1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



935 



to tell the truth I have had but very little 

 faith that any of our queen-raisers could 

 furnish a queen that would be any very 

 great help in this line. Perhaps my lack 

 of faith was because I was not keeping 

 track of what was going on. Well, now, 

 here is friend Hawley's story. If I have 

 not got it straight I am sure he will kindly 

 straighten me out. He raised quite a nice 

 lot of queens from that non-swarming queen- 

 bee. I do not know just how many, but he 

 had an apiarj' of 60 hives from this special 

 queen. And now just hold your breath. 

 Not one of the bO hives sent out a swarm. 

 They just kept piling in the honey through 

 the whole season, from start to finish, and 

 averaged 400 pounds per colofiy of extracted 

 honej'. The rest of his hives, containing 

 queens from other sources, all swarmed 

 and kept swarming, and accomplished com- 

 paratively little in the way of honey-pro- 

 duction. When 1 told this story at the con- 

 vention, Mr. Mcliityre (or somebody else) 

 said one reason why the 60 did not send out 

 anj' swarms was because they all had 

 young queens. This great yield was two 

 j'ears ago. One year ago. and the present 

 3'ear, the crop was very poor in the San 

 Jose Valley. I do not know but some of 

 3-011 may think that friend Doolittle has 

 been hiring me to write up his breeding- 

 queens. I confess I always feel it a plea- 

 sure to write up Mr. Doolittle or anybody 

 else when I come across items like the 

 above, incidentally. But the great point in 

 Mr. Hawle3''s report is that it indicates the 

 possibility of getting a strain of non-swarm- 

 ing bees just like the non-sitting strains of 

 common fowls. 



Dr. Miller and I were both disappointed 

 in selecting beautiful-looking specimens of 

 fruit from fruit-stands in Los Angeles. Let 

 me say, by the way, that a beautiful stand 

 right across the street from our rooms in 

 the Hotel Gray was kept open night and 

 day. The whole stock in trade, or nearly 

 so, was out on the sidewalk; and perhaps 

 the}' found it would be about as cheap to 

 hire somebody to watch the fruit all night 

 as to undertake to carry it indoors. Well, 

 when I visited friend Hawley he asked me 

 to taste of peaches, plums, oranges, etc., of 

 his own growing, that were certainlj' equal 

 to an\' thing grown anywhere in the world, 

 so far as my experience goes. In fact, I 

 tasted so many of the luscious fruits I had 

 to go back to the beefsteak diet, and not 

 touch fruit of an^' sort for several days. 



I now want to say a word about Hotel 

 Gray, where friend Brodbeck saw fit to 

 domicil Dr. Miller and myself. Mrs. Gray 

 used to be a bee-keeper, and take Glean- 

 ings. Somebody said she made money 

 enough with bees to build a hotel. I asked 

 her if it was true, and she said it was at 

 least partly so. Well now, all the time 

 we were staying at Hotel Graj* we did not 

 smell tobacco smoke: we did not see any 

 evidences of tobacco spit, and nobody puffed 

 tobacco smoke in our f^ces while we were 

 on her premises. I asked her how she 



managed it. She said she did not exactly 

 know how it came about, unless people took 

 it for granted that a hotel managed by a 

 woman ought to be clean and tidy and 

 sweet-smelling. She furnishes rooms only 

 — not meals. We had a very pretty spa- 

 cious apartment, with windows and doors 

 opening outon the street, covered with screens 

 to keep out mosquitoes, with bath-room and 

 closet especially for that apartment and no 

 other, at $1.50 per day. The room was nice 

 enough and large enough to hold bee-keep- 

 ers enough for quite a little convention. 

 Yes, and that big bottle of distilled water 

 that Dr. Miller told you about was kept re- 

 plenished in the bargain. Now, some of 

 you may think 75 cents per day is a pretty 

 good price for a room without meals. But 

 please remember this is right in the heart 

 of the citj', with four large windows to the 

 room, fronting the street, only two flights 

 of stairs up. 



WHAT DOES IT COST PER MILE TO RUN AN 

 AUTOMOBILE? 



Perhaps we might in the same line ask 

 the question, " What does it cost a mile to 

 travel with a horse and buggy?" In hiring 

 liveries in difi'erent parts of the United 

 States I have found they generally want 

 about $1.50 for hitching up. In a good many 

 places they will not hitch up for less than 

 that. Charges in Florida, California, Michi- 

 gan, and Ohio are not very much different. 

 For $1.50 they will drive you ten miles. 

 If you want to go more than that, the ex- 

 pense, with average fair roads, is about 10 

 cts. a mile. Of course, a man has to go 

 along witli you to bring the horse and bug- 

 gy back. If you bring the rig back your- 

 self they generally make you a little better 

 price. This is not very accurate, it is true, 

 but it is a sort of estimate. Liverymen 

 consider it worth about 10 cts. a mile, and 

 for this price you should get a respectable- 

 looking rig, with a top on to keep out the 

 rain, and a robe if it is cold weather. As 

 a liveryman has to make a profit, it proba- 

 bly costs less where you have a horse and 

 buggy of your own. If you use the rig once 

 a week, or less often, it may cost you even 

 more than the above. Of course, the buggy 

 will wear out, and so will the horse; and 

 j'ou have not only got to feed him but you 

 must have a tolerably good-sized barn to 

 hold the hay and grain. 



Now, I am not going to make a defense of 

 the automobile — that is, I am not going to 

 talk as if I had one for sale, for I am not at 

 all interested in the sale of any of them. I 

 clip the following from a recent number of 

 the Cleveland Ltader: 



Columbus. O., Oct. 8. — William Huston, who recent- 

 ly made an 8000-niile trip through the East in his au- 

 tom'bile, to-day figured out the cost of keeping his 

 machine in repair during such steady and hard service. 

 He finds that the mere co>-t of operating his automo- 

 bile was ten cents a mile, divided as follows: tire 

 m .intenance, five cents a mile; ga.'oline, two cents a 

 mile; general repairs, three cents a mile. 



