48 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 15 



taking daily physical-culture exercises. It 

 is no fad or hobby, because we have been 

 keeping- it up for the last six months, with 

 good results. Persons of sedentary habits 

 can well take them up, and it will, I be- 

 lieve, add years to their lives. — Ed.] 



Gerstung, editor of Die Deutsche Bien- 

 zacht, quotes the Straw about long-tongued 

 bees, p. 545, and adds, " By the side of this 

 possible fact stands the other, that unused 

 muscles relax and even deteriorates. Both 

 ficts, however, stand opposed to the view 

 that long-tongued bees owe their origin to 

 particular queens. It is the conditions of 

 ]ife that exercise determining influence." 

 Does Herr Gerstung mean that the queen 

 has no influence whatever upon her poster- 

 ity? [There is some truth in what Ger- 

 stung says; that is, we found that the 

 tongue-reach is greater during the height 

 of the honey-flow than during the rest of 

 the season. The constant strain to get at 

 the coveted sweets has a tendency to draw 

 the organs out, and possibly "relax" them, 

 as the physicists saj', to a point where the 

 natural reach is greater- But I think we 

 must look more to blood and selection than 

 to any other source. — Ed.] 



You MAY ARGUE all 5'ou please, Mr. Edi- 

 lor, with Doovittle about cellar wintering, 

 but I tell you it makes in me an aching 

 void when I read about his putting bees in 

 ;i place where they will stay all winter long 

 without care and without change of temper- 

 Uire. Say, Bro. Doolittle, what would it 

 cost me for a hillside of the right kind to 

 i!ig a bee-cave in? and oould you make any 

 reduction by the quantity? [So you envy 

 Doolittle his bee-cellar. I take it that you 

 are not able to secure an even temperature; 

 ;md I belive that, if the facts were known, 

 there is not one bee-keeper in a thousand 

 who has a cellar or repository where the 

 lemperaturewillremain as uniform through- 

 out the winter, irrespective of outside tem- 

 ]ierature, as in the Doolittle cellar. For 

 1 hat reason it does not seem advisable for 

 me to counsel giving bees no ventilation, 

 and letting them entirely alone. A plan of 

 procedure that would answer for an ideal 

 cellar like Doolittle's would not answere 

 for the average cellar that is far from being 

 ideal. — Ed.] 



"Introducing queens from one to three 

 days old," says G. M. Doolittle, p. 9, from 

 an incubator or queen- nursery has proven 

 an unsafe method with me, and one that 

 causes more labor and worry than the time 

 .'(•ained would compensate for." I wish he 

 )\ad told us what was the "time gained." 

 When I tried it, it was actuall3^ time lost, 

 lor I would have a queen laying sooner 

 when I gave a ripe cell than when I gave 

 a young queen. Strange, wasn't it? 

 [Doolittle's experience is about the same 

 as our own. For that reason the lamp-nur- 

 sery was taken out of the ABC book near- 

 ly fifteen year ago. The nursery was used 

 to take care of a surplus of cells when, for 

 example, all nuclei had eiiher virgins or 



cells. Sometimes a virgin in a nucleus is 

 lost. In such cases a young virgin from 

 the nursery, one or two hours old, would be 

 run in and accepted. But if there is any 

 doubt we find it better to put in a cell where 

 we are not so sure there is a virgin, but 

 only at such times as we have a surplus of 

 such cells. — Ed.] 



Mail privili^ges in this country are of 

 the best in some respects, while in other re- 

 spects we are behind. In some countries 

 commercial quanties of honey can be sent 

 by mail. There seems something peculiar, 

 not to say wrong, in a condition of affairs 

 that allows me to mail a package of honej- 

 from Marengo to any part of Germany for 

 less cost than to the nearest town. [This 

 is one of the strange things; and yet it is 

 not so very strange after all when we re- 

 member the powerful lobbies the express 

 companies can put up in Congress to pre- 

 vent the passage of bills that would obvious- 

 ly cut down their business. When we get 

 nearer the millennium we shall have a 

 United States parcel post, in spite of the 

 express companies; and I hope we shall 

 not have to wait beyond the ken of our life- 

 time either. The people of this great coun- 

 try are coming to a point where they will 

 not allow aggregations of capital to hold 

 their noses on the grindstone forever. When 

 capital overreaches, and keeps on doing it, 

 as it did during the coal strike, the people 

 are apt to have something to say. There, 

 now, I did not mean to go into the realm of 

 politics, or socialism; but I believe the prin- 

 ciple of the golden rule is bound to hold 

 greater sway in the near future than it 

 does now. — Ed.] 



A clipping was sent me,beginnintr, "The 

 churches are decaying everywhere, and 

 ending." "The influence of the church is 

 dying," while in between *vas the state- 

 ment that statistics showed a falling-off in 

 the attendance at Sunday meetings during 

 the past decade of 25 to 60 per cent. Some- 

 what strangely, in nearly the same mail I 

 recieved the account of a careful census of 

 adults attending church in New York city 

 the three first Sundays in November. Of 

 the 366 churches investigated, the average 

 attendance was 65 per cent of the member- 

 ship, and 31 per cent of the attendants were 

 men. If the falling-oft" has been 25 to 60 

 per cent, the attendance ten years ago must 

 have been 86 to 162 per cent. That is, out 

 of every 10 members, 86 to 162 must have 

 attended! The country isn t going to the 

 dogs just yet. |I am not worrying about 

 the future of the church. Perhaps its 

 growth is not so rapid as we would like to 

 see it, and 3'et its influence is increasing. 

 The standard of morals in the world is get- 

 ting higher and higher. In the matter of 

 of temperance, for instance, public senti- 

 ment in and out of the church against the 

 drink-traffic is growing stronger every day. 

 Good people are beginning to find there is 

 a power in the church vote, and are using 

 it, and some politicians are . beginning to 



