1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



747 



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€PJCKiJ\rGS 



gMOM OUA NEIGHBORS FIELDS j££, 

 Br'LSTCNOG:" 



tbat it was a quail that had done the mischief. 

 To show the folly of charging the bees with 

 the mischief I give herewith, by courtesy of 



Naught remains of .summer's wealth ; 



Blasted stalks and withered flowers 



Speak to us of life's best hours 

 That fled away by stealth. 



til 



As the report of the Philadelphia conven- 

 tion will appear in pamphlet form, besides 

 being discussed in this journal, it has not 

 been deemed best to make any condensation 

 of it here. 



tii 

 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Mr. York says Charles Dadant is nearly 82 



years old. Better than that. He'll be 83 



next May, having been born May 22, 1817. 



May he stay 17 years more and make a century! 



\i> 



Mr. W. M. Whitney says he has noticed 

 that bees do not disturb a skunk, while they 

 will drive a white dirt-throwing rooster out of 

 the yard. He concludes the bees tolerate the 

 skunk on account of its quiet ways, and yet it 

 eats bees as well as chickens do. I'd rather 

 kick a rooster, I believe, than a skunk. A 

 little honey loaded with strychnine, placed 

 just under the surface of the ground in front 

 of a hive, will deprive a well-bred skunk of 

 his worst feature in a short time. 

 tit 



Mr. York is introducing pictures more and 

 more into his excellent journal, and I com- 

 mend him for it. On the first page of his 

 issue for Oct. 5 is given a view of what I deem 

 to be the prettiest bee-yard yet shown. It 

 belongs to F. G. Herman, of New Jersey. It 

 is a veritable little park, and Rambler's 

 " muse " prompts one to say : 



I'd like to be a honey-bee, 



And fly around that park ; 

 I'd visit all the flowers bright, 



And fill my combs by dark. 



tii 



In regard to bees and grapes, Mr. C. P. 

 Dadant says: "Another heavy grape crop is 

 now on the vines in this vicinity, and yet we 

 do not hear the usual complaint about bees 

 eating grapes. It looks as if the uneducated 

 grape-grower had at last come to the conclu- 

 sion that the bee-keepers are right when they 

 assert that bees can not puncture sound grapes. 

 But such is surely not the case, and the silence 

 of the grape-growers comes from the fact that 

 no damage is being done this year, for the 

 very simple reason that, in this vicinity at 

 least, the weather has been so dry that the 

 grapes are not bursting ; and although the 

 honey crop is short in the uplands, the bees 

 have no occasion to annoy the horticulturist, 

 for there are no damaged grapes for them to 

 work on." 



In a discussion with an old Frenchman, 

 the latter complained to Mr. Dadant for keep- 

 ing so many bees as to destroy his grapes. 

 He insisted that the bees made two small holes 

 in the grape ; but Mr. Dadant showed him 



JI-lSIilRI.ES UK HilU.NET. 



MANDIBLES OF BEE. 



Mr. York, a cut showing the mandibles of a 

 hornet and one those of a bee. While the for- 

 mer might be able to scrape a hole in a grape, 

 it certainly is evident that a bee could not do 

 so, as the mandibles would slip over it like a 

 cow's lips over a pumpkin. Mr. Dadant says 

 it will take years to eradicate the prejudice 

 grape-growers have against bees. If the ques- 

 tion can be settled, Mr. D. has done it here, 

 as he and his father have raised grapes and 

 bees together on a larger scale, perhaps, than 

 any other persons in America. They have a 

 vineyard of 13 acres, and about 90 colonies of 

 bees on the same farm, but find " the bee is 

 not the enemy of the horticulturist, but his 

 friend. 1 ' Mr. Dadant well says that it is just 

 as necessary to teach these truths in our pub- 

 lic schools as that the earth goes round the sun. 

 tii 

 PROGRESSIVE BEE-KEEPER. 

 I much regret that F. L. Thompson should 

 construe what I said of him on p. 388, May 15, 

 as derogatory when I meant it for the highest 

 praise. In saying he holds in light esteem 

 the rules of syntax, punctuation, etc., I meant 

 that he has so good a natural taste as a writer 

 that he can be safely trusted to be a law to 

 himself, and that he does not have to hunt up 

 a rule for all he writes. This is perfectly plain 

 from my closing remark : "It is a fortunate 

 thing for us that Mr. T. is well qualified to act 

 as an independent worker." In spite of this 

 and what I said of him on pages 80, 255, 567, 

 he calls this " mud " and "taffy," intimating 

 that I accuse him of being a poor scholar. He 

 says, "Whatever implication it has is false, 

 and the writer knows it." I am glad to have 

 Mr. Thompson's authority for now believing 

 that my good opinion of him was ill founded ; 

 but I did not know it till just now. 



\<u 



FOREIGN JOURNALS. 



It is a Bavarian maxim to plant a tree in 

 every open space, and have an apiary near 

 every house. 



ti) 



The Rheinische Bienenzeitung says the 

 government of Holland has ordered a regular 

 number of bees to its East India possessions 

 to fertilize the coffee and cocoa. Honey 

 flavored with coffee would certainly be fine. 

 tii 



Mr. Van Dieren, in De Bieefivriend, a Dutch 

 journal, says moisture in hives can be obviated 

 by placing in them two or three lumps of 

 chloride of calcium. This has a great affinity 

 for moisture, and should be renewed every 

 two weeks. Do not mistake it for chloride of 

 lime. 



