280 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aprte 1. 



A good many times I am called upon to 

 settle difficulties among bee-keepers. Both 

 parties have got their feelings stirred up, and 

 each decides the other is a rascal. Sometimes 

 I plead repeatedly for more charity on both 

 sides. There is one point I fear our friends 

 often forget. Suppose a man advertises bee- 

 supplies, and sends out a circular. Then 

 somebody sends him fifteen or twenty dollars 

 for goods, perhaps right in the midst of the 

 honey season ; but the supply-dealer, if he is 

 just starting, and is doing a small business, is 

 likely to be sold out. Then there is a delay 

 that is expensive. Now, I always tell the 

 man who receives the cash that he must be 

 very careful about being harsh or severe with 

 such a customer. When somebody sends us 

 money we should treat him as we would an 

 honored guest. If a visitor comes to your 

 home when you are having almost a wrangle 

 about something, how quickly you all put on 

 a smiling face and drop the unpleasantness ! 

 The new comer is your guest, and you are in 

 honor bound to be courteous and pleasant in 

 the presence of visitors. Now, the man who 

 sends you money for something should be in 

 one sense a privilege! character — a sort of 

 honored guest, and he should be accorded 

 unusual courtesy — at least until you have sent 

 him his goods; and even after that you should 

 be a little more respectful to him because he has 

 traded with you. You are under no particular 

 obligation to be courteous and smiling to 

 every tramp that comes along (especially if 

 he walks on your clean porch with his muddy 

 boots) ; but common sense as well as Chris- 

 tianity requires you to be courteous and pleas- 

 ant to people who trade with you. I would 

 put up with a great deal without quarreling, 

 from a man who sends me money through the 

 mails. I would be very careful about calling 

 him a rascal, or even an enemy. 



I have gone over this just because I feaf a 

 good many of our beginners in business fail 

 because they are not sufficiently ready to be 

 courteous and obliging. A man who would 

 send us $10.50 for clover seed could not well 

 be considered an enemy ; and I rather took 

 pleasure in writing that little postscript where 

 I decided to give him a little rebate on two 

 bushels sent at one time, over the printed 

 price for a single bushel. I hardly need 

 mention how much time and money are worse 

 than wasted in neighborhood quarrels. Yes, 

 every little while we hear of people who lose 

 their he 1th by getting into a quarrel, and 

 quite a few have lost their lives by simply 

 allowing themselves to get into a fit of uncon- 

 trollable anger. " If thine enemy hunger, 

 feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink." 



Mar. 28. — The following is just at hand. 



I ordered the wire netting from you early in the 

 spring, and it did not reach me until November. This 

 I can prove to you by my po'-tmater here, who keeps 

 the wareroom where" goods are kept in as they are 

 unloaded from the train. The reason I did notsend 

 you the freight on wire netting any sooner last year 

 was that r did not want to pay out' money for freight 

 and be out of the wire netting also, and not get the 

 netting when t needed it so badly. I had intended to 

 order a lot of bee-supplies from you, and then include 

 the freight on wire netting, but I forgot it when I 

 ordered the clover seed. T. D. 



GRAND RAPIDS LETTUCE AS AN ORNAMENTAL 

 FOEIAGE-PLANT. 



There is nothing that pleases me more in 

 the way of foliage-plants than a bed of Grand 

 Rapids lettuce when it is just doing its " pret- 

 tiest." I told you last fall about replacing 

 the soil in our greenhouse-beds, the same that 

 had been there for five or six years. Well, in 

 filling the beds anew I made up my mind that 

 I was going to have the best combination to 

 make plants grow that I could scrape up. 

 First we had a pile of decayed sods that had 

 been piled up in a heap for a year. We spread 

 these evenly over the bottoms of the beds. 

 Then we got some old black manure mixed 

 with soil that we scraped up where an old barn 

 had been taken away. We put on perhaps 

 two or three inches of this. Then we put in 

 about an inch of sand, and with this as much 

 wood ashes as I thought the beds would bear 

 — perhaps a quarter of an inch thick all over. 

 Then we were ready to work it all up together. 

 After sifting the top and making it smooth 

 and level, we put on about a quarter of an 

 inch of tobacco dust, to keep off the green fly. 

 Well, this compost seems to have been a suc- 

 cess. I never saw lettuce-plants grow nicer, 

 and there has been none of the spots in the 

 beds where nothing would grow that we had 

 been noticing for some two seasons past. 

 And, by the way, some of the boys felt so sure 

 that well water was not as good for watering, 

 especially in the greenhouse, we made differ- 

 ent arrangements for watering. Very likely 

 the hard water would not, make so much dif- 

 ference in the open air, for we always have 

 showes to dilute and wash off the effects of 

 the hard water. The wa'er from our hydrants 

 is not hatd, but it contains a large amount of 

 soda — so much that in the greenhouse it 

 makes the ground and sometimes the plants 

 show a whitish powder where it has been used. 

 Well, the lower part of our greenhouse has 

 always been more or less wet in the paths 

 after a rain. We have tile drainage, but our 

 stiff clay, after being walked on so much, gets 

 so it holds water in spite of the three drains. 

 On the south side of the greenhouse there is a 

 path that is lower down than the rest, and 

 this has always been more or less muddy. At 

 each end of this path we sunk a two-foot 

 length of 18-inch sewer-pipe. We let it down 

 into the ground so that it was a little lower 

 than the level of the path. On top of this is 

 a wooden cover, to make it safe to walk 

 around, even in the night. Well, by lifting 

 this wooden cover a pail or watt ring pot can 

 be filled at any time ; and so far during the 

 past winter there has always been water 

 enough in these little cis'erns to supply the 

 plants; and whether it is the water or the new 

 soil, or both, at any rate we have a growth of 

 lettuce and other stuff that just makes me 

 happy. 



Now to go back to the starting-point, I 



