APRIT. 15. 1914 



285 



CCo 



STEAY 



lareogo. 



I'm suri)rised at the general belief in 

 breeding for improvement among writers in 

 April 1st Gleanings. Not one, I think, 

 opposes it. 



If thin super foundation is worked less 

 readily by the bees than medium brood, as 

 shown, p. 139, extra-thin super must be still 

 worse. I've no use for extra-thin, anyhow. 



No JOKE, friend Byer, about rai-ity of 

 bees here, on second-crop red clover. In 

 Ontario you say some bees work on it, but 

 in England all hive bees can work it, while 

 here rarely any. 



My first thought on seeing those bees on 

 cover of Gleanings, April 1: " Those pic- 

 tures are faulty; but they're 'the real 

 thing.' " I don't see how you got dead bees 

 to look so life-like. 



0. Bromfield, I use five splints to hold 

 medium brood foundation in frame. Don't 

 know whether four might answer. I boil 

 splints in wax till it stops frothing, then 

 put in when wax has cooled to be just 

 liquid; no special tool for imbedding — just 

 the edge of a little board soaked in water. 



G. M. DooLiTTLE says, p. 209 : 



Any beekeeper who has a spark of love for his 

 pets is all awake for the season when the first song 

 of the bluebird breaks forth on the air, and the 

 musical croak or peeping of the frog in the pond is 

 heard once more. 



That's not written in rhyme, but it's 

 poetry of the right sort. The man who 

 isn't thrilled with such sounds is not a true 

 beekeeper at heart, and thrills of that sort 

 are beyond the purchase of money. 



A. I. Root, you seem just a bit inclined, 

 p. 275, to think we might as well sit com- 

 placently with folded hands and continue a 

 lot of denominations of churches with the 

 difference between tweedle-dum and tweedle- 

 dee. Now look here; you old fellows may 

 as well make up your minds to get out of 

 the way for us younger ones, because the 

 uniting of the sects is coming, believe me. 

 In Canada a movement is on foot to unite 

 Methodists, Congi-egationalists, and Pres- 

 byterians; in this country some denomina- 

 tions have already united, and it's in the 

 air all over the land. When Billy Sunday 

 was in Marengo all the churches worked 

 together as one. The idea that they could 

 do better work together then and better 

 work apart afterward ! Get out ! 



E, G. Finnup, Finney Co., Kan., the 

 world's champion sweet-clover grower, also 

 an extensive stockman, has 1500 acres de- 



voted to " the weed." From a 100-acre field 

 he harvested 900 bushels of seed, bringing 

 $13,000. He considers sweet clover the 

 equal of alfalfa; makes earlier pasture; 

 will not bloat cattle; stands dry and freez- 

 ing weather better; grows on land where 

 alfalfa will not; yields with him a greater 

 tonnage of hay; and grasshoppers don't 

 bother it, but are very fond of alfalfa. — 

 Country Gentleman, 657. [The farmers of 

 Kansas seem more generally to recognize 

 the value of sweet clover as a forage-plant 

 than the farmers in some other parts of our 

 country. In. Kansas they have demonstrated 

 that land that is too poor to grow any thing 

 but prairie grass will grow sweet clover, 

 and sweet clover is making that land come 

 up- in value in a way it never did before. 

 It is very strange that some apparently up- 

 to-date farmers, and even some scientific 

 agriculturists in the East, regard sweet clo- 

 ver as a mere weed. Years ago they so 

 regarded alfalfa. History repeats itself. — 

 —Ed.] 



I THINK I was the first to publish that I 

 had had a queen reared over a colony with 

 a laying queen. That was accidental. T 

 think I have never since succeeded inten- 

 tionally. Last summer I tried it over ten 

 colonies — dead failure; but in two or three 

 cases where I had no thought of rearing a 

 queen, where there happened to be brood in 

 an upper story I was surprised to find a 

 nice brood-nest with a young laying queen. 

 Who knows the secret of success? [When 

 Doolittle first brought out his book on 

 queen-rearing, there did not seem to be any 

 thing so very difficult about raising queens 

 in an upper story with a laying queen be- 

 low; but it will be remembered he used 

 perforated zinc between the upper and low- 

 er stories; but later on he found that the 

 upiDer-story proposition was not a success 

 except during a general honey-flow when 

 brood-rearing would be stimulated at its 

 best. While we do not believe that the 

 mating of queens in upper stories is a 

 general success, we never regarded it as a 

 difficult thing to accomplish when there 

 were suitable conditions. Queen-breeders 

 have for years raised cells in upper stories, 

 and do it yet, as the simplest and most 

 successful plan for securing well-fed baby 

 queens. It is only a step further to get 

 tliese young ladies married. Well, if you 

 will turn to the last edition of the ABC 

 and X Y Z of Bee Culture you will find 

 some of the requisites for cell-building in 

 upper stories. — Ed.] 



