GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 1. 



and child as well as man are meant ; and, of 

 course, if a pronoun is called for in such a 

 sentence it is masculine: "Man goeth to his 

 long home." 



When an ant is called " she " it is to answer 

 some poetic idea, not to define gender at all ; 

 spider and bee ditto. E. E. Hasty. 



Richards, 0. 



[Our older readers will recognize the name 

 of Hasty as an old friend ami correspondent 

 who used to write considerably for Glean- 

 ings in the early '80's. He enjoys the dis- 

 tinction of being one of the breeziest and 

 most interesting writers in all beedom. 



I am the more interested in Hasty's side of 

 the question, because our ABC has long used 

 the term he in referring to the ordinary bee; 

 and A. I. R. has always stuck to that use of 

 the pronoun, and now to have so able a cham- 

 pion as Mr. Hasty is indeed consoling. 



Dr. Miller and I have quarreled over this 

 same question not a little ; and as a sort of 

 compromise in the last edition of our book I 

 strove to strike middle ground; and wherever 

 I found the pronoun he I changed it to it. 

 But somehow it took the " life " out of much 

 that is said. Like Hasty I associate with" he " 

 smartness and wickedness ; and with "she," 

 softness and goodness. 



I am sorry now that I did not leave it he all 

 the way through. It might have raised a 

 rumpus with Dr. Miller, but he and I are used 

 to having squabbles. — Ed.] 



BEE-KEEPING IN CUBA. 



The Fine Flavor of the Bellflower Honey ; No Im- 

 mediate Danger of Cuban Honey becoming a 

 Competitor of American Honey. 



BY W. W. SOMERFORD. 



Mr. O. O. Poppleton's article in Dec. 15th 

 Gleanings, "Honey from Cuba, and its 

 Quality," is one of Ihe best articles on the 

 subject, of each and every location, its special 

 flavor and quality of honey, that I have run 

 across from the pen of any one. And, by the 

 way, it was Mr. Poppleton who gave me the 

 first taste of Cuban honey, out at Punta Brava 

 de Guatao, Provincia de la Habana, almost 

 ten years ago ; and he it was who gave me my 

 first lesson in Spanish ; took me to Havana, 

 introduced me to Dr. Warner, who gave me 

 directions out to Mr. Casanova's apiary, twen- 

 ty miles from Havana. Mr. Casanova was 

 then one of the leading bee-keepers on the 

 island, having over 500 modern hives, sold to 

 him by Mr. A. J. King, of New York, the 

 man who introduced the movable- frame hive, 

 or modern bee-keeping, in Cuba. 



But the worst feature of the introduction 

 was foul brood, from D. A. Jones, of Beeton, 

 Canada, along with some fine queens from 

 him, to Pedro Casanova. As I took Mr. Ca- 

 sanova's apian- on halves for a number of 

 years I know some things about foul brood in 

 Cuba that I am going to tell before I am 

 through writing about Cuba as the bee-man's 

 paradise. And as to the Spanish language, 



the first few nights I spent on the island, ten 

 years ago, I camped out, and couldn't then 

 ask for a night's lodging or buy a railroad 

 ticket. The language is going to be the draw- 

 back to Americans booming the bee-business 

 in Cuba — more so than any thing else, for the 

 few who are there in the swim are going to be 

 troubled so much with beginners' questions 

 that their answers will not always be as kind 

 and plentiful as Mr. Poppleton's were to me. 

 Mr. P. forgot to mention the best trait that I 

 found in the bellflower honey of Cuba, and 

 that is its eating quantity. I say " quantity," 

 for the more or the longer a fellow eats it the 

 better he likes it; so when you sell to a cus- 

 tomer you're sure of selling to him again, as 

 the Cuban " campanilla " (or bellflower) hon- 

 ey is something fine — too nice, I think, to be 

 compared with basswood honey ; for if it is 

 like Texas basswood honey, and you sell a 

 man a five-gallon can of it, you are not apt to 

 sell him any more — not inside of three years. 



But all the honey produced in Cuba is not 

 so fine. The honey from royal palm is the 

 bee-keeper's standby, as it blooms every day 

 in the year, and yields a solid stream of honey 

 the year round, sufficient to keep bees boom- 

 ing, except during the 90 days it rains ; and 

 as it rains sometimes the full 90 days, without 

 missing a day, the palm honey is washed out 

 so clean and so often that black bees starve by 

 the wholesale in Septemb'r and October un- 

 less fed plentifully when stores run out. I say 

 "plentifully," because it takes lots of feed to 

 keep up eight or ten frames of brood together 

 with a big swarm of bees. But the palm 

 makes up for lost time in November and De- 

 cember by yielding several supers of thick 

 dark honey, about the color of sorghum syrup, 

 with a twang to it that always shows it to be 

 pure Cuban honey in flavor. I mention this, 

 for Mr. Fred Craycraft told me about extract- 

 ing 700 gallons of pure sugar-cane honey, 

 gathered by the bees from the burnt cane-fields 

 during the first year of the war, the cane be- 

 ing burned sufficiently to kill it. After being 

 killed it cacked open, and, of course, the 

 juice ran out and candied, and the dews and 

 showers melted the candy into molas-es, so 

 the bee had nothing to do but bring in the 

 pure cane syrup; and pure it mu>-t have been, 

 for the buyers only laughed at Mr. Craycraft 

 when he offered it for sale as hone}'. 



Mr. Poppleton, in closing his valuable arti- 

 cle on Cuban honey, says: "Should very 

 many American bee-keepers set up business in 

 Cuba I think Mr. Coggshall, as well as a good 

 many more of us, will find their rivalry a 

 much more serious matter than we shall en- 

 joy . ' ' The ' ' seriousness ' ' of competition from 

 Cuba, in the way of honey, looked away off 

 yonder to me, while rambling among the war 

 ruins, and while observing the ropj% infallible 

 evidence of foul brood, as something not very 

 "serious;" and I am afraid I shall die of 

 natural old age before very many Americans 

 iL enjoy " or luxuriate on cheap honey from 

 Cuba. In the first place, Cuba is not a whale 

 for size; and in the second place, as nearly as 

 I could see and learn, there is not more than 

 half of it that will do at all to keep bees on, 



