MARCH 1, 1916 



181 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



STRAY STRAWS I Marcgd,.. 



William Beucus, you say, ]>. 

 H7, "The black is the older race." 

 Where do you get that? All au- 

 thorities I've ever read say tli? 

 other vpa}'. 



'' We still incline to the opinion 



that Mr. Ellis actually heard 



" quahking/' page 124. Then that's the 



first quahking outside of a cell, and the first 



with tones of unequal length. 



TiMBERLiNE RiGGS, Something seems 

 wrong with your foundation, p. 102. You 

 say, "In order for the disease to get a start, 

 our bees must in some manner become 

 weakened in vitality." " In this localitj' " 

 the disease gets a start in colonies with 

 strong vitality. And I'm a bit skeptical 

 about its being crowded out of a weak 

 colony — or a strong one either. 



Arthur C. Miller, after reading your 

 article, p. 107, I don't wonder 1 didn't suc- 

 ceed with the smokc-d-stress method. I 

 followed the instruction to give so many 

 puffs, and I know they couldn't have filh^d 

 with smoke the deep space below and all 

 the supers above. You say, " When colo- 

 nies are at work in supers, for gracious 

 sake let them alone." Now you quit that. 

 About the only time I wai.t to introduce a 

 queen is when a colony is queenlcss, and 

 that's mostly when supers are on. And 

 then you don't want me to butt in. Huh ! 



Five pounds of sugar and two pounds of 

 water make a syrup of the consistency of 

 honey, and so I counted that 5 pounds of 

 sugar might take the place of 7 pounds of 

 honey. But there may well be a loss in 

 the feeding, and it may also be that honey 

 is the better food, so a pound of sugar may 

 be none too much to replace a pound of 

 honey. But, say ! don't i^rint this Straw in 

 the copy you send J. L. Byer. I don't want 

 that Kanuek to be chuckling over my back- 

 down. 



M. Johnstone's plan for proving a plu- 

 rality of laying workers in a colony, p. 78, 

 is bright. Years ago it was proven in 

 Europe in a different way. From a colony 

 of laying workers many of the bees were 

 taken and dissected, and a large proportion 

 of them were found to contain eggs. I wish 

 Mr. Johnstone had explained what he meant 

 by saying " you will never forget the ap- 

 pearance of those discovered in the act." 

 I suspect, however, that I know, for t!ie 

 only one I ever caught in the act had a 

 striking appearance with its wings ciowd- 



ed up about its head in a very uncomfor- 

 table manner. 



No trouble to make labels stay on tin if 

 you have the right paste, p. 93, but not a 

 word as to what the right kind is. Now, 

 isn't that exasperatingly aggravating? If 

 you know, why don't you tell? [As for the 

 right kind of jDaste, it is not proper to ad- 

 vertise in the reading-columns. The fact is, 

 however, you can buy a paste at almost any 

 drugstore or stationery-house that sells 

 paste that will fix labels to tin. There is 

 a special paste for the purpose, however, 

 and the same is advertised in another col- 

 umn. — Ed.] 



An Ohioan with nine colonies and a few 

 neighboring colonies asks how he can rear 

 queens from his one Italian colony and be 

 reasonably sure of pure mating. A bit 

 difficult. It's just as bad to have neighbor- 

 ing bees two blocks away as to have tliem 

 in your own yard. You can encoui-age 

 drones in your Italian colony and suppress 

 drones in the others and then take your 

 chances. Possibly you can have drones 

 suppressed in neighboring colonies. But it 

 isn't best to have drones and queens from 

 the same colony. 



The new spelling in Gleanings is in 

 the line of economy, and I rather like the 

 looks of it, except " thru," which gives me 

 a jolt every time. But if I'd always been 

 used to " thru," spelling it " tlilrough. " 

 would give me a still worse jolt. I remem- 

 ber when honor, labor, etc., in place of 

 honour, labour, etc., and arctic in place of 

 aretick seemed just as strange as the pres- 

 ent changes. Our spelling is by no means a 

 fixt thing, and I wouldn't be stopt from 

 making other improvements that should be 

 accomplisht. 



R. F. Holtermann, I don't know wheth- 

 er I'm Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zoi^har; but 

 while you're sitting among the ashes busy 

 with your potsherd I may as well join tlie 

 others, if only to " darken counsel by words 

 without wisdom." You fear European foul 

 brood cannot be stamped out. Well, you 

 never entirely stamped out the weeds in 

 your garden ; yet I venture to say you've 

 done good gardening. And you can raise 

 good crops of honey while fighting Euro- 

 pean foul brood. When I first met it I 

 looked forward to it with hoiTor. As I look 

 back upon it there's nothing very bad except 

 the foolish loss of a lot of good combs that 

 j'ou can avoid. Clieer up, brother; things 

 are not so worse as they might be. 



