1900 



GI/EANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



681 



no visible hearing organs, they certainly have 

 something that serves that purpose, and the 

 same may be said of the smell. 

 («/ 

 Mr. A. C. Sewell, writing from South Africa, 

 gives the following interesting items in regard 

 to the fate of the poor bees that happened to 

 be between the two contending forces: 



An apiary near Spion Kop, consisting of seven bar- 

 frame hives, is cleared out, but in this case some brok- 

 en frames scattered about gave the impression that 

 they had been "taken up" on the Boer system by 

 thrusting some lighted grass into the entrance; the 

 owner also b sing a g;ood supply of bee-appliances, as 

 well as all his household goods and farm implements. 



The tragic fate of another stock in a fine, full-size 

 glass observatory hive, standing in a garden inside 

 the town, was not involved in the mysteiy attaching 

 to the others, for it was blown to atoms by a shell that 

 burst close to it, and a splinter from it knocked a cup 

 of tea out of the owner's hand, who himself escaped 

 uninjured. 



A little lot of bees up near the top of the mountains 

 managed to escape the general luin, and beyond one 

 or two isolated hives that I have not yet heard about, 

 I think it is almost aU that is left in the district. But 

 the owners do not intend to give up bee-keeping, as 

 one was down here last week and took back two stocks 

 to make a fresh start, and I have just heard from my 

 old friend that he has captured a stray swarm, evident- 

 ly a starvation one, and is bringing it up with the 

 syrup-bottle. 



\h 



For disinfecting hives, the editor has' the 

 following sensible suggestions to make: 



There can be no more effective means of thorough- 

 ly disinfecting hives - in which bees have died through 

 foul brood — than a " painter's lamp," No organism 

 can stand contact with fire, and the lamp referred to 

 intensifies heat just as a blow-pipe does the flame of 

 a gas-jet. Remove the paint from hives inside with a 

 spatula — as painters do very quickly — and then with 

 the flame "scorch " the surface of the w od without 

 burning. Even the spores of foul brood would go 

 down before i/iaf ; moreover, it does away with the 

 need for repainting. 



As indicating the great tenacity with which 

 foul lir.iod holds on when once well under 

 way, I copy the following from a correspond- 

 ent in Wickford, England: 



I had my first experience of it in the spring of 1899, 

 three of my hives being attacked. In two cf them 

 the brood was in the brown or ropy stage, while in 

 the other one it was in the light-colored or early stage 

 of development, which does not smell so bad. I burn- 

 ed the worst of the three outright, and when our 

 county expert came he advised driving the other two 

 stocks and treating the bees as a swarm, which I did, 

 uniting both lots in one hive on six frames. I then 

 fed the btes till they would take no more. They built 

 out and filled twelve frames of comb, and I packed 

 them for winter on ten frames The bees came 

 through all right and were doing well when the ex- 

 pert came this year. I put on a box of shallow fiames 

 in good time; but as the I ees did not .start work in 

 them I took them off' last week, and on examining 

 the comb below found the disease there again, but not 

 bad, while there was a good strong lot of bees. I soon 

 made up my mind what lo do this time. I have burn- 

 ed and buried the lot except the clean shallow combs, 

 which are put away ready for melting when I send 

 my wax for this year, and I hope that will end it with 

 me. My other eight stocks are doing well. I may 

 say the hive is broken up for firewood. 



The International Apicultural Congress will 

 be held in Paris on the 10th, 11th, and 12th 

 of September. Invitations have just been re- 

 ceived here, requesting the members of the 

 Root Co. to be present. Mr. Calvert intended 

 to attend when he left here. Such a meeting 

 can not fail to do much good. 



DEVELOPING CLOVERS WITH SHORTER CO- 

 ROLLA-TUBES. 



The Method to be Followed, and Some of the 



DiflQcuIties, from the Standpoint of One who 



has Spent Years in Working at the 



Problem. 



BY e;. e. hasty. 



Friend E. R. Root : — You call me out on 

 the clover-developing proposition. Yes, I was 

 in that effort quite a long time — grew cold at 

 length, and let the multiplicity of other things 

 cause me to drop out. Perhaps the indiffer- 

 ence of the bee public helped me a little in 

 getting cold ; and if Dr. Miller's call for re- 

 newed effort gets lots of volunteers I may wake 

 up and " tag on." 



And what can I tell to the new volunteers 

 which will be to t'-eir profit? Perhaps not 

 very much. I'll advise them to keep distinct 

 in their minds the three kinds of work to be 

 done. Call them, if you please, A work and B 

 work and C work. The A of it is to go into 

 the fields and select short-tubed clovers. Bet- 

 ter take plenty of time and do lots of this, as 

 this is likely to be the most encouraging part 

 of it (perhaps all the encouragement you'll 

 get). Field clovers vary greatly — vary in the 

 line of being lots of long-tubed ones and lots 

 of short-tubed ones, and also vary in the line 

 of there being few and rare specimens, which 

 can be found by long hunting, much more 

 hopeful than the easy-found ones. 



Work B is the slow and tedious work of 

 raising seedlings year after year, and keeping 

 them from backsliding, as they will probably 

 disgust you by doing, and slowly, with careful 

 selection, getting a little shorter and shorter 

 as the years go by. It was this work that tired 

 me out. It is going to take a great many 

 years. Five years, or ten, will be only a " cir- 

 cumstance " in it. Still, perhaps it's best not 

 to give it up, even if like 



Freedom's battle, once begun, 

 Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son. 



It is necessary to keep in mind the fact that 

 the time of year, amount of fertility in the soil, 

 vigor of growth, drouth or the opposite, and va- 

 rious other things considerably affect the tube- 

 lengths of the same plant. On these accounts 

 we often seem to be gaining when we are not. 

 And it wz]^/?/^^ that we would seem to be losing 

 when we were really gaining. Practically, 

 after three or four years of effort you will prob- 

 ably feel very much befogged as to whether 

 you have really gained any thing or not. 



Work C is a sort of diamond-hunting work. 

 Most plants, besides their capacity for gradual 

 change, show from time to time sudden and 

 great changes in a particular seedling or a par- 

 ticular bud. These almost startling manifes- 

 tations are called "sports." If the desired 

 bee-clover arrives during the present genera- 



