200 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 15 



forming a cube. If, now, a third room pre- 

 cisely similar be added with its stove, cer- 

 tainly neither room will be made colder. 

 The other objection is valid if there be two 

 combs in the central compartment, for in 

 that case the bees of the center might form 

 a sphere with one of the outside compart- 

 ments, leaving the other compartment to it- 

 self. But if the middle compartment has 

 only one comb, as mentioned on p. 69, and 

 has as many bees as either of the other com- 

 partments, then there ought to be no loss of 

 heat by the addition. [But the condition of 

 two or three living-rooms is hardly the 

 same as that of the nuclei referred to. 

 When there are two halves of the cluster, 

 one on each side of a partition, these two 



Eortions of the bees will fare a good deal 

 etter than that other portion that can not 

 get anywhere near the other two bunches 

 of bees that are practically one. If you 

 could divide a cluster into thirds by means 

 of division, then your three-compartment 

 box would be all right. — Ed.] 



"The more propolis I have, the more I 

 want Hoffman frames with short rests," 

 says M. A. Gill in Review. And M. A. Gill 

 is nobody's fool, either. [When I first in- 

 troduced the Hoffman frame to the bee keep- 

 ing world in 1890 and '91, I followed, as near- 

 ly as possible, the original type used by 

 Julius Hoffman, the inventor; but I could 

 not follow the style of his hive; and right 

 here unwittingly I ran against an obstacle. 

 It was this: Mr. Hoffman covered the ends 

 of his top-bars with a quilt so the bees could 

 not get to those ends and propolize them 

 to the edge of the rabbet. He had no bee- 

 space on top of his frames, and it was per- 

 fectly feasible for him thus to protect them. 

 I saw at once that the hives that were in 

 general use at the time with a bee-space on 

 top would require a change in the frame. 

 We narrowed down the paddle-like ends of 

 the top- bars, reducing the point of contact, 

 thinking that would overcome the difficulty; 

 but it accomplished the result only in part. 

 "Then we discovered that, if we made a bee- 

 space around the ends of the top-bars, there 

 would be no propolis sticking. In my opin- 

 ion the shortened top-bars are so immeasur- 

 ably superior to any top-bars which the bees 

 glue fast to the rabbets that I can not see 

 how any one can prefer them. The only 

 possible objection that can be urged is the 

 lack of finger room; but as I never handle 

 the frames at these points, but always grasp 

 the top-bar just inside of the end-bars, I am 

 not troubled in this respect. Well, to make 

 a long story short, I can only say that I 

 agree with friend Gill perfectly.— Ed.] 



I REMEMBER the time when slavery was 

 thoroughly intrenched in the land, and men 

 in northern pulpits defended it. I remem- 

 ber the time when it was as respectable to 

 sell whisky as to sell beef. To-day slavery 

 is only a memory, and about one-half of the 

 territory of the United States is under pro- 

 hibition, and liquor-selling is under the ban 

 even where it is legalized. Do you sense 

 the progress that has been made? [The 



world does move right here in Ohio. For 

 example the Toledo Blade reported the other 

 day that there were thirteen strong temper- 

 ance bills before the legislature of Ohio, 

 with the probability of at least half of them 

 passing. It was not more ten or twelve 

 years ago when the A nti- saloon League of 

 Ohio could do no better than to get a tem- 

 perance bill into a committee, where it would 

 be promptly killed by putting it in a pigeon- 

 hole. Then later on, when the League suc- 

 ceeded in getting a bill reported favorably 

 out of the committee they thought they had 

 done well, even if the bill was killed in the 

 House. A year or so afterward, enough 

 progress had been made so a temperance bill 

 was finally passed by the House by a majori- 

 ty of one or two votes, but it was killed in 

 the Senate. Four or five years ago one bill 

 went through both Houses, and became a 

 law. When a governor two years ago went 

 so far as to threaten to veto a temperance 

 bill unless weakened by amendments, there 

 was such an outburst of popular indignation, 

 that, instead of being elected by over 113,000 

 majority, as he was the first time, he was 

 defeated by over 40,00. The tidal wave that 

 threw him out of office also elected a lot of 

 men favorable to temperance; so that to-day 

 we have actually thirteen bills in the hopper, 

 with the prospect of half of them passing. 

 What is being done here in Ohio is being done 

 to a greater or lesser extent in all the 

 States. Never was there a time when the 

 temperance matter was so much of an issue 

 as now, and what is more this great reform 

 will come without bloodshed. — Ed.] 



I AM GLAD, Mr. Editor, to discuss with 

 you the important matter of pure vs. mixed 

 stock. Your views in the footnote, p. 140, 

 are entirely correct, and I see that I am like- 

 ly to be misunderstood. Let me define my 

 position more clearly. I do not believe that 

 my stock is unusually good because they 

 are hybrids, but in spite of it. I believe 

 with you that the same intelligent care in 

 selection with pure Italian stock will result 

 in as good honey- gatherers as with crosses, 

 provided one is situated where one can keep 

 them pure. Moreover, if I had two colonies 

 equally good as storers, one pure and the 

 other a cross, I should much prefer to breed 

 from the pure stock, among other reasons 

 an important reason being that I should 

 feel more sure that the pure stock would 

 keep up to the mark in future generations* 

 in other words, that the pure is more nearly 

 a fixed type. But in deciding on a course 

 of action one must take into consideration 

 all the conditions. Please keep in mind also, 

 that, in trying to breed for improvement, 

 the tendency to sport plays an important 

 part, or, to put it in coarser terms, the ele- 

 ment of chance. Keep in mind also that 1 

 am surrounded on all sides by blacks and 

 crosses, and to keep Italians pure is impos- 

 sible. The only way to keep as nearly pure 

 as possible is to introduce constantly fresh 

 blood that is pure. I did that for years. It 

 so chanced that, in a number of instances, 

 hybrid colonies did better than any of the 



