320 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



ingly bright early in the season; but the 

 weather turned bad after the copious rains, 

 so that the mountain-sage honey fell far 

 short of expectation. Whether there will 

 be any of this lioney in the Eastern markets 

 we can not say; but it is safe to assume 

 that the amount will not be large. We 

 have not been ad\ised as to the prospect 

 in the alfalfa regions of the West; but as 

 nearly as we can gather from our general 

 correspondence, the spring has not been un- 

 favorable, and we may expect a fair yield 

 from alfalfa. 



Florida, one of the principal honey States, 

 will fall far short of her usual production. 

 The splendid tujielo regions that yield 

 thousands of barrels of fine table honey in 

 other years will have only about one-fourth 

 of a croi). In the palmetto regions the crop 

 will be light. W^e have not yet been advis- 

 ed as to what mangrove will tlo. 



As to prices that will rule during the 

 coming season, it is yet a little early to offer 

 a prediction. But the failure of California 

 and Florida, both of which ship enormous 

 quantities of honey to the Eastern markets, 

 will have a tendency to stiffen prices. Even 

 if the crop from white clover is large this 

 year, the demand for it is so great that it will 

 be im})ossible for it to glut the market, and 

 it may therefore be exjjected that prices will 

 be firm. If there is a large crop of white 

 clover in the Eastern regions it will have a 

 tendency to depress slightly the price of al- 

 falfa; but we have no fears along that line, 

 for clover is reported killed out in a number 

 of localities last winter. 



the fine type used in our "heads of 

 grain;" (Questions and ans- 

 wers IN gleanings. 



Every now and then complaint comes in 

 to the effect that the tyi)e used in our Heads 

 of Grain department is too line for our sub- 

 scribers to read reatlily; and the question is 

 often asked why not use a larger face, like 

 that used in the main part of the journal. 



Our question-and-answer department, as 

 appears in the Heads of Grain, is a very im- 

 l)ortant i)art of our jcnirnal. Indeed, we be- 

 lieve we could better att'ord to cut out the 

 general articles, and even our illustrations, 

 rather than omit this. Then why don't we 

 put it on a level with other matter, by put- 

 ting this mailer in what printers call "eight 

 point " rather than six point? 



Our Heads of Grain are important because 

 they hell) soUe many little })roblems that 

 come before the bee-keeiier. Jiut what is 

 one man's difficulty is not another's; there- 

 fore the question-and-answer deiiartment, 

 valuable as it is, is used more as a reference, 

 like a dictionary, than any thing else in 

 Gleanings. The reader will notice that we 

 use strong black headlines at the top of each 

 letter in Heads of (irain. The puri)ose of 

 this is to enable the reader to i)ick out the 

 question or item that helps him to solve a 

 like difficulty that confronts him. For ex- 

 ample, one lium will skip every thing relat- 

 ing to robbing, wintering, and feeding; but 



he is eager to get hold of any scrap of in- 

 formation that explains why his bees do not 

 rear brood as they should, or why they do 

 not go into his supers. The result will be 

 that he will read, perhaps, a small part of 

 the matter in Heads of Grain and skip all 

 the rest. The other fellow does not care any 

 thing about the question of bees going into 

 supers or breeding up, but he wants to know 

 why his bees died during the preceding win- 

 ter, and so he skips every thing that the 

 first man sought. Heads of Grain covers a 

 very large field, and consequently a great 

 variety of subjects. In order to accommo- 

 date all our readers with their individual 

 problems we are obliged to condense the 

 text itself as far as we can. If we were to 

 use eight-point type, with the same number 

 of pages, the amount of matter given would 

 be reduced at the rate of from 16 pages to 9, 

 or, about 43 per cent. In other words, we 

 could get in only a little over a half of the 

 (juestions and answers that we do now. 



Our regular articles require consecutive 

 reading and careful thought; and therefore 

 it follows that, when the eyes have to be 

 held to the page continuously on any class 

 of matter, large tyi)e should be used to re- 

 lieve the strain on the eyes. But when the 

 Heads of Grain pages are consulted, to pick 

 out here and there a short item, it is not a 

 hard strain on the eyes if those eyes have to 

 stand the strain only two or three minutes. 



two important foul-brood bulletins 

 for free distribution. 



The Bureau of p]ntomology of the United 

 States Dei)artment of Agriculture has just 

 issued for free distribution two imjwrtant 

 bulletins by Dr. E. F. Phillips, in Charge 

 of Ai)iculture. The first. Farmers' Bulletin 

 No. 442, entitled " Bees and Bee Diseases," 

 takes up the whole subject in a brief but 

 conq)rehensive way. It discusses the na- 

 ture of diseases, names of diseases, symp- 

 toms, methods of si)reading, i)recautionary 

 measures, treatment, inspection of apiaries, 

 and the diseases of adult bees. A most ex- 

 cellent photograph showing the work of the 

 larger wax-moth on a comb is shown on 

 page 0. Various illustrations show just how 

 to differentiate between American and 

 European foul brood. These drawings are 

 l)articularly valuable to the bee-keeper un- 

 familiar with one or both diseases, and we 

 hope to secure the loan of them so they may 

 be presented in these columns. 



Taking it all in all, this bulletin is the 

 jnost ui)-to-date and reliable of any thing 

 on the subject of bee diseases that has ever 

 been issued; anil when we consider, on a 

 conservative estimate made by Dr. Phillips, 

 that the loss to bee-keepers from disease alone 

 reaches a mill ion dollars annually, or five 

 per cent of the entire crop of the honey i)ro- 

 duced in the United States, it would seem 

 that every bee-keeper in the lantl ought to 

 secure a copy of this bulletin. Write to the 

 Secretary of Agriculture, and ask for Bulle- 

 tin 442, by Dr. Phillips. 



The other bulletin. No. 138, entitled "Oc- 



