1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



923 



Mr. Decker is an old man, and we may on 

 this account pardon his boyish enthusiasm 

 in the matter; but we can not so readily 

 pardon the periodicals that have sent out 

 the absurdly extravagant resumes of the 

 matter. Finally, as no one has as yet, in 

 answer to my repeated calls, mentioned any 

 sort of success in hatching eggs over bee- 

 hives, I hope no one who sees this will waste 

 good eggs and annoy the bees further by 

 any such experiments. Perhaps I might 

 mention further that the Rural New- Yorker, 

 before giving place to an article on the sub- 

 ject, referred the matter to us. When I 

 told them what I knew about it they re- 

 frained from putting the article in print. 

 If a hundred other periodicals would go to 

 headquarters, or, in other words, to a spe- 

 cialist in that particular line before u=ing 

 such sensational articles, it would be better 

 all around. 



CATCHING SWARMS OF RUNAWAY BEES, ETC. 



On page 732, July 1, I mentioned that Mr. 

 T. W. Bryan, of Ficklin, 111., would not send 

 us his book containing his "dollar secret," 

 but returned our money. A subscriber sends 

 us a copy of the Missouri Valley Farmer to 

 show that they are still letting Mr. Bryan 

 use their reading columns to boom his 

 secret. Below is a sample of the way he 

 answers correspondents: 



A lady in Texas says she is a great lover of the 

 honey-bee, but they sting her badly, as at swarming 

 time, so she asks for a remedy. By allowing bees to 

 swarm in the old-fashioned way one is apt to get stung 

 more or less. The only remedy I Ivnow of that will cut 

 out all this stinging, all this watching and worrying 

 about your bees at swarming time, is to adopt my plan, 

 and that is to fit up your hive so that, when your bees 

 swarm, they will be conducted at once to this hive by 

 the "home-seekers," and that does forever settle the 

 business for that swarm. 



This "dollar book" is now in my hands. 

 It contains five very small pages, coarse 

 print. He commences by quoting from the 

 Bible, evidently to impress people with the 

 fact that he is a godly man. The wonderful 

 secret is told in two or three words. There 

 are two ways of attracting runaway bees 

 back to their hive. One is by the use of a 

 piece of bright-red flannel. This may be 

 neiv, but I think our readers will agree with 

 me that it is not trne. The second way is 

 to attract the bees by scent, using the oil of 

 anise. This 7nay be true, but it is 7iot new. 

 It has been advertised for fifty years in 

 secrets for hunting wild bees. 



The little pamphlet closes by saying that, 

 as the instructions are copyrighted, you are 

 not permitted to communicate any part of 

 them to your neighbors lest you violate the 

 law as well as lessen your chance of catch- 

 ing bees. 



NITRO-CULTURES AND THE DEPARTMENT AT 



WASHINGTON. 



I have felt greatly pained to see in the 

 papers intimations that graft and rascality 

 have gotten hold of the Department of Ag- 

 riculture at Washington. We have not re- 



ceived the particulars as yet; but our good 

 friend Greiner, in the Farm and Fireside, 

 refers to a part of the troubles as follows: 



While individual farmers here and there may allow 

 themselves to be duped by sleek rascals, the modern 

 farmer does a good deal of his own thinking, and as a 

 class they are too intelligent and have too good leader- 

 ship of their own to be long deceived by even the most 

 skillfully concocted schemes, may the schemers even 

 have a high official position. Of this we have just had 

 another proof by the sudden collapse of the bubble of 

 the famous nitro-cultures. Now that the gas is out of 

 the bag, we are in a fair way to get at the solid facts in 

 this whole business. I still believe that my earlier esti- 

 mate of it was about right when I told some of the Buf- 

 falo seedsmen last winter, in answer to their question 

 what I thought of nitro-cultures, that there is just 

 about ten per cent of truth and ninety per cent of hum- 

 bug in it. But we want that ten per cent of truth. Un- 

 doubtedly it is valuable. We should not throw the 

 whole thing overboard because somebody has damned 

 it, not with faint but extravagant praise. I have a 

 whole lot of experiments under way at the present time, 

 and expect interesting results. For the present we 

 hardly know "' where we are at," as the bulletins of the 

 Department in Washington on this subject will not 

 readily be accepted now as authority. The nitro-cul- 

 ture business has left the fad stage— we shall soon 

 know what is fact and what fancy. 



Our readers may remember that I have 

 already cautioned them about paying $2.00 

 for enough of the culture to fertilize an 

 acre, and especially where they claim that a 

 difi^erent variety was required for each va- 

 riety of legumes. Of course, no one can 

 find fault with the samples the government 

 sent out for trial free of charge. 



GOVERNMENT PLANT-GARDEN IN CALIFORNIA 

 TO TEST HONEY-PLANTS. 



We clip the following from the San Fran- 

 cisco Call: 



The California Promotion Committee announces that 

 the United States Department of Agriculture is estab- 

 lishing a sub-station in the plant-introduction garden 

 at Chico for investigations in agriculture. A specialty 

 will be made of testing honey-plants to be secured by 

 Mr. Benton, of the Department, who is now in India. 

 Bee diseases on the Pacific Coast will be investigated, 

 and an experiment made in the different varieties of 

 bees, among them the giant bee of India and the various 

 specimens of the Philippines. 



California is the greatest honey-producing State in 

 the Union, and the department will support an apiary 

 and issue much information to the California apiarist. 

 The apiary sub-station at Chico is in charge of John M. 

 Rankin. 



ARTICLES DEFENDING SALOONS AND THE 

 USE OF BEER, ETC. 



The brewers have evidently "got busy" 

 in furnishing every periodical, that is low 

 enough to accept it for pay or otherwise, 

 various articles claiming that beer does not 

 cause intemperance, etc. They are also 

 trying to make out that President Roosevelt 

 is a tippler, just as they tried to make out 

 a while ago that he was a user of tobacco. 

 Write to the editors of these periodicals 

 that, if they give place to this kind of stuff, 

 you will not have the paper on your prem- 

 ses. That is just what I have told the edit- 

 ors of one of the Cleveland dailies that I 

 have heretofore taken almost all my life. 

 It begins to look as though we had all got 

 to stand up and let the world know "where 

 we are at," wet or dry. 



