1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



567 



friend of the bee-keeper than his enemy. This 

 is good news to me, for I confess I have no 

 pleasure in hearing of their destruction. Per- 

 haps owls, hawks, and snakes will seem less 

 hateful to us when we know more about their 

 habits. 



it/ 



In speaking of the difference between dead 

 brood and foul brood, Prof. Cook says : "This 

 dead brood is not at all like foul brood, and 

 any one who attends to the following descrip- 

 tion carefully will have no difficulty in dis- 

 tinguishing the one from the other : In this 

 case the characteristic, most disagreeable odor 

 of foul brood is wholly wanting ; the sunken 

 cell-cap, with its frequent perforation, is also 

 absent. The dead brood is always in the form 

 of larva;, and never in the sticky, pasty, unc- 

 tuous mass so characteristic of foul brood. 

 We insert a pin and draw a decaying larva 

 from the cell, and it is not a stringy or ropy 

 substance that springs back when it lets go 

 the pinhead, as is true of foul brood, on the 

 whole, yet it often appears coffee-colored or a 

 rich, dark brown, as does foul brood. The 

 surest way to tell is in the character of the 

 decaying substance in the cell. If the larva 

 is always found, showing the form even in its 

 decay, instead of the slringv, elastic, pasty 

 mass, then it is not foul brood." 

 \ii 



In speaking of the word "maroon," as ap- 

 plied to bees, Dr. Miller asks of Mr. Doolittle : 

 "If you knew them to be maroon, while all 

 the authorities, the books, and the bee-jour- 

 nals, were calling them yellow these years and 

 years, will you be kind enough to tell us why 

 you never mentioned it before?" As words 

 expressing shades, such as ecru, maroon, sub- 

 dued gooseberry, etc., are indefiniie, why not 

 compare one thing with some object with 

 which all are familiar? For instance, lemons 

 and oranges are so fixed in color as to be good 

 standards. This morning I saw some bees on 

 my pumpkin-blossoms, and their segments 

 were so near the beautiful orange of the blos- 

 soms, in color, that the d fference was hardly 

 perceptible. It occurred to me then that here 

 is a good thing to measure color by. Orange 

 is a primary (rainbow) color, and is certainly 

 nearer the color of Italians than lemon yellow. 

 " Maroon," in bicycle talk, seems to call for 

 a muddy purple. The bees in question on my 

 vines belonged to the foreman of the job- 

 printing department here. He keeps them 

 on the roof of his house, about ten rods from 

 mine. I never saw a happier picture than 

 those bees in the bottom of those beautiful 

 yellow cups, rolling in what was to them gold- 

 en wealth. 



\i> 

 BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



The July issue starts out with a beautiful 

 picture of a basswocd limb, followed by an ed- 

 itorial article on this great honey-tree, now so 

 rapidly passing away. 



m 



Dr. A. B. Mason's department is worth all 

 the Review costs. His remarks relative to 

 omitting addresses of correspondents meet 



my approval. In a somewhat facetious man- 

 ner he settles the question thus: "The first 

 time I saw that one of Bro. Doolittle's articles 

 came from Onondaga Co., I wondered if he 

 had changed his place of residence, and left 

 his ' old stamping ground ' at Borodino ; and 

 when I saw that our dear Prof. Cook had 

 changed from Claremont, Cal., to Los Angeles 

 Co., I unearthed a postal guide, and, to my 

 extreme satisfaction, found that, like Bro. 

 Doolittle, he was holding forth from the same 

 ' home-nest ' as before, and I sincerely hope 

 that no more of our bee-journals will cease to 

 give their readers the postoffice addresses of 

 contributors." 



\\i 



C. Davenport tells how he sells honey at 

 home. He touches on one point that I have 

 often thought has been neglected — the local 

 paper as an advertising medium for honey. 

 Mr. D. relates how he sold 4000 lbs. of honey. 

 He advertised 18 lbs. for $1.00, describing ex- 

 tracted honey as being free from wax and 

 wood. He then authorized his banker to offer 

 $100 for evidence showing that his honey was 

 not pure. The result was, he sold all he had 

 and 500 lbs. more that he bought. 

 % 



Aaron Snyder writes about the drawbacks 

 of Cuba as a honey country. He claims that 

 Cuba is the best honey region in the world, 

 but among the disagreeable features of that 

 island he mentions the language, insects, fleas, 

 jiggers, scorpions, snakes, etc., all of which 

 Mr. Poppleton has described in these columns. 

 Quite likely these pests will not deter the 

 average American from goinjj to Cuba provid- 

 ed the honey is there, for they will rapidly 

 disappear before American genius. 

 \i> 



F. L. Thompson's " Notes from Foreign Bee 

 Journals " is an important and valuable fea- 

 ture of the Review. I fear but few realize the 

 amount of work necessary to produce so good 

 a result. It shows at a glance the latest con- 

 clusions in that hotbed of mental activity, 

 Central Europe. Why honey keeps better by 

 being boiled is thus explained in a German 

 bee journal : " Although the formic acid evap- 

 orates, the albuminous ingredients, which are 

 what cause fermentation, are also separated in 

 the foam." 



CALIFORNIA ECHOES 



BY J . H . MARTIN 



According to Straw upon page 421, Dr. 

 Miller has remarkable hens. He really con- 

 veys the idea that his hens hatch chickens 

 from onions. No lice on those birds. 



Dr. Miller's intellectual machinery must be 

 out of gear if he can not see the difference be- 

 tween Indian and squaw. Indian conveys the 

 same idea to me as German, Celt, etc., while 

 squaw is a degrading personal epithet. Do 

 you see, doctor ? 



