• devoted: _ 



•To -BE.ES •■*&£> {•■.". 



• andHoNEY-mPC^ lb. 



•INTERESTS- 



Vfo^t 



lCblishedby-THEA'l : RoO"f CO. 



$i°° perYear.^'X® Medina- Ohio 



Vol. XXVII. 



OCT. 15, 1899. 



No. 20. 



YES, I AGREE to keep mum if you'll get 

 Doolittle to answer that question, p. 710 — at 

 least in print; but just wait till I catch him 

 out alone, if his answer is too saucy. 



" Do BEES sometimes stay out in the field 

 all night?" is a question in American Bee 

 Journal. Most of the 30 replying say yes, 

 but there are a few doubting Thomases. 



" In 1897, when so many factories were run- 

 ning night and day, the season was almost a 

 failure" (footnote, page 7i0). Don't you 

 mean 1898? 1897 was a big year, in this re- 

 gion at least. [Let's see; yes — I guess you 

 are right. — Ed.] 



In most sections the space between sepa- 

 rator and capping is % inch; but in some 

 cases it is f T> . That's only j!g difference, but 

 it looks a good deal more than j\. [In a few 

 instances bees build the combs to within T 3 g of 

 the separator ; but generally speaking, % is 

 the general average. — Ed.] 



Those be brave words, Brother A I., that 

 you say about humbug healers, p. 732. Now 

 please print a plain paragraph about a good 

 friend of mine who lately said some rather 

 apologetic things about that arch operator, 

 Dowie, who owns up to having got $1,000,000 

 for which he will account to no one but God. 



If you haven't a grapevine, "get right at 

 it this fall and plant one," says A. I. Root, p. 

 731. Don't you tell him I said so ; but if you 

 live in Northern Illinois, wait till next spring 

 to plant any vine or fruit-tree. [Personally I 

 do not like grapevines in our apiary, and I do 

 not know of any of our apiarists who do or 

 did. If the trellis is large in size, and the 

 hives four or five feet away from the vine, it 

 may do. — Ed.] 



The Deutsche III. Bztg. warns against buy- 

 ing sugar without knowing where it has been 

 kept. A neighbor lost all his bees through 

 feeding sugar that had been stored in a room 



with kerosene, turpentine, etc. [I should be 

 inclined to believe the loss was not due to the 

 kerosene or turpentine, but to some other 

 cause. Why, to me it seems absurd to think 

 that the mere odor of either could so affect 

 sugar as to kill the bees fed on it. — Ed.] 



Wile old-style sections be higher than 

 the plain the coming season, or shall we be 

 encouraged to hold on to the old style by hav- 

 ing the inset and the extra lumber thrown in? 

 [There will probably not be much difference 

 in the price the coming season, although it is 

 plain that, when plain sections come more in- 

 to popular favor, they will have to be sold for 

 less money. Our own books show that they 

 are working that way. — Ed.] 



An, objection to sections as light as some 

 are made is that one must be too careful in 

 scraping not to break them. The thinness 

 has been carried a little too far. Please thick- 

 en up a little. [If you mean the wood of the 

 section is too light — that is, too thin — I would 

 say that the probabilities are that the9-to-inch 

 width of section will be very soon superseded 

 by those that are 8 to the inch. We are pre- 

 paring to make our sections for another sea- 

 son all l /% inch thick. — Ed.] 



" The section that promises to be stan- 

 dard is A% square by \ l / 2 , plain." That's 

 what you thought a few months ago, Mr. Ed- 

 itor. Have later developments made you 

 change that view? [I have not changed my 

 opinion, doctor, unless it be that there is a 

 possibility that the tall plain section will in 

 time come to be the standard. But I am very 

 well satisfied that the plain section, either 

 square or tall, will in time supplant the sec- 

 tion with insets — Ed.] 



I iDON'T seriously object to your saying 

 " squushed " instead of " squashed," Mr. Edi- 

 tor, if you prefer, but I do object to your drop- 

 ping out the vowel, making it " squshed," as 

 you have done at bottom of p. 724 and pre- 

 viously. I'll stand a good deal from you, but 

 the line must be drawn somewhere. [Have it 

 either way you want — with one u or two. 

 Either way expresses my meaning. We used 

 the word as a " colloquialism." We knew it 

 should be spelled skwusht, all the time. — Ed.] 



