GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



pie, and what the Lord has sent me; and what I 

 have been able to earn has supported me and mine, 

 and a great deal of work for the Lord. To this sort 

 of work and life my wife and I are pledged. 



In closing-, let me ask you to continue Gleanings. 

 And if the Lord move your sympathies on behalf of 

 the suffering- here, I hope you will speak the word 

 to your friends through your journal, and pray that 

 some help may come through you to the suffering 

 here. lam not in. need, nor are my Christians; but 

 the poor heathen, who know not God to cry to, fteed 

 your prayers and sympathy. God is full of mercy, 

 and these famine and plague voices are his, and as 

 full of mercy as any ever sent to the perishing. 



C. B. Ward. 



Yellandu, Nizam's Dominions, India, Mar. 25. 



Let us now come back to our country, and 

 read a letter from a brother bee-keeper who 

 seems to preserve a very cheerful spirit, even 

 although he has had terrible trials and losses: j 



A SAD STORY FROM ONE OF OUR BEE-KEEPERS WHO 

 HAS SUFFERED FROM THE FLOOD. 



Friend A. I. Root:— I am sitting in our humble 

 domicil, not able to leave our door unless we go in a 

 boat. Our stock is standing on the levee, in front, 

 flghtiog the buffalo gnats; the younger of the fam- 

 ily out tbere trying to keep the g-nats from kill ng 

 horses and cows; the water at our door is 28 inches 

 deep. What bees we saved, some 30 colonies, are up 

 on stilts, hurriedly made when tlie levee broke 

 some five miles north of us. We lost some 200 head 

 of hosrs, but have saved horses and milch cows so 

 far, though they are uetting very poor. We feed 

 them all we can; but being about out of feed, we 

 are cutting- and boating to them green willow and 

 Cottonwood to try to save them. The river is fall- 

 ing a little, but very si iwly— about one or two inches 

 in 24 hours. It looks very dark about making any 

 crops in this vicinity. The levee is crowded with 

 horses, mules, cattle, and negroes, driven from 

 their homes by the worst flood we ever had. 



I said the water is 28 inches deep in our dooryard; 

 but it is much deeper in most of the town. On the 

 main street, on which are the court-house, postofBce, 

 and most business houses, it is from 5 to 8 feet deep. 

 All business is suspended: no trains here in 25 days. 

 The levee broke on the last day of March, and we 

 were flooded in a few hours. I saw Mr. Diver, and 

 he tells me he lost all his bees, as did Syples at Gun- 

 nison, 8 miles north of us. When our bees swarm, 

 wbich they nave been doing, we have to let them go 

 —can't save them. This is a gloomy picture, but 

 not nearly as bad as it actually is. 



There have been several persons drowued, and a 

 great amount of stock; in fact, the stock are still 

 dying fast after being- gotten out on scaffolds and 

 the levees. I guess there are 200 or 300 head dead 

 within less than a mile of Rosedale; and. to make 

 matters worse, they have the measles among the 

 people, and some are dying from that cause. I have 

 received but one copy of Gleanings since the 

 water got us. K. J. Mathews. 



Kosedale, Miss., April 26. 



CULTIVATING PLANTS AND CULTIVATING BOYS. 



Right over in the greenhouse across the way 

 I noticed yesterday, April 27, a good-^ized bed 

 of Earliest in the World tomatoes that were 

 getting crowded. In fact, the whole seemed all 

 at once to have erot to the point where they 

 were discussing " who should be tallest." With 

 the present line weather they would be two or 

 three inches taller than I want them, in 24 

 hours or less. They must be moved. Fred and 

 Frank were busy filling orders for potatoes and 

 other stuff that had to go at once. Mr. Green 

 was superintending the boys planting half an 

 acre of strawberries. I felt as if I could not 



have those tomato-plants in that rich soil one 

 day longer. 



Pretty soon school was out, and three bright 

 earnest boys were ready for a "job." There 

 was a bed already made, ground tined up and 

 nicely leveled off, and even marked for the 

 plants, 7 inches apart from center to center. 

 The boys would take up the plants and set 

 them out in the bed, without any question, if I 

 asked them to do so, (I'it/iotU any instruction; 

 but they would get the dirt all off the roots, 

 and would probably make other blunders, and 

 my beautiful early plants, growing so nicely, 

 would be injured, and many of them killed. If 

 I could be with them for fifteen or twenty min- 

 utes I was pretty sure they would do it almost 

 if not quite as well as some expert men. The 

 boys were from thirteen to fifteen years of age. 

 I called them. 



"Here. Carl, you get every thing ready to 

 put out those tomatoes. Have a couple of bars 

 to stand on; and here, Clyde, you take the hoe- 

 handle dibble* and make the holes just large 

 enough for the plants that Carl is going to set 

 out; and, Clare, you come with me. Bring 

 along two trays and a trowel." Clare has not 

 had as much experience in gardening as the 

 other two, but he is a skillful boy when he 

 knows what we want. 



I showed him how much water to give the 

 plants, where to place his tray, how to handle 

 his trowel, and then held up a plant with a ball 

 of rich black soil hanging to it, say as large as 

 a good-sized hen's-egg. I took up three or four, 

 placed them on the tray, tops all one way, and 

 told him to try it. He soon had a dozen on the 

 tray very nicely. Then I called Clyde to take 

 the tray over to Carl. Carl lifted the plants 

 so carefully that little if any of the dirt tum- 

 bled off — set them down in the holes widened 

 out with the hoe handle dibble, and pressed the 

 earth close around them When he had got 

 out the dozen. Clyde carried back the empty 

 trav and swapped it for a filled one. While he 

 was gone I carried the hose over to where Carl 

 was putting the plants in. and opened the valve 

 just so as to give a small stream. Then Carl 

 let enough on to each plant, without wetting 

 the foliage, to get the roots well soaked. After 

 I had instructed each boy just how to work I 

 watched them for five or ten minutes and knew 

 they would do it all right. In two hours over 

 .500 plants that were crowding and struggling 

 for more daylight were put outdoors and moved 

 from three inches apart to seven. As fast as 

 Carl got a row of plants in, one of the light 

 board shutters was laid over them, and moved 

 along so as to cut off the sun. The plants stand 

 up this morning. April 28. just as proudly and 

 gracefully as they did in the greenhouse; and, 

 shaded by the shutters during the heat of the 

 day, I do not expect a leaf to wither or even 

 scarcely to droop. 



Now, friends, when plant raising can be made 

 to go along like clockwork, and have all the 

 plants live, it is one of the nicest things to work 

 at in the world. But when you do your work 

 bunglingly, and have failure after failure, I do 



* I will e.xplain that our hoe-handle dibbles are 

 made from any hoe that gets broken oft' at the 

 shank. We have the blacksmith lieat up the shank 

 and draw it down to a blunt point. While doing 

 this he keeps the handle of the hoe wet so it will 

 not Ourn ; then it is finished up with a file or emery 

 wheel, and kept polished and bright. Instead of 

 having to stoop over, as you do with short handled 

 dibbles, the operator stands upright, and makes 

 the holes almost as fa^t as he can walk along. In 

 using this dibble in our plant-beds (rolling it as it 

 goes down) the operator stands on one of the wood- 

 en bars laid across the bed, for we never set foot on 

 the ground in the beds at all. 



