160 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Mar. 15 



Stray Straws 



By Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



Mr. Editor, your idea of the bees' get-to- 

 gether-in-a-ball idea, p. 136, is O. K. 



Instead of nailing up bees in the hive, 

 as suggested, p. 123, it might cause less wor- 

 ry to take them in the cellar. 



"May God hasten the day when good 

 women shall do at least some of the voting, ' ' 

 p. 117. Make it "vote same as men," Bro. 

 Root, and I'm with you. 



Do BEES gnaw down entire old combs and 

 rebuild, p. 88? Possibly; but if so it seems 

 as if I ought to have seen some indication 

 of it after keeping so many old combs all 

 these yf ars. 



Friend Cavanagh, you suppose, p. 109, 

 my foul brood was "treated the same sea- 

 son as discovered!" If you promise not to 

 tell, I'll own up to you that I discovered it 

 in one hive two or three years before treat- 

 ment, but thought it was poison. 



That weighing-device, p. 114. Sup- 

 pose one side of a hive heavier than the 

 other. Place it on the weigher with the 

 heavy side toward the scales, and let it 

 weigh 50 pounds. Now turn the hive with 

 the light side toward the scales, and it will 

 weigh more than 50 pounds. In general, 

 the closer to the scales an object is placed, 

 the lighter it will weigh. 



Quite right you are, Mr. Editor, in tell- 

 ing C. A. Neal, p. 149, that his queen will 

 spread out rather than go above; but taking 

 the question just as he puts it: "Will a 

 queen in a twelve-frame .Jumbo lay in the 

 four outside frames, or will she go up in the 

 super?" my answer would be tbat she will 

 do neither. Generally the central eight 

 Jumbo frames will be enough for her. 



"What's in a name? " says thic editor of 

 the Irish Bee Journal ; but he seriously ob- 

 jects to the long names that are now given 

 to foul brood and black brood, My sym- 

 pathies are with you, Bro. Digges. But I 

 am told there is a kind of necessity in the 

 case. Our State laws are against foul brood, 

 and black brood would not come under that 

 head; but American foul brood and Europe- 

 an foul brood do. Well, there's no law 

 against contractions; and we can say A. f. 

 b. and E. f. b. 



Alin Caillas, Ij' Apicufteur, p. 464, esti- 

 mates that a bee carrying .0007 oz. of honey 

 at a load will make 12,632 trips to fill a sec- 

 tion 4 inches square and 1 inch t lick. If it 

 average 1^ of a mile to the trip, it will travel 

 as much as a third of the way i round the 

 world. In a colony of 120,000 be*s, if 80,000 

 are fielders, and each one makes 10 trips of 

 ^ of a mile daily, the total travel for the 

 day will be more than twice the distance to 

 the moon. As flyers, the Wright brothers 

 are not in it with the bees. [If a bee car- 



ried .0007 oz. of weetor it would have to make 

 nearly twice 12,000 trips in order to make 

 enough honey to fill a section 4 inches square 

 and 1 inch thick. — Ed.] 



It's a tough job for me to make out the 

 meaning of things in French journals, but 

 it's a comfort to know that Frenchmen 

 sometimes get things twisted that are said 

 in English. In a Straw, Dec. 15, 1 spoke of 

 the size of worker-cells, and then, changing 

 the subject, said: " If your foundation hangs 

 within yi inch of the bottom-bar, I guaran- 

 tee your bees, if they are like mine, will in- 

 crease that % to >4." In L'Apiculteur, p. 

 75, it appears in this fashion: "Dr. Miller 

 says to Mr. Root, that, if the foundation be 

 enlarged by yi of an inch, he guarantees 

 that his bees, like his own, will increase 

 from >^ to H"! 



"If THE MAJORITY in any community 

 want saloons, they can have them, as things 

 are at present," page 120. That's true; but 

 let's not have things continue as at present. 

 A community ought to be allowed to vote 

 out a thing that's wrong; but no community 

 has a right to vote in a thing that's in and 

 of itself wrong. In that respect the saloon 

 stands solitary and alone as the only thing 

 inherently wrong that people are allowed to 

 vote in. Ever think of it? If a community 

 were to vote in polygamy — and some com- 

 munities might want to — it wouldn't be al- 

 lowed for a minute. Why should it be al- 

 lowed to " vote in " saloons any more than 

 polygamy or stealing? 



F. B. Cavanagh, you're harping on the 

 right string, page 146. AVhat we want is a 

 campaign of advertising — not local, but 

 national. No thirty-cent business, but 

 thousands of dollars. With the right kind 

 of advertising, honey should become a staple 

 instead of a luxury, and should take its old 

 place alongside of butter in price. If one- 

 fourth as much honey were consumed as 

 butter at 10 cents a pound it would total 

 more than $180,000,000. If we could reach 

 that amount by advertising, don't you be- 

 lieve it would be a good stroke of business 

 to spend one per cent of it in advertising? 

 Even if we spent only one-tenth of one per 

 cent it would give us the neat little sum of 

 $180,000. But without speculating on fu- 

 ture increase, what bee-keeper can not af- 

 ford to spend for the right kind of advertis- 

 ing $1.00 for every $loO his crop brings? 

 Let's see what that would amount to with 

 present conditions. I think Dr. Phillips 

 estimates the present output at $20,000,000. 

 At $1.00 for every $100 that would give us 

 $200,000. We are well able to do that if Cav- 

 anagh, Tyrrel, Rauchfuss, and others will 

 only get us together. I'd be glad to chip in 

 on that scale if it brought us only enough 

 more to pay for the advertising. It would 

 be worth it to know that all over the land 

 every one was eating honey. Health of na- 

 tion. But it wouldn't turn out that way. 

 I feel sure that every dollar invested in that 

 kind of advertising would]| bring back at 

 least ten. Let's do it. 



