1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



171 



thousands of bee-keepers who think they do 

 not need or can not afford bee books or 

 journals, and who never read them. When 

 they dispose of their crop, however, it is 

 done at a loss of from two to three cents a 

 pound, which amounts to quite an item when 

 the crop is large— large enough sometimes 

 to pay for all the bee journals and books for 

 many years. 



My advice to these is to get up out of the 

 old ruts and keep in line with the times. 

 Subscribe for one or more bee journals, and 

 get several books on the subject, and then 

 study them well, and follow out in your 

 work what is learned from your reading. 

 The cost of the original investment will be 

 small when compared with the profits that 

 will be sure to result. 



Next, attend the bee-keepers' conven- 

 tions. They are of the utmost importance, 

 as much is learned at such meetings that is 

 not found elsewhere. By rubbing up against 

 some of the better bee-keepers the other- 

 wise square corners soon round off and thus 

 make a better bee-keeper and a better fel- 

 low-man of a person, much more valuable to 

 the whole fraternity. 



^yromOuy 



M 



In the British Bee Journal for Jan. 19 a 

 writer comes to the defense of the black 

 bees against the usual charges laid against 

 them. He utterly denies that the first charge 

 against them, that of bad temper, has any 

 foundation in fact. As to their not being 

 prolific, he dissents mildly. He says, "I 

 grant at once they are not so prolific in the 

 height of the season as the best specimens 

 of Italians. But give me my choice of, 

 say, fifty queens of either race, unselected, 

 and I have no hesitation in saying that I 

 would vote for the natives." As to blacks 

 not storing so late in the season as the Ital- 

 ians, he says his experience is just the other 

 way. As to their inability to resist disease 

 as well as the Italians, he makes a claim 

 that is so peculiar, in the face of other tes- 

 timony, especially of what Samuel Simmins 

 says in this issue, p. 178, that I quote a few 

 lines : 



Of all the cases of foul brood I have ever encountered, 

 nine out of ten, I think, were directly traceable to the 

 foreign element, and I almost subscribe to the senti- 

 ment expressed by a prominent contributor to our pages 

 some years ago when he wrote: " Since we began im- 

 porting we have had foul brood; before we began 

 importing we had it not." To the statement that 

 natives are "helpless" in the face of this disease I abso- 

 lutely demur. It generally, on the contrary, takes from 

 two to four times as long to kill out a black lot as it does 

 an Italian colony. The latter, frequently in a single 

 season, assumes it in the form of a "galloping consump- 

 tion." If it catches the infection one season in a mild 

 form, the very prolificness of the queen proves its 



undoing, because each contaminated occupied shell be- 

 comes a center of contagion, disseminating the spores 

 over the surrounding area until no single egg laid by 

 the queen results in a metamorphosis evolving a bee fit 

 to take on its shoulders the active duties of a healthy 

 existence. 



Is this a matter of locality? 



A month ago I gave a clipping from a 

 Cleveland paper setting forth as wonders 

 what bee-keepers have practiced for many 

 years. An explanation was given, but the 

 editor made no reply. The same week, how- 

 ever, the following appeared in the same 

 journal. It shows plainly that, after a sub- 

 ject has been discussed a good while in the 

 parlor, it finds its way eventually to the 

 servants' hall. It reads: 



A bee that works only at night is found in the jungles 

 of India. It is an unusually large insect. The combs 

 are often six feet, and from four inches to six inches 

 thick. 



Somebody has heard of the giant bee, of 

 India, and is palming off the above on the 

 public. Just think of cells two to three 

 inches deep! What the "six feet" refers 

 to is not known. How much would such a 

 comb weigh when filled? What would hold 

 or support it? 



Right on the track of the above comes the 

 following, which is too good to lose: 



Alonzo Murphy, a farmer living near Pochuck, while 

 digging a ditch through some black dirt on his place 

 recently, ran across the trunk of a tree about four feet 

 below the surface. The trunk was in a fine state of 

 preservation. The log was about two feet in diameter, 

 and hollow. In the hollow space Mr. Murphy found a 

 large quantity of honey which was in a good state of 

 preservation as was the tree-trunk. There was enough 

 of it to supply himself and neighborhood for the winter. 

 Prof. E. J. Ferguson says the honey has been there over 

 9000 years. He arrives at this estimate by the depth of 

 the deposit of soil over the log. 



There is no such place as Pochuck in the 

 Postal Guide. Don't scold commission men 

 any more for putting honey in a cellar for a 

 week when it can be kept, like "Massa," 

 "in the cold, cold ground," for 9000 years. 

 I should think such honey would " supply " 

 a neighborhood a good while. The skill of 

 Mr. Ferguson in deciding on the age of the 

 honey is quite on a par with that of some 

 scientists in giving the date of the death of 

 the gentleman who left his skull at the bot- 

 tom of a drift unknown ages before Adam. 

 The Indians have always claimed there were 

 no bees on this continent before the time of 

 Columbus. They called the bee the * ' white 

 man's fly." 



But the great point is, whither are we 

 drifting when the masses get information 

 from such sources? I am glad to see that 

 Mr. York has been calling attention to this 

 matter. 



A British pamphlet on the West Indies 

 says there is an opening in Jamaica for bee- 

 farming, and that one with practically no 

 knowledge of bees could start a hundred 

 colonies, with a little assistance from a bee- 

 man on the spot. A writer in the B. B. J. 

 wisely warns one first to get experience and 

 then a teacher, and then make sure of that 

 uncertain factor, a market, for his honey. 



