit-Oroiver, 

 to the effect that a cavity 8 ft. by "}■< inches in 

 an elm was completely filled with honey-combs, 

 and had been fastened up for .SO years with no 

 chance for entrance or exit. •' Empty combs of 

 the queen-bee also showed that they had 

 swarmed." Query: Do bees always swarm 

 when the queen builds combs? 



Dwindlers, Mrs. Axtell reports, had plenty 

 of brood in the hives all the time. I've some- 

 times suspected that the severe drain on the 

 bees, of caring for so much brood, was the cause 

 of dwindling. Did any one ever know a case of 

 dwindling without the be(!S having more brood 

 than they could well cover. Still, dwindling 

 might bring about that state of affairs, no mat- 

 ter how well the brood was covered in the first 

 place. 



