468 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Junk 15. 



escape them ail? "Keep to the right ; go 

 stow.'" Does the gambling den have an 

 attraction? Beware, joung man; "Keep to 

 the right ; go slow." Is there a temptation 

 to be unfair in business? Beware again. It 

 is the upright and honest dealer who runs the 

 longest and most prosperous race. "Keep to 

 the right; go slozv." Would you become a 

 good bee-keeper, noted for the neatness of 

 your apiary, and the excellence of your prod- 

 uct ? ' ' Keep to the right ; go stoic. ' ' I was 

 led to these reflections, perhaps, from what I 

 had learned about a bee keeper the previous 

 dav, and whom I thought lived near Seattle. 



RESTING BY THE FOUNTAIN. 



At any rate my thoughts had a tinge of mourn- 

 ing over the moral condition and conduct of 

 said bee keeper. Sit down upon this fir stump 

 and I will tell you. I had met this young 

 man several times in Southern California; and 

 though his home was in Seattle I did not ex- 

 pect to find him very prosperous, for I had 

 learned that he had lost about 100 colonies of 

 bees by some one poisoning them. My first 

 inquiry about him and his whereabouts was of 

 a grocer. 



" Oh ! " said he, with a sneer, " that fellow 

 out at Latona : he was run out of the country, 

 and it is a good riddance." 



But for all the grocer said, I went out to 

 Latona, in the suburbs of the city, and made 

 further inquiries of a man who was splitting 

 wood near his door. 



He put his ax on a block of wood, and, lean- 

 ing on the handle, looked at me rather quizi- 

 cally. "You any relation to that fellow?" 

 said he. 



"Bless you, no," said I, with alacrity. I 

 had in mind what the grocer said, and had no 

 desire to claim relationship. As your readers 

 are aware, I have met hundreds of bee-keepers, 

 and, almost without exception, they are worthy 

 to hold relationship with the best blood in 

 our land. The exceptions are 

 so few that it really hurts us 

 to find one in a low stratum, 

 in the slime of humanity, as 

 it were. 



The wood-splitter corrobo- 

 rated all the grocer had said, 

 and more too. Said he, 

 "Stranger, if that thing had 

 happened in any of . the old 

 settled portions of the East, 

 that fellow and that woman 

 would have been tarred and 

 feathered and ridden out of 

 town on a rail, or they might 

 have been treated to a rope 

 and a limb of a tree with 

 equal justice." 



A short distance through 

 the brush from this man's 

 house I found the deserted 

 cabin. Bee-hives were piled 

 up, others scattered promis- 

 cuously, bees poisoned, the 

 bee-keeper run out of the 

 country, and all because he 

 did not heed the warning that 

 is before us all, and which 

 a man, though a fool, can 

 heed : ' ' Keep to the right : go 

 slow." 



There are a few bee-keepers 

 in a small way around Seattle, 

 and a few efforts to find them 

 resulted in finding the very 

 ones I was looking for had 

 moved out of town or else had 

 moved out of the business, 

 just as I had found it in Port- 

 land and other places in this 

 northern country. 



I found one neat little apia- 

 ry close to one of those 

 charming wheel-tracks, and within sight of 

 Lake Washington ; but an interview w T as de- 

 nied me, for the good people who lived 

 in the neat little cottage were not at home. 

 Stumps and bee-hives were mingled in the 

 apiary, for this country has not gotten beyond 

 the stump age. A good growth of ferns also 

 spread their fronds for a shade. 



I interviewed quite a number of the grocers, 

 and in every case found them selling Califor- 

 nia honey, both comb and extracted, the lat- 

 ter in one-pound screw-cap tumblers with a 

 piece of comb honey surrounded with extract- 

 ed honey. The comb honey had the label of 



