June, 1917 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



465 



was necessarily narrow. When we entered, 

 on time, as we thought, in spite of having 

 stopped by a wayside pump for a drink 

 and wash-up, Mr. Bartholomew was already 

 speaking. He urged the splendid possibili- 

 ties of Tennessee beekeeping, the wisdom of 

 producing honey at this particular time of 

 high i^rices, and the necessity for improved 

 methods of apiculture. He made a strong 

 plea in favor of the production of extracted 

 honey, advocated shallow supers for this 

 section, described the interesting prism ex- 

 periment for testing the purity of honey, 

 shooed queen-excluders right out of the hive, 

 even when running for extracted, urged 

 practically unlimited room, put the second 

 super on top of the first and the third on 

 top of the second, and renewed his always- 

 convincing arguments for winter packing. 

 In this connection he told about Judge 

 Cook, of Chattanooga. It seems that Judge 

 Cook decided to put four hives in a winter 

 case last fall; and this spring when he un- 

 packed he sent word to Mr. Bartholomew 

 that those four colonies were already up to 

 full summer strength, any one of them be- 

 ing equal to any six of the unpacked colo- 

 nies! In the face of Dr. Phillips, Mr. 

 Bartholomew, and Judge Cook, will there 

 be an unpacked hive of bees in Tennessee 

 this fall? 



Mr. Crane followed with an interesting 

 and instructive talk on poultry-raising that 



I wished I might have heard several years 

 ago. After .the lectures we were escorted 

 to the other car, where Mr. Knox played 

 host most graciously with some refreshing 

 sparkly lemonade. And here we learned 

 that so much interest had been shown, and 

 so much enthusiasm developed, that they 

 had decided to run on for still another week. 

 They had talked to as many as 650 people 

 in one day, more than 5000 in the two weeks. 

 And the kiddies came too, as you can see 

 in one of the pictures Mr. Bartholomew so 

 kindly gave us. At one wide-awake station 

 they had to hold an overflow meeting out- 

 side, as the car could not contain them aU. 

 Seven hundred inquiries about beekeeping 

 had reached Knoxville as a result of the 

 first week's run. 



Then the next week, a Nashville bee-sup- 

 ply agent told Mr. Allen that something 

 surely had happened to the business. Or- 

 ders were coming in so fast it was bewilder- 

 ing. " And they're most of 'em beginners 

 too," he confided ; " I can tell it by their 

 letters!" 



* * * 



Bees athrill with summertime, humming thru the 



haze, 

 Bringing gleam and witchery to all the sunswept 



ways, 

 How you set the tender heart of Mother Earth 



acro-on 

 With radiance and romance from the rhythmic heart 



of June ! 



Flocking to the poultry and bee special. The kiddies came too. 



NOTES FROM CANADA 



J. L. Byer, Markham, Ont. 



MAY 4, and 

 still win- 

 ter is lin- 

 gering in the lap 

 of spring. The weather has been unusually 

 cold all thru April and May to date, and 

 for the last three days we have had snow 

 flurries with small piles of snow Still lying 

 in fence-corners. 



This sounds "frigid," without doubt, to 

 our southern friends, and yet in a letter 

 just received from a well-known beekeeping 

 friend in Texas he says that many of their 



honey - bearing 

 sources were so 

 frozen as to be 

 useless for the 

 bees, and that the weather there is unseason- 

 ably cold too. He further says that he is 

 feeding both honey and pollen to make it 

 possible to rear queens; and in order to 

 have drones for mating purposes, queenless 

 colonies have to be supplied with drone 

 brood. He estimates the spring loss of bees 

 in his part of the state at 25 per cent, and 

 says that colonies are still going backward. 



