1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



913 



virgin queen in the upper blue, the best 

 man will win. If the choice were left to 

 me I'm afraid I'd make a bungle. [I am 

 not sure but you are right. Even if we 

 could mate successfully in a big tent, there 

 are some hand-picked drones, apparently 

 good lusty fellows, that would make poor 

 progenitors. It is getting to be the practice 

 nowadays to rear drones almost exclusively 

 from one or two choice queens in a queen- 

 rearing 3'ard, then kill ofif the useless ones, 

 or keep them from developing. By so do- 

 ing, don't we nearly control the parentage 

 on both sides? And if the drone with the 

 greatest wing power is the best man, possi- 

 bly he is strongest in other waj's. In one 

 of our yards during the past summer, the 

 major part of our drones were reared from 

 one queen — a queen whose bees made a big 

 record in honey a j-ear ago. The virgins 

 of that same yard were reared from other 

 queens whose bees did equally well. I had 

 not thought of it before; but it strikes me 

 the plan comes pretty near being equal to 

 the " tent " plan of mating; for suppose we 

 had a mammoth tent in successful opera- 

 tion, we would turn those same drones loose 

 into that same tent. Perhaps the really 

 best man might weary himself to death to 

 get out, leaving his less active inferior 

 brother to perform the service. The ques- 

 tion hinges down to this : Would hand- 

 picked drones be better than nature-picked 

 drones? Nature works on the " survival of 

 the fittest," and that plan has been work- 

 ing for thousands of years. — Ed.] 



_ yrow Oi/r 



No more, with hissing shot and shell, 



Do we our claims arrange : 

 In London halls we talk it o'er 



And quickly make the change. 



No lives are lost, no honor marred, 



No great expense incurred ; 

 The reign of Peace is coming in — • 



Her heavenly voice is heard. 



My thanks are due to Hon. Eugene Se- 

 cor for a copj' of his home paper containing 

 a poem from his pen in eulogy of the press. 

 It is thoroughly good, and is especially in- 

 teresting to those of us whose lives are spent 

 in manipulating the said piece of machine- 

 r\'. It is pleasing to find an intensely busy 

 and practical man like Mr. Secor who can 

 at times devote himself to innocent rambles 

 in the world of fancy, and thus soften the 

 dull monotony of the eternal grind by span- 

 ning it with the poet's rainbow. 



It will be remembered bj' most of the 

 readers of this journal that Mr. Secor is 

 the poet-laureate of the bee-keeping host. 



BRITISH BEE JOURNAL. 

 Mr. L. S. Crawshaw, of Ilkley, Eng., 

 offers a few interesting remarks on the pro- 

 nunciation of the common word proplis. He 

 concludes, after offering much testimony, 

 that it should be called />ro-po lis and not 

 prop-o-\\%. He also decides that we should 

 speak of the Li-^^w-ri-an bee and not Lig-u- 

 r^^-an; of the Cyp-r'\'a.xi and not Cy-pri-an. 

 C/iitine, he thinks, should be called ki-tin, 

 not kit-'in. His conclusions are good. 



\tfr 



A writer asks if bees, prior to sealing 

 over their honey, deposit in their cells a 

 substance of a preservative nature, capable 

 of keeping the honey in a sound condition 

 for an almost unlimited period. The editor 

 says: 



It is perfectly certain that a salivary secretion is add- 

 ed by the bees to the nectar gathered from flowers, and 

 this secretion affects the chemical change in the piod- 

 uct which converts it into honey in the full sense of 

 the term. Indeed, nectar is not honey until this 

 change has been brought about by the action of the 

 bee. We rather think that the ".substance of a pre- 

 servative nature " of which you have heard is believed 

 by your informant to be foimic acid ; but this idea is 

 a myth, and has no foundation in fact : nor is it true 

 that any thing is added by the bee just before sealing 

 the cell, which preserves the honey for all time. In 

 fact, it is known that if honey is not well ripened — 

 that is, all superfluous moisture evaporated — it will 

 not keep for any great length of time. 



A fine view of the apiary of Mr. Thomas 

 Evans, Waddeson, England, appears in 

 the issue for Oct. 1st. The following lines 

 from his pen will be of interest, I think, 

 showing as they do that some people in 

 England can bite a raisin in two on the 

 score of economy as well as here: 



I follow the occupation of a gardener, but for the 

 last twelve vears I have tended the bees of the late 

 Baron F. de Rothschild. I am always ready to lend a 

 helping hand to my fellow bee-keepers ; and should 

 any of these pass my way I should be pleased to re- 

 ceive a call from them. In the 'driving' season I 

 scour the country around for miles, driving bees to 

 save them from the sulphur-pit, and bring them home 

 on mv bicycle. 



There aie no big takes of honey in this district, like 

 those I read of in other parts of the country. Perhaps 

 the locality is more suitable for the rearing of ducks 

 than for honey-raising. Nor is the demand for honey 

 very large in these parts. For instance, one of my 

 customers (a ladv who keeps her hunter) requested me 

 to supply her with " half a section of honey." As it is 

 not my cu.stom to sell split sections 1 hardly need say 

 this large order was politely refused. 

 ik 

 SOUTHLAND QUEEN. 



This journal comes regularly, and pre- 

 sents a fine appearance. It is well worthy 

 of the support now accorded it, and more 

 too. In the issue for September, Mr. J. E. 

 Chambers, in speaking about bees embalm- 

 ing dead mice, wades into the editor of 

 Gleanings roughly for doubting that they 

 do, and says he is glad he is not an editor 

 if editors know no more about the case in 

 point than that. He says he has found 

 dead rats in hollow trees, completely cover- 

 ed with propolis. Mr. Atchley adds that 

 he once found an opossom completely cover- 

 ed in the same way. The whole question, 

 however, hinged on what bees would do in 

 a common hive, and here E. R. R. freely 

 admitted he did not know, but was ready 

 for evidence. 



