504 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 1. 



thing inside indicates wealth and luxury. The 

 next house may be a cow-stable, with a dozen 

 or more cows in it; the next a tin-shop; the 

 next a house full of niggers, and so on all 

 along the street. No house, from the outside, 

 indicates what's inside. 



There are several nice parks in Havana 

 where one can enjoy the music from the differ- 

 ent bands several nights in the week, and 

 there is one nice walk here, the Prado. Here 

 one can see the beauty and wealth of Havana 

 driving about or promenading. The boasted 

 Spanish or Havanese beauties are scarce. The 

 ladies here all have beautiful eyes and hair, 

 and this is all. You can see more beautiful 

 women in any large northern city in one hour 

 than you could see here in a week — that is, to 

 the taste of the writer. Of course, tastes dif- 

 fer. They also have a custom of powdering 

 so thick that they all look as if their heads 

 just came out of a flour-barrel; then they put 

 the perfume on so thick that you can smell 

 them coming long before you can see them. 

 But I'll stop now or I may get myself into 

 trouble. There is hardly any of what we 

 would call children here. They are either 

 babies or grown. Up to five or six years they 

 are babies; from ten years up the boys are 

 mashers, and the girls are dressed and pow- 

 dered up, and trotted about by their parents 

 just as their elder sisters are. This is one of 

 the queer customs they have. They never let 

 a girl go out or sit alone with a man. A girl's 

 beau has to court her with her father or moth- 

 er sitting facing him. I hope this is because 

 it is an old custom rather than from a distrust 

 of man or woman. 



The most of the laboring class are nearly all 

 unmarried men, and they use up in a restau- 

 rant what they can earn. They seem to ra- 

 gard marriage as a luxury out of their reach; 

 and with the habits of both men and women 

 here I think it is. There is not a single sav- 

 ings bank in Havana. Some years ago one 

 was started, but it proved a flat failure. The 

 natives will spend their last cent in hack fares 

 before they will walk ten blocks. I saw a 

 laborer, who was working in the sewers here 

 for 83 cents a day, hire a hack to ride eight 

 blocks to have a pickax exchanged. This was 

 spending 20 cents in riding while earning four 

 cents for the same length of time. 



I will not say any thing about bee-keeping, 

 as you have a more able writer here writing 

 you an article. 



Havana, Cuba, May 15, 1899. 



A CASE OF BEE-FEVER. 



BY E. W. BROWN. 



A few years ago I was taken with an acute 

 attack of bee-fever. I was totally unable to 

 cure myself. Even hypodermic injections had 

 no permanent effect ; and, being too bashful 

 and miserly to consult a physician, I gradual- 

 ly grew worse until my case became chronic. 

 By exercising my best judgment I kept my 

 fever from assuming a malignant form, al- 

 though some of my friends thought I would 



eventually have to be sent to an asylum for 

 the insane. I may 'wind up there yet, but 

 somehow nobody seems to worry about it any 

 more. 



You can, perhaps, imagine how "powerful 

 bad off " I was when I say that I gave up a 

 good job as inspector for the Chicago Tele- 

 phone Co. ; mortgaged my suburban home for 

 8400 ; packed my eight colonies of bees and 

 household goods into a car, and moved 500 

 miles with a family of wife and three children, 

 in spite of the fact that there were hundreds of 

 acres of sweet clover growing in the vicinity 

 of my home, and a crop failure was unknown. 

 My wife and I were born in the East ; and 

 after seven years' absence we longed to go 

 back. This is one of the reasons why we took 

 the leap in the dark. 



Before leaving Chicago I read an Indiana 

 bee-keeper's advertisement in a bee-paper, of- 

 fering for sale colonies of Italian bees on 

 wired frames at $4.00. I ordered 14 colonies 

 to be sent here (New York). I thought they 

 would be sent by freight ; but when I had to 

 pay $27.50 express charges I became aware of 

 the fact that small lots of bees are sent only 

 by express. For $60.00 I could have had a 

 whole carload of bees sent by freight, and re- 

 ceived free railroad fare for one person. How- 

 ever, I was prepared, for the shipper wrote me 

 in advance, telling just what train the bees 

 would arrive on. I happened to know some- 

 thing about express rates, so I made a guess 

 on the weight of the bees, and estimated that 

 the charges would be about $28.00 before I 

 went to the station after them. When I ar- 

 rived I found the express agent in a nervous 

 state of mind. There was a big pile of ten- 

 frame hives with covers removed and wire 

 cloth nailed over the tops. The 14 covers 

 were crated by themselves. Every thing was 

 in good order, and packed well enough for a 

 journey to California. When I told the agent 

 I had come for the bees he said, with an anx- 

 ious look, " The express charges are S27.50." 



" Is that all? I thought it would be more," 

 I answered. 



I was pleased to learn that the charges were 

 no higher than I expected, and he could see 

 that I did not feel bad. When I drove away 

 he stood staring at me. Perhaps he was think- 

 ing of Josh Billings when he said people were 

 of two classes — " phools and damphools." 



I was well pleased with the bees. All the 

 combs were built on wired foundation in what 

 I should call closed-end Hoffman frames. 

 They would interchange nicely with ordinary 

 Hoffman frames. 



That season proved to be so rainy that the 

 larger part of the nectar went to waste ; but I 

 obtained 6(5 lbs. per colony — a total of about 

 1450 lbs. This includes fall honey — mostly 

 comb. 



When it came time to pack the bees for win- 

 ter I found that the closed-end frames were 

 the only ones that contained brood in every 

 case where I had put both kinds of frames in 

 one hive, with two or more closed-end frames 

 together. If there were two or three closed- 

 end frames on the north side of the brood- 

 chamber, there is where I would surely find 



