638 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 1. 



the dollars. Langstroth was a real benefac- 

 tor. He is not only revered by the bee-keep- 

 ers of the United States, but by all Europe as 

 well. Let us pay him this our last tribute. If 

 the money comes in, and a suitable monu- 

 ment is erected, we will show a half-tone pic- 

 ture of it. 



MY TRIP EASTWARD. 

 As our readers are aware, I have been plan- 

 ning a tour among the bee-keepers of the East 

 this sunnner. I leave here for the Buffalo con- 

 vention, and will go on from that point, after 

 the convention, to Syracuse, where is located 

 one of our branch offices. I shall make a cir- 

 cle among the bee-keepers of that vicinity, 

 taking in Doolittle, Salisburv, and others; then 

 on through Herkimer, Otsego, and Tompkins 

 Counties ; thence on to Providence, R. I. , where 

 I am to act as judge of the honey exhibit at 

 the vState Fair, which la.sts from the 6th to 

 the 10th of September. But I shall be at the 

 exhibit, probably, only the 7th. I shall make 

 a flying trip, going by rail for long distances, 

 to save time, and using my bicycle to strike 

 intermediate points and places not directly 

 on the line of the railroad. But I am afraid 

 I shall have to skip by a good many of our 

 good friends, as my time and strength will be 

 limited. 



COMMISSION SWINDLERS. 

 On page 500 of this journal for last year we 

 published the name of Martin Brockman, a 

 commission man in Cincinnati, who had ob- 

 tained from Mr. Byron Walker some 170 worth 

 of hone}', and who either would not or could 

 not make any returns. At all events Mr. 

 Walker was satisfied that Mr. Brockman tried 

 to swindle him. He now^ sends me informa- 

 tion, coming from the Pcstoffice Department, 

 to the effect that this same Brockman, togeth- 

 er with George R. Dixon, A. Hess, and Chas. 

 Cook, made up a gang whose headquarters 

 w^ere in Cincinnati, and who had been conduct- 

 ing a fraudulent business through the medi- 

 um, of the United States mails. Report goes 

 on to show that they were convicted in the 

 United States Court, sentenced, and are now 

 serving time as follows: Brockman and Dixon, 

 four years each, and Hess five years and four 

 months, in the Ohio penitentiary; Cook gets 

 thirteen months in the Cincinnati workhouse. 

 Such news is refreshing. It is a pity that 

 Uncle Sam could not get after the glucose- 

 mixers in the same wav. If he could, I im- 

 agine that the business "of the |12,000,000 glu- 

 cose trust, recently formed, would languish 

 for want of respectable patronage. 



THE NEW T.\RIFF RATES, AND THEIR RELA- 

 TION TO APICULTURE. 

 ElvSEWHERE I have referred to the tarifi" on 

 glucose. In looking over a copy of the Ding- 

 ley tariff bill, recently enacted, I find that the 

 tariff on honey is 20 cents a gallon, and bees- 

 wax goes free as before. White-pine lumber, 

 of which hives are made, is subject to a duty 

 of $2.00 per 1000 ; basswood, $\ .00. The tariflF 

 on honey is, I think, unchanged. Its effect has 



been, I believe, to keep out of our markets 

 cheap honey from Cuba and Mexico. .\t first 

 sight it might appear that the tariff on lumber 

 would have a tendency to raise the price of 

 hives ; but, fortunately, there is a very large 

 lot of lumber of good grade on the market, 

 suitable for making hives, and this lumber is 

 begging for a customer. It is what is usually- 

 denominated " shorts " — that is, it is lumber 

 that is otherwise suitable for purposes of build- 

 ing, but too short to work to advantage on a 

 house or barn. The very fact that the lum- 

 ber-dealers are competing with each other to 

 get rid of the.se " shorts " will prevent the tar- 

 iff or any thing else from raising or lowering 

 the price of hive lumber ju.st at present. 



Now, I hope that what I have said on the 

 subject of the tariff will not be construed as 

 having a partisan flavor. We have no room 

 for any discussion of the tariff or free trade in 

 our columns ; and any article of that nature 

 sent in for publication will be returned by the 

 first mail. What is said above is neither for 

 nor against the tariff — or, at least, it is not .so 

 intended. 



DRONE-TRAPS VS. CLIPPING QUEENS' WINGS 

 TO CONTROL SWARMING. 



The editor of the Revien\ in referring to 

 what I said about chasing after swarms with 

 undipped queens, and that it was my deter- 

 mination hereafter to have all queens' wings 

 clipped, whether our customers liked it or 

 not, suggests that queen-traps will enable one 

 to control a swarm wthout clipping. That is 

 true. At our out-yard we used traps on all 

 colonies having undipped queens. But the 

 perforated zinc somehow seemed to disconcert 

 the workers, and then toward evening the bees 

 of such colonies showed a tendency to cluster 

 out more than on those hives having colonies 

 of eqtial strength where the entrances were 

 left unobstructed. But queen-traps are handy, 

 " allee samee." There were two colonies at 

 the out-yard that were so very populous, and 

 being a little on the hybrid order, it was not 

 practicable to take time to hunt their queens, 

 .so I just clapped on entrance-guards and let 

 them go. 



It should be said, however, in connection 

 with the entrance-guards, that they will pre- 

 vent virgins as well as laj'ing queens from go- 

 ing off A\-ith the swarms. It sometimes hap- 

 pens, imbekuown to the apiarist, that the 

 laying queen is superseded, and a virgin or 

 young laying queen takes her place. In such 

 a case, if the old queen were clipped the bees 

 could swarm and "light out" for parts un- 

 known ; but perforated zinc would hold them 

 — or at least there would be very few virgin 

 queens that would get through it, and in gen- 

 eral practice there are none at all. 



R. B. LEAHY'S VISIT TO MEDINA. 



R. B. LE.\hy, the supply-man of Higgins- 

 ville, Mo., and editor of the Prooressive Bee- 

 keeper, on his tour among the manufacturers 

 and bee-keepers made us a brief call here at 

 Medina. 



The Leahy Manufacturing Co., like every 

 other manufacturer of bee-keepers' supplies. 



