716 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 1 



and find it a great advantage to you to do 

 so." 



There, friends, I almost beg of you to take 

 my advice in this matter, and adopt some 

 simple method whereby you can tell at a 

 glance the age and quality of every queen 

 in your apiary. It is not only a source of 

 much satisfaction to know the real merit 

 of all your queens when working among 

 them, but I assure you it is also, from a dol- 

 lar point of view, one of much importance. 



In regard to the proper time to supersede, 

 I must differ with those who recommend 

 superseding in the fall. My principal rea- 

 son for doing so is this: If the queen to be 

 superseded (as is generally the case) is old, 

 and beginning to fail in lieeping her hive 

 well filled with brood, then you stand a big 

 chance of having a weak colony the follow- 

 ing spring unless you give them a young 

 queen before August 1. In this section even 

 our young queens lay but little after Sept. 

 1, and certainly we should have a good pro- 

 lific queen in every hive at least one month 

 before the breeding season closes. But if 

 you are superseding good queens that have 

 kept their hives well filled with brood to the 

 end of the season (simply to get a better 

 strain of bees) then you can supersede your 

 queens almost any time during the fall; oth- 

 erwise I should very decidedly prefer super- 

 seding all my queens early in the season. 



Now, my friends, think this matter over 

 well; and in doing so remember that your 

 next year's surplus depends to a great ex- 

 tent on the quality of the queens you have 

 in your hives this coming fall. The man 

 who is' careless in this matter will have many 

 disappointments that he might otherwise 

 avoid with but little trouble and expense. 



Now a few words to those who ask me 

 many questions by letter. If you will send 

 your questions to Gleanings or the Review 

 I will try to answer them through those pa- 

 pers. During the last month I have answer- 

 ed one question in 63 different letters, and I 

 certainly have not time to write the same 

 thing over and over so often. 

 Delanson, N. Y. 



[Mr. A. E. Manum, a well-known contrib- 

 utor to these columns some ten years ago, 

 and who, at the time at least, was operat- 

 ing a series of outyards of some six hundred 

 colonies, I think, stated most emphatically 

 that he could not afford to keep a queen 

 after she was two years old. Some disa- 

 greed with him at the time; but I think a 

 majority of the practical honey-producers 

 supported his contention. 



The experiment recorded by our corres- 

 pondent with 107 colonies is very mteresting 

 and valuable. What has cost him several 

 hundred dollars is placed before our readers 

 at the mere mere cost of reading, plus one 

 twenty-fourth of a year's subscription. 

 And, by the way, there are hundreds of 

 good things in all the bee-papers. I think 

 it was Mr. W. L. Coggshall, another bee- 

 keeper whose colonies run up into the hun- 

 dreds, said that he could not afford, busy as 



he was, to fail to go over carefully all the 

 bee-journals, for he says he is constantly 

 gettmg new ideas that mean to him dollars 

 and dollars. This article alone, if carefully 

 read, will be worth, perhaps, hundreds of 

 dollars to other bee-keepers. 



Very lately in these columns one or two 

 writers have urged that, in their own prac- 

 tice, they supersede once every year, claim- 

 ing that a queen six months or a year old 

 would give results that a queen two years 

 old would not; that any thing over two 

 years old was never to be considered except 

 as a breeder. —Ed.] 



PRIZE-WINNERS FOR THIS ISSUE. 



Professional Men in the Ranks of Bee-keepers. 



BY E. R. ROOT. 



Mr. Charles G. Macklin, of Morrison, 111., 

 was the winner of the second prize lor the 

 view of the bee-yard here shown, in the late 

 photo contest. He is one of the very nu- 

 merous examples of professional men who 

 have taken up bee-keeping as a side hne — 

 not alone for the money there may be in it, 

 but primarily lor the pleasure and recrea- 

 tion after business hours. He is an insur- 

 ance agent by occupation, but has been 

 keeping bees for three years, and now has 

 an apiary of something like lUO colonies — a 

 corner section of which appears in the ac- 

 companying photo— the winner of the second 

 prize. It appears to be the back yard of an 

 ordinary town or city lot. The grass is 

 kept down with a lawn-mower, and orna- 

 mental shrubbery as well as fruit-trees are 

 conveniently located for shade to the hives. 



At the time of submitting the photo Mr. 

 Macklin gave us no particulars; but in the 

 absence of any statement I assume that ' " a 

 better half " is the sharer in the recreation 

 and pleasure afforded by the bees. Perhaps 

 it is she who sits in the delightful shade of 

 the tree where she can watch the busy 

 workers bringing in what they suppose to 

 be their own stores of mellifluous sweetness, 

 but which in reality they are to share with 

 her. 



Where the rest of the hundred hives are 

 located may be guessed. They may be in 

 the two long rows diverging at right angles. 



The addition of professional men to our 

 ranks is and should be welcomed by the 

 bread-and-butter bee-keeper, the one who 

 keeps bees solely for the living he can get 

 out of them, for it is these men of affairs, 

 learning, and finance, with their political pull 

 and influence who are able to get for us 

 needed legislation to protect our interests. 

 It is these men who are able to go before 

 the big newspapers and magazines and se- 

 cure denials of comb-honey lies. It is these 

 men who add dignity and power to our con- 

 ventions, and who enliven our bee-lore, not 

 so much by their practical experience as by 

 their enthusiasm that gives a new tone and 

 life to the ordinary humdrum of bread-and- 

 butter getting. 



