1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



531 



where children are around. Prof. Cook says 

 so many interesting things about ants that 

 one can hardly help having a kindly feeling 

 for them. The agricultural ant of Texas 

 clears the ground, sows the seed, and raises 

 its own grain. 



Mr. York fears that Mr. Hutchinson and I 

 would not favor a shorter spelling, even if it 

 could all be done in a chunk. Noah Webster 

 shortened our spelling very materially in his 

 dictionary by leaving out one / in such words 

 as traveled, beveled, jeweled, etc., and in 

 many other ways. I have always favored 

 that, and the reform is now practically accom- 

 plished. In a job office the new spelling 

 would make endless trouble. Last winter we 

 printed a job for a firm in Jamaica, and they 

 said they wanted English spelling or none ; so 

 we had to spell it harbour, labour, etc. I feel 

 sure our common spelling will not be modified 

 during the next century. 

 \\i 



Writing to Mr. York, Mr. Doolittle says : 

 "I am fearfully driven with work now, and 

 have sore eyes and a lame back to make work 

 as uncomfortable as possible. ' ' I have always 

 felt it was a pity that Mr. Doolittle should 

 spend his useful life in doing his own work 

 instead of hiring help. If he had secured 

 help during the last twenty years, and had 

 merely supervised his work, 1 am confident 

 that a cipher would now be standing on the 

 right side of every "$1 " he can show. I do 

 not see how any man can write as much for 

 the press as he does without a stenographer, 

 to say nothing of the great amount of work he 

 does in his apiary and on his farm. I am 

 speaking in general terms, of course, for per- 

 haps Mr. D. knows his own business better 

 than I do. 



\h 



CANADIAN BEE JOURNAL. 

 It seems that the honey from eucalyptus, 

 or that having a minty flavor, is not safe to 

 send to England, as it is not liked there. The 

 editor denies the minty flavor of the lot of 

 honey referred to, and says it will be difficult 

 for the Ontario bee-keepers to believe that 

 there is mint in Ontario honey. By "mint," 

 I suppose we are to understand a flavor sug- 

 gestive of peppermint or spearmint. It seems 

 to me mint has never been considered a detri- 

 ment to honey on this side of the line. 



The London Daily Free Press prints as a 

 sober truth the report that pure honey of any 

 particular kind can now be had by having ' ' a 

 large lot of ground, perhaps half an acre," 

 planted, say, to white clover, and confining 

 the bees to it with wire netting, putting the 

 hives under it. In this way mixed honeys 

 can be avoided. The editor well says : " Bee- 

 keepers will smile at the above, and yet it is 

 a sample of bee-literature all too common at 

 the present day — not alone on bees and honey, 

 but probably in every other line." However 

 absurd the statement may be, it is by this 

 time an established thing in the world's be- 



lief, and years of contradiction will not eradi- 

 cate it. 



vl/ 

 AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 

 Mr. G. M. Doolittle leads off with an article 

 on hiving swarms. He says that all the drum- 

 ming on tin pans, blowing of horns, firing of 

 guns, etc., has nothing to do with bees clus- 

 tering. Nineteen swarms out of twenty will 

 cluster in some place within reach of the api- 

 arist soon after leaving their old home, wheth- 

 er any noise is made to settle them or not. 



\\i 

 The editor, H. E. Hill, is in Stuart, Fla., 

 where he had an apiary three years ago, near 

 the Indian River narrows. He gives a fine 

 view of his apiary. The hives seem right on 

 the brink of a large body of water on which is 

 a skiff. The picture is a tempting one, and 

 makes one wish to go to Florida. On the St. 

 Lucie River, Mr. Hill extracted, barreled, and 

 shipped 3500 lbs. of palmetto honey from 65 

 colonies in two weeks. When that failed he 

 moved south to Miami, in the sailboat, and 

 then to Stuart, making a cruise of 300 miles. 

 One morning they were just ready for break- 

 fast when an overhanging limb swept the 

 table bare, throwing the viands to Neptune. 



GLEANINGS FROM GLEANINGS. 



The Importance of Careful Accurate Observation. 

 BY A. J. WRIGHT. 



Mr. W. M. Whitney, in an article on page 

 436, seems inclined to have a little fun over 

 the idea of " dark rays." Well, that is all 

 right. I like to see others enjoy life, even if 

 it is sometimes at my expense ; and then it 

 often happens that one, after years of patient 

 study, investigation, and experiment, is laugh- 

 ed at by another who has never spent a half- 

 hour in study on the subject. 



Mr. Whitney says : "Just shut your eyes, 

 and think a moment. How much darkness 

 tabby cat could get, even in the daytime, by 

 shutting her eyes ! Then where would poor 

 mousie be ? What's the use of expanding the 

 pupil, even in the dark? Shut the eye ; it'll 

 be dark enough." 



Now, friend Whitney, I have not anywhere 

 contended that an animal could see by shut- 

 ting its eyes, but that, in the element neces- 

 sary to vision, the eye must be open. The 

 pupil of the cat's eye in the full glare of day- 

 light becomes but a dark line. Is the eye 

 thus so nearly closed to enable the cat to see ? 

 No. It is for the purpose of shutting out 

 those rays of light which in the nocturns are 

 a hindrance to perfect vision. 



This subject of how certain animals can see 

 in the dark is very interesting, and opens up 



