200 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Mar. 1 



feeding- increased them to 100 strong colo- 

 nies, and secured about 1000 lbs. of ex- 

 tracted honey. This was done at an out- 

 yard which I visited on a bicycle once a 

 week, during the season, spending about 

 four or five hours each trip. If one prac- 

 tices stimulative feeding — feeding before 

 and after the honey-flow — he could, if he 

 had the requisite skill, go beyond this. At 

 the time I made this increase we had a 

 good season for honey, and ordinarily I 

 should not expect to do as well. — Ed.] 



NOTES OF TRAVLL 



4 BY A.: .ROOT . 



How then shall they call on him in whom they have 

 not believed ? and how shall they believe in him of 

 whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear 

 without a JDreacher?— KOMANS 10 :14 



One Saturday afternoon Mr. W. W. Som- 

 erford (the "man who talks," as poor 

 Rambler had it) came to our rooms (No. 89 

 Prado), and said we were to go out to his 

 place on our wheels that evening, and that 

 he would then, Sunday morning, take me 

 over to Mr. Eraser's mission at Guanajay. 

 You maj' think it funny, but Guanajay is 

 usually pronounced " Wah-nah-//z_^/t." In 

 Spanish, gu is given much the sound of w, 

 and 7 is always called /z, or given the sound 

 of h, and the accent is on the last syllable. 



It was so late before Somerford got ready 

 to start, darkness overtook us; but before it 

 was quite dark we stopped to look over an 

 apiary that has quite a history. Our older 

 readers may remember that, years ago, A. 

 J. King, of ihe Bee-keepers' Magazine, ca.me 

 to Cuba to start an apiary on what was 

 then considered a pretty large scale, for the 

 Casanova Brothers. It was about the time 

 I commenced sending out the " Simplicity" 

 hive, or hives made so they could be piled 

 up two. three, or even fo2ir stories high. 

 The Kings made a hive similar, and called 

 it the "Eclectic" hive. For shade, the 

 wealthy owners made sheds of galvanized 

 iron, supported on iron posts, and these 

 sheds are standing to-day, not only dura- 

 ble, but artistic and neat in appearance. 

 After the Kings left Cuba, Osborne (for- 

 merly of California) took charge of this 

 apiary, and it was here he ordered from 

 us the largest extractor in the world, to be 

 run by a steam-engine. I saw the engine 

 and the great "Jumbo" extractor; but 

 both are now standing idle, while a Cuban 

 takes all the honey with a common small 

 extractor to be turned by hand. This once 

 beautiful apiary that cost so much money 

 is now very much on the road to ruin. 



After we took the road we had both dark- 

 ness and rain, and I should have given up 

 getting home until Sundaj' morning, but 

 not so our good friend S. He is not only a 

 "talker," but he is a " pusher " iij any 

 thing he starts out on. For a time it seem- 

 ed as if we could not keep our wheels un- 



der us, they slipped about in the mud so 

 badly; but S. declared a little further on the- 

 roads were of a different character, and so 

 it proved. His bright little wife was taken 

 rather by surprise to see a visitor covered 

 with mud ushered in late Saturday night, 

 and she made quite an apology because my 

 bedroom was so filled with crates of beauti- 

 ful section honey I could hardly get into it. 

 I replied something like this: "When I 

 first became crazy on bee-keeping, long 

 years ago, I used to dream of great piles of 

 beautiful honey in neat little packages. It 

 was only a dream, however, then; but now, 

 to-night, shoiild I wake up and see by the 

 bright moonlight what is all around me, 

 I might, for the first time in life, find my 

 boyhood dreams all realized; therefore, dear 

 Mrs. S., do not feel at all worried, even if 

 I do have to turn 'edgewise' to get to that 

 pretty little washstand when I get up in 

 the morning." 



Mr. S. has something new in bottom- 

 boards for hives. His are made of stone, 

 "or, rather, of the material they make the 

 tiles of for roofing their houses. They are 

 made at a tile-factory, and cost only about 

 ten cents each. They can be set close to the 

 ground, and never rot or warp. He was 

 then filling an order for "chunk honey" 

 in square cans. He has large screw caps 

 put on the cans (six inches or more across) ; 

 and after the can is filled with pieces of 

 comb honey, extracted honey is poured over 

 and around it, and he said he was then 

 getting more per pound for it than other 

 bee-keepers were getting for comb honey in 

 sections. I presume, however, this demand 

 did not continue; for while I write I am 

 told he is in New York marketing that nice 

 honey that filled my bedroom that night. 



Sunday morning Mr. S. and his wife on 

 their tandem, and Mr. Hill and myself on 

 our wheels, all started on the beautiful cal- 

 zada (government stone road) for church 

 and Sunday-school, nine miles away. On 

 these beautiful stone roads, graded so as to 

 have no hills that one can not run up and 

 down without trouble, it is no task at all to 

 go on a wheel ten miles to church. I have 

 several times " reeled off " a mile every 5 

 minutes. At every kilometer (pronounced 

 here ^/ow-eter), there is a stone post with 

 big plain black figures, numbering the dis- 

 tance. A kilometer is about two-thirds of 

 a mile, and these " mile posts " are exceed- 

 ingly convenient. I think Bro. Eraser will 

 excuse me if I say right here that I am z'ery 

 much in love with himself and his good wife. 

 One explanation is that, before I met them, 

 I was hungering and thirsting to see some 

 kind of mission work going on in Cuba. 

 Mr. Somerford told me Eraser was a man 

 after m3' own heart, and also that, in his 

 opinion, he was one of the very besl men in 

 the world. Mr. Eraser has been on the is- 

 land three j^ears, under the auspices of the 

 American Missionary Society. He has a 

 very pretty building near the center of the 

 town, that contains the schoolroom, library, 

 and a very pretty home for his family. He 



