1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



401 



Now that the Interstate Commerce Com- 

 mittee has reported favorably on the Brosius 

 bill, it is the duty of bee-keepers now to bring 

 a pressure to bear on the speaker (Henderson) 

 of the House so that the bill may get a hear- 

 ing at an early date. 



W. A. Selser, familiarly known as the 

 honey man of Philadelphia, is very sick with 

 typhoid fever, and for a time it was thought 

 that he could not recover. Although he is 

 still a very sick man we are glad to inform 

 his many friends that the crisis has passed, 

 we hope, and if he does not have any setback 

 he will get well 



How to find a queen seems like a simple 

 thing to an old veteran ; and yet all of them 

 know it is often a very difficult task. On page 

 396 I have described the methods that many 

 bee keepers practice, and now I desire to know 

 whether any better or any other method has 

 been devised. It will soon be necessary to go 

 through the apiaries to clip the queens' wings 

 and replace others. How to find the queen 

 quickly is something worth knowing. Let us 

 hear from the biethren. 



If you have not yet written to your Con- 

 gressmen, urging them to support the Brosius 

 pure-food bill, please do so at once. Do not 

 assume that some one else with a little " more 

 political pull" will have more influence than 

 you. Congressmen like to hear from their 

 constituents ; and you may rest assured if the 

 good people of this land, who care for pure- 

 food legislation, do not write to their Con- 

 gressmen, that the glucose interests, and all 

 other interests connected with adulterating, 

 will see that the pure-food bill is killed. It is 

 a splendid measure, and ought to receive the 

 support of every member of Congress. 



As the reader will see by consulting the 

 columns of this issue I have crowded in a 

 great deal of editorial work, and in conse- 

 quence some of our contributed matter has 

 been left ont. It is much easier to get out a 

 journal largely if not all contributed matter ; 

 but the editor, from his peculiar position, is 

 enabled to take a bird's-eye view of the field 

 at a time, and he ought to be broad enough to 

 state the best practices in vogue, without re- 

 gard to locality or individual colorings and 

 prejudices. If our readers prefer less of the 

 editorial and more of the contributed matter, 

 I should be glad to have them tell me so. 



PYRETHRUM FOR KII^WNG BEES. 



Very recently, being suspicious of one col- 

 ony in our yard, and fearing it might have 

 some contagious disease, and not desiring to 

 take any chances, we gave the colony a good 

 sprinkling of pyrethrum powder. This was 



done at night. In the morning every bee was 

 " as dead as dead could be." The entrance 

 was closed, and all taken to the boiler furnace 

 and burned. The object in using pyrethrum 

 was to prevent any bees from escaping while 

 the hive was being removed to the place of de- 

 struction. In bad cases of foul brood, as a 

 precautionary measure it might be well to kill 

 the bees with pyrethrum powder, then the 

 whole can be burned or destroyed. Of course, 

 in any ordinary case of foul brood it is not 

 necessary to kill the bees ; but when one at- 

 tempts to burn a very bad case, a few live bees 

 are liable to escape, and so carry the infection 

 to other hives which they will surely visit if 

 they can not find their own, which, of course, 

 has been removed to be burned. 



DR. miller's bee-horses. 



When Dr. Miller and I arrived at his home 

 after the Chicago convention we found that 

 the bees were having a little bit of fracas 

 among themselves. They had gotten into a 

 hive from which the bees had died, and as a 

 result there was a "general row." I suggest- 

 ed that, inasmuch as the combs were dry, they 

 be left just as they were. 



" Yes, that is my practice, in such cases," 

 said the doctor. But during that afternoon, 

 when we went through the apiary there were 

 plenty of skirmishers ready to sting whenever 

 one showed himself . Well, Dr. Miller's horses 

 wanted to drink, and he was equally anxious 

 to accommodate them. They were unhitched 

 from the buggy, and leisurely walked down 

 toward the apiary near where the pump was. 

 I could see at once that they knew that cross 

 bees were in the air by the way they switched 

 their tails and tossed their heads. At first 

 they hesitated, but finally they walked right 

 through where the cross bees were flying. 

 Notwithstanding the bees were so cross that 

 Dr. Miller and I were both veiled to keep from 

 being stung, those horses continued right to- 

 ward the crossest colony, near which was the 

 trough. The animals seemed to think that, 

 if they could get their heads down into the 

 trough, the bees would not attack them, and 

 such was the case. 



Dr. Miller began pumping, and the horses 

 plunged their noses deep into the water, and 

 drank, and drank, and drank, to their fill. 

 Once in a while they would raise their heads 

 and take breath ; but when there was an on- 

 slaught of bees they would duck their heads 

 down again into the water. 



When they started back they would keep 

 their heads shaking and dodging, for all the 

 bees seemed to concentrate their attacks at the 

 horses' heads. But the horses got back into 

 the barn without so much as a sting. "I 

 doubt," said the doctor, " whether they would 

 be so unconcerned if they were hitched up to 

 the wagon." 



DOOLITTLE OUEEN-CELL CUPS BY THE PECK. 



I PRESUME some of our readers are not fa- 

 miliar with the Doolittle method of making 

 cell-cups with a single stick. For the benefit 

 of such I will say that Doolittle takes an or- 



