366 



GLEANINGS IN BEECULTUKE 



May, 1917 



SOMETIMES 

 a n d often 

 oftener the 

 beekeepers' sup- 

 ply house gets 

 all that is com- 

 ing- to it and 

 more, as is prov- 

 ed by the post- 

 script to the following letter received by a 

 supply-manufacturing concern located less 

 than a thousand miles from where the Man- 

 Around-the-Oftice sits as he writes this. 

 Read it, if you can nerve yourself against 

 its very emphatic language. Here_ it is 

 (except that the man's real name is not 

 given) : 



" Deer Surs: — The huny extrackter what i order- 

 ed sum time back came today and what the devul do 

 vou send me a masheen without a crank, how in 

 iiehcana man extrakt huny when there aint no 

 crank to turn the whurli?;ig bizness mside that holds 

 them ther komes that the huny runs out of when 

 it whurls fast, now maybe you think i am a dam- 

 foole but my wife she to sed ther want no crank 

 and the two on us hadent aurter make thesame mis- 

 take now if you fellers dont no no more un send 

 out a masheen without a crank, you surtanly aurter 

 be ffiven hellunthadevul. when i spens my soocl 

 munv for a masheen an then cant use it when i get 

 it i iiave got to take it out on sumwun. now what 

 i want to say is to send that crank damkwick what 

 is the good of a masheen with no crank is what^ i uc 

 like to no. nextime you can keep yur damol 

 masheen. " hoping you are the same i am 



" Emmet Bumpits 



"p, s. — dont send the crank, i found it in the 



bottom of the box." 



» * * 



This is true, too. It just goes to prove 

 that men can "fib" when they speak the 

 truth and tell tlie truth when they "fib." 

 It was at the Pan-American Exposition 

 at Buffalo, fifteen years ago. 0. L. Her- 

 shiser, as superintendent of the New York 

 State honey exhibit had eight or ten 

 colonies of bees (his own) in glass en- 

 closures around the large outside windows 

 of the second story of the Agi'icultural 

 Hall. " On the first floor, just inside the en- 

 trance door and below where the bees \\eve 

 domiciled, some enterprising Americaai 

 citizen was conducting a sweet-cider con- 

 cession. With a handpress he produced 

 sweet cider and pomace " while you wait " — 

 and did a thriving business at so mucli 

 per. There came a honey dearth, ^ and 

 Hershiser's bees all hands took to cider- 

 drinking and pomace-chewing one flight 

 down. They stung a few human competi- 

 tors there, and scared a good many more. 

 Ruin and wrath gripped the concession 

 man. I guess they did — he was so mad he 

 nearly had apoplexy. Got the superin- 

 tendent of the building. Got his assistants. 

 Got hard language carefully thought up. 

 Then they all together went upstairs to 

 the bee region. He would get those ding- 

 blasted bees out of there by the great horn 



sj^oons, or know 

 why. He talked 

 just that way to 

 t li e in iiocent, 

 lufus - whisker- 

 ed, mild-manner- 

 ed beeraan that 

 M r. H e rshiser 

 had in charge — 

 said the bees were stinging the life out of 

 his customers, and already had stung the 

 cider business to a fare-ye-well and — oh! he 

 talked awful. " Those bees sting, that are 

 troubling you, do they?" mildly asked the 

 rufus-be-whiskered bee-guardian. " Sting? 

 I guess tliey sting," said Mr. Concession 

 Man. " They would shoot rifles at us if 

 they had them." " Ah !" said the mild man, 

 " then they can't be these bees, for 

 these bees don't sting," and he reached 

 into a well-filled drone-trap over the en- 

 trance to one of the colonies, took out a 

 handful of the he bees, rolled several on his 

 face, crushed them in his hand, got the 

 concession man to do likewise — in short, 

 convinced tlie visiting war committee that 

 " these are stingless bees," and the erst- 

 while wrathy concession man and his crowd 

 Avent awa}^ perfectly satisfied, to hunt their 

 lieads off for the sure-enough stingers that 

 must come from somewhere else. As they 

 went downstairs filled with wonder and 

 stingless notions, the innocent beeman slap- 

 ped his leg, undid his features, and said 

 to Ernest : " These bees rtire stingless." 

 Sure enough, those bees were stingless. 

 He had •" fibbed " and he hadn't, hadn't he? 



Men can get so far apart from eacli other 

 on the temi^erance question that they can't 

 comprehend each other's language, as the 

 following incident occurring in our office 

 shows. Manager J. T. Calvert is as 

 " dry " as Mr. A. I. Root. He won't stand 

 for " booze " anywhere nor at any time. 

 He's just straight poison on it. Well, an- 

 other man, temporarily doing some special 

 accounting work in the office, chanced 

 not to be so poisonous on liquor as John 

 is. In fact, he was accustomed to take a 

 good many personal cliances on this form 

 of poison. The very first day he was in 

 the office John got a wliiff of his exuberant 

 breath — right in our office, mind you — and, 

 in a surprised undertone and close to his 

 ear, said: "Do you drink?" With a 

 grateful look of pleasurable anticipation the 

 sj^ecial figure expert spoke right up, say- 

 ing: " I don't mind. What have you got?" 



Hully gee! John got his breath back 

 finally, and eventually recovered. The 

 other man has long since gone hence. 



