Aug-. 17, 1899. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



517 



read them ag'ain. It is also true that many things a begin- 

 ner cannot digest will be interesting and nourishing a year 

 or two later on. Keep your bee-magazines and see how 

 meaty they will seem on second reading. She made a good 

 spring observation as she watcht that apiary being over- 

 hauled. Eight-framers and sectional hives all very weak ; 

 ten-framers much better ; tens and twelves with big and 

 extra-deep frames mostly rousers. Something may have to 

 be done about this if it is a/ways so. Will take some time 

 to decide whether it is or not. Page 418. 



ALW.WS WRITINC. WHAT ONE MEANS. 



Dr. Miller gets at the root of an important and vexa- 

 tious matter where he says writers sometimes say some- 

 thing quite different from what they mean. Page 418. As 

 a sort of corollary of this suffer me to say that few (I sus- 

 pect) get to be writers of the very highest rank till they 

 contract a sort of frantic dislike for sentences and clauses 

 that ran he understood in more than one way. Even if 

 laziness does say, " Let it go ; no one will ever misunder- 

 stand that" out it has to come. 



FINE LOT OF BEE-STING REMEDIES. 



What a fine lot of sting remedies C. P. Dadant enumer- 

 ates on page 419 I Some got away, too. I think we may 

 profitably talk a little more about ruhhiiig as a sting- 

 remedy. Altho pretty sure to make ordinary patients 

 worse, it is handy, and really excellent, for bee-keepers who 

 have become two-thirds inured to bee-poison. Remove the 

 sting instantly, and rub the spot until it burns (with fric- 

 tional heat) so j'ou can hardly bear anj' more : then go on 

 with what you're at, and avoid thinking of or looking at 

 the sting at all, and the poison will be so diluted and spread 

 around as to fail to set up its characteristic action. Pretty 

 much the same may be said of opening the smoker door 

 and toasting the spot. That we lose part of our inurement 

 everj' winter, and gradually recover it when we begin hand- 

 ling bees in spring, is a rather unfamiliar idea to m}- nod- 

 dle, but quite likely it is right. 



AMMONIA AND CLOSING THE PORES FOR BEE-STINGS. 



Mr. Dadant ventures on the record that the very best 

 remedy of all is ammonia — external for moderate cases, and 

 internal also for worse ones. I will venture that the very 

 best remedy is closing the pores of the skin in the vicinity 

 of the puncture. Sting analogous to a fire, and this remedy 

 is like shutting the doors and windows. Hoiv to best close 

 the pores decidedly depends. If the sting is on clear, level 

 territory (mostly it isn't) the best way is to put on three or 

 four inches square of tissue paper with strong mucilage. If 

 , it's near the holes and hummocks of the countenance, smear 

 a similar extent of space with the thickest honey you can 

 get, or with any harmless and viscid substance. Get rid of 

 the idea that the daub effects any chemical or medical 

 change, and understand it as merely keeping away part of 

 the natural supply of oxygen. Page 419. 



BEE-STlNG INFORMATION — "IMPORTANT IF TRUE." 



Never saw so much bee-sting information in one place 

 before as in the bee-boil from J. Langer, on page 437. Im- 

 portant if reliable. We can all test this scientist's work at 

 one point, where he saj-s the poison has a. pleasant aromatic 

 odor. To be sure, the smell that one person likes another 

 don't like, but some of us would say unpleasant. A mere 

 trifle heavier than water. From 166 to 333 bees carry a 

 grain of poison. (Looks exaggerated. A grain would be 

 quite a lot.) The poison proper is not the acid itself, but 

 dissolved in the acid — and precipitated b5' alkali. Then 

 what earthly use to give ammonia, or other alkali, as a 

 remedy ? The dried poison is as poison as ever ; but left in 

 its natural fluid state, and in a glass tube not sealed, it be- 

 comes harmless in about four weeks. Sealed it keeps 

 longer. Here's richness and wisdom, lots of it — if some- 

 body else doesn't come and upset it all. Simmer the above 

 and Dadant's article well together — the resulting elixir well 

 shaken before being taken. 



NEW EDITION OF DK. WATTS' "HIMS." 



So according to Dr. Watts (page 419) Apis dorsata build 

 but one size of cell, and their drones are all reared in 

 worker-comb. Small edition of Dr. Watts' liims .' 



OPEN-AIR HONEV LIABLE TO FERMENT. 



The idea that all varieties of bees which build in the 

 open air trust to aerial evaporation to keep their honey, and 

 do little to it themselves, is striking, and impresses one as 

 likely to turn out correct. That nearly all of 60 or 70 honev 



samples at Calcutta fermented more or less, looks like 

 pretty good evidence. 



DOOLLTTLE'S EXPERIENCES. 



The Doolittle article, page 420, may be summed up in 

 this: Don't give a laj'ing queen to a colony that has just 

 swarmed, unless your rather exceptional location yields a 

 continuous flow. Tater (without feeling sure) would incline 

 to saj' : Don't do it at all — makes the swarming worse, 

 which is likely to 15e terribly bad without. Mr. D.'s experi- 

 ence hardly covers that kind of a location, I think. Thanks 

 for the able way which he has workt up what he has experi- 

 enced. Hope he will tolerate my good, hearty dissent to his 

 doctrine, that bees reared during basswood are mostly dead 

 before fall-flower harvest. Say might be, so far as time 

 goes, but as midsummer is apt to be largely idle time, more 

 frequently in first-rate working order. 



BEES WORKING ON PEAS — COWPEAS ? 



And W. T. Lewis, on page 431, we'll nail him to the 

 record as one who has seen bees work with enthusiasm on 

 peas. May be he means cowpeas, however, which would 

 be less remarkable. 



DRONE-COMB IN THE SECTIONS. 



Three respondents, on page 427, intimate that drone- 

 comb in sections is no harm. Tater thinks the harm of it 

 has been greatly exaggerated. 



■\VHITE vs. BLACK POULTRY. 



And Tater wants to put one of his bugs in the ear of 

 that poultry-man, page 425, who took to light-colored fowls 

 because his bees worried the dark ones. Doesn't he know 

 that standard works on poultry favor that change for an 

 important and entirely different reason ? Fowls have to be 

 killed and sold, even if eggs are the main object, and white 

 ones look and sell better when drest. 



PERHAPS A MIX-UP OF FIGURES AS -WELL AS SWARMS. 



It's a nice one — that record on page 422, of 548 swarms 

 from 48 colonies in one year— else a mix-up of figures, or 

 something. That is over 11 swarms to one count in spring. 

 As Mr. Dadant (Gleaning-s in Bee-Culture 460) speaks of it 

 as sez'en per colon}-, probably there has been some slip. 



THAT CURIOUS RESULT FROM SCRAPING HIVES. 



Just to be contrary, I'll guess that that doubted experi- 

 ence on page 441 was genuine. Bees had been gathering-, 

 as substitute for propolis, some sticky and very poisonous 

 paint. 



ILLINOIS' PURE FOOD COMMISSIONER. 



Gov. Tanner's reasons for not appointing a dairyman 

 or bee-man as food commissioner io?/«(/ all right. Must be 

 thankful that a glucose man or oleo man was not wormed 

 in somehow. Page 440. 



IS SWEET CLOVER HONEY DARK ? 



Rather a novel idea to us that sweet clover is a dark 

 honey — still not necessarily an error on the part of that 

 Kansas official, on page 4-fo. Liable to be blackened by 

 mixture with road-dust, one would say. And most of us do 

 not see sweet clover honey unmixt with something else. 



BAIT FOR HUNTING BEES IN TREES DURING A HONEY-FLOW. 



I fear Mr. L. J. Clark, page 446, will not find the bait 

 that bees will work on zealously while the nectar harvest is 

 good — 



Ouoth the sagacious little bee. 

 '•'i'he best is g-ood enough for me" — 



and therefore the tempters will tempt in vain. But there 

 are often periods of a week or more in summer when the 

 flowers don't •• give down." Watch an apiary till you cap- 

 ture one of these famine spells (when domestic bees are in- 

 quisitive, and eager for anything that turns up), then go 

 for the woods with the usual device of burning comb and 

 exposing honey. I can see no reason why some success 

 might not be had in any season when bees will rob. 



PUTTING SMOKER-FUEL ON TOP OF THE FIRE. 



Mr. C. p. Dadant uses poor smoker-fuel, I plainly see — 

 with first-class fuel it is a very bad plan to put it on top of 

 the fire — burns up too quick. All the same, his talk to be- 

 ginners (page 434) is an excellent one. COGITATOR. 



The Premium offered on page 525 is well worth work- 

 ing for. Look at it. 



