39th YEAR. 



CHICAGO, ILL,, FEBRUARY 9, 1899, 



No, 6, 



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Afterthought. I 



-^ T116... 



^^ The " Old Reliable " seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. ^' 

 ■^ By " COGITATOR. • ^'. 



INTRODUCTION. 



LINE upon line, precept upon precept," is the way to in- 

 struct. The effect of bee-medicine is much of it lost for 

 want of somebody to come afterward and rub it in 

 through the cuticle — and therefore here comes your humble 

 servant to put you in mind of what you read several weeks 

 ag-o. It's a peculiar job, tho, because different sorts of pa- 

 tients require different kinds of rubbing. The rubbing 

 that would do nicely for chilblains or callousities might 

 cause the gouty patient to knock 3-0U down with his crutch. 

 And, then, the medicine suitable for colic might not be just 

 the thing for insomnia ; and in doctoring through the print- 

 ing press we have to deal out the medicine to all, like 

 an army ration. (All this will make you think it's Dr. 

 Peiro that's starting in again ; but of course shrewd judges 

 will perceive that " Cogitator " is only another alias for the 

 editor.) 



THE PORTR.-VIT OF DOOI,ITTI.E. 



The first thing that strikes us in the new year is how 

 different the portrait of Doolittle looks from all liis previous 

 pictures. Looks as if he had just been doing something 

 naughty, and was inwardly chuckling about it. Cogitator 

 thinks the multiplication of bee-men's pictures is getting 

 to be a nuisance, very like the pictures of folks cured of 

 something by somebody's dollar-a-bottle stuff. But tliis 

 does not hit Doolittle at all. It is a high honor to be the 

 foremost practical bee-man of the whole world : and we are 

 more than willing to contemplate a new picture of our 

 leader any time. The point suggested is this : Pictures of 

 nobodies continually thrust before us obliterate from the 

 mental retina the pictures of the somebodies which we 

 would like to retain. 



EVERYBODY HIS OWN OUEEX-RE-\RER. 



Doolittle's article says, "No person is an accomplislit 

 apiarist until he is a thorough master of the queen-rearint.- 

 part of the business." Maybe that's the truth ; but it hits 

 a lot of us unpleasantly hard — the happy-go-lucky way of 

 letting our bees rear their own queens entirely comes so easy 

 , — easy as slumber to the sluggard. Mr. D. backs his un- 

 pleasant assertion by reminding us that when we happen to 

 be favored with a queen of exceptionally valuable qualities 

 we let a big prize go mainly to waste, just because it is too 



much bother to rear SO young queens from her and intro- 

 duce them. 



No special value in a little frame on purpose for queen- 

 rearing, and many disadvantages. Worth something to be 

 told that by such competent authority. Have a good frame, 

 and use it for queen-rearing same as for everything else. 



One tiptop idea that needs rubbing in is, that nuclei 

 with queens always build worker-comb ; and combs with 

 holes in them should be given to such for them to mend up. 

 Strong colonies mend holes with drone-comb too often. 

 When your " hole — y " combs give out, cut out your patches 

 of drone-comb, and have it replaced by comb of' worker size. 

 The use of a little frame for nuclei blocks this excellent 

 policy. 



It also looks as if he was right in the rather extreme 

 advice to use a full-sized hive for nuclei — no handy way yet 

 devised to keep little hives from being robbed which is "at'all 

 comparable to making the bees enter one side of a big hive, 

 and then go across it to their compartment on the other 

 side. Unless the nucleus is unrea.sonably weak, robbers 

 will almost never overcome it if so arranged. Probably 

 robbers soon come to distinguish diminutive hives from big- 

 ones, and assume that the former can of course be beaten if 

 the attack is sharp enough, when they would let a big hive 

 alone in the same circumstances ; just as banditti attack a 

 cabin, but keep clear of a fort. Beginners (and perhaps 

 most of us) need a heroic dose of capsicum to wake us up to 

 the magnitude of the robbing evils which a little fore- 

 thought could prevent just as well as not. 



-A.BOUT THOSE " .\IKIN(G) " EXPERIMENTERS. 



Well, how about Mr. Aikin's plan to get 20 apiarists to 

 experiment simultaneously on problems of importance? 

 Good; only I don't believe he half realizes the difficulty of 

 arranging the details of the business. It is driving 20 horses 

 in a team with a compound evener. Now and then one 

 might fly back. And a trifle of kicking is possible, even. 



Anon some will say : " I am doing- a full share of the 

 work of this, and .somebody else is getting- all the credit of 

 it." And at last the results would not agree; and the un- 

 solved problems would mostly remain unsolved. When the 

 symposium method of question-box answers" was first in- 

 vented we were to have all unsettled things settled right 

 away. How many were really settled ? The problems 

 mostly stay with us to the present day ; and yet the plan 

 was worth its page-room. The present' plan i.s' likely to be 

 worth trying ; but we must not expect too much of it. 



Perhaps the best of tlie probli;ms he suggests for such 

 investigation is : When a colony stores 20 pounds of comb 

 honey surplus, how much extracted surplus would tliev have 

 stored? His present thought is, about 25. (I cheerfully 

 second that figure.) Thinks he never once realized 40. 



The question whether unqueening during harvest makes 

 the bees less energetic in their storing, would do well for 

 joint investig-ation also ; but I doubt if much good would 

 come of submitting the honey-wax ratio. Nineteen would 

 find in accordance with previous prejudices : and the twen- 

 tieth would find nothing beyond what has been found 

 before. 



Aikin says 25 pounds of surplus comb honey means 3 



