978 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE 



H. A. McLendon's apiary, Andalusia, Alabama. In reach of these bees are black and white tupelo, 



poplar, alder, ti-ti, gallberry, etc. 



Not a few have mixed the introduction by 

 the new method to queenless colonies with 

 the suggested experiments with the method, 

 in requeening without dequeening; and yet 

 nearly as many have reported success in 

 requeening without dequeening as have re- 

 ported failure. 



Bee culture met with almost as gi-eat a 

 misfortune as good fortune when Lang- 

 stroth introduced his hive and the book in 

 which he described it, and the manipulations 

 possible with it. The bee-world went man- 

 ipulation mad, and has never gotten over it. 

 Most of the wonders of bee-life described 

 by Langstroth were overlooked so far as 

 applying them to the art of bee culture is 

 concerned. Hot on the heels of the ap- 

 pearance of Langstroth's hive came a host 

 of others, and all sorts of claims and coun- 

 ter-claims, variations, inventions, new or 

 revamped, fairly overwhelmed the bee-press, 

 and each one added to the obscuration of 

 the most important things in Lang-stroth's 

 book. 



Coincident with the publication of Lang- 

 stroth's book was that of that gi-eat bee- 

 master, Quinby, perhaps the greatest we 

 have ever had. His book was packed from 

 cover to cover with the art of understanding 

 bees and their ways. Appliances were in- 

 cidental to the work, not the work to the 

 appliances. His description of bee actions, 

 the why and when of sundry operations, the 

 reasoning from effect back to cause, are 

 marvels of bee-mastership. Later, learning 

 of Langstroth's invention he was quick to 



see its value, but he did not let it run away 

 with him. No, he fitted it to his knowledge 

 of the ways and needs of the bee and the 

 beekeeper. Wherever one finds an old stu- 

 dent and follower of Quinby, he finds a true 

 bee-master. One cannot help wondering 

 where commercial beekeeping would be to- 

 day had Quinby's work been the text-book 

 of the beekeeping world instead of Lang- 

 stroth. Quinby unquestionably was the 

 father of commercial bee culture. He did 

 more with his simple appliances than many 

 a " big " beekeeper of to-day does with all 

 his implements and appliances. And he 

 was able to do it because he studied the 

 bees and their ways, and understood them. 

 And those persons who took the pains to 

 study his writings also learned to a marked 

 degree to understand the bee. 



But to-day it is not so. Every thing re- 

 volves about appliances and their manipula- 

 tions. Very few beekeepers will carefully 

 read a painstaking description of bee struc- 

 ture or bee behavior, and fewer still will 

 grasp its importance or know how to use it. 

 This fact is brought home strongly to those 

 of us who address gatherings of beekeepers. 

 After a careful talk on some phase of bee 

 behavior and its application to bee culture, 

 one is shocked by the total missing of the 

 points by some of the listeners. Here and 

 there will be one who has grasped the re- 

 marks, and questioning usually brings out 

 the fact that such a one has been a student 

 of some branch of applied science, or is 

 trained in analysis. 



