504 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Aug. 8, 



another theory for my bees, for some of them are making 

 preparations for swarming (June 14) when they are almost 

 on the verge of starvation, not a pound of honey in the hive, 

 and no prospect of any immediate improvement. 



If bees swarm to save the queens, suppose you try this : 

 Introduce two or more queens by means of excluders, then re- 

 move the excluders and see if they'll swarm to save the queens. 

 I don't know, I don't know. Marengo, 111. 



^ 



An Experience with Kingbirds. 



BY .J. A. NASH. 



Perhaps I am only writing something that has been dis- 

 cussed over and over again, when I allude to his royal high- 

 ness, the Kingbird — Tyrannus inlrepidus ; but as I most 

 heartily despise this feathered rascal, if Bro. York will give 

 me the space in which to do so, I will abuse him to my heart's 

 content. 



To start fair, I wish to say that I love all of God's crea- 

 tures that are friends of man, and useful to him, but I have 

 little use for birds or beasts of prey. Now I presume the rea- 

 son this little bird received its high-sounding name was be- 

 cause some one saw it driving a hawk away from its nest — 

 they of ten do this ; so does the blackbird, and several other 

 small birds. 



Years ago the kingbirds held full sway in my apiary, 

 along with the wrens, robins, bluebirds and others of the deni- 

 zens of the wood, that will be so friendly with us if we will 

 only let them, and they (the kingbirds) devoured my bees ac- 

 cording to the dictates of their hardened little hearts. I snip- 

 ped the heads off of several with a rifle, but found nothing to 

 convince me that they eat bees, except a few drones. I felt 

 guilty, and looked up and down the road to make sure uo one 

 had seen me killing the pretty creatures, buried the bodies of 

 the slain, and for years after I was a staunch friend of 

 Thjrannus. 



Now the above is a fair sample of the way some of us con- 

 duct our experiments. 



Three or four years ago I was nailing hives near the api- 

 ary, and noticed a kingbird swooping through the cloud of 

 bees that came dropping down at the fronts of the hives near 

 by, heavily laden with the first honey of spring. My eyesight 

 was good, and I was satisfied that the bird was catching bees, 

 and the only bees to catch that early in the spring were work- 

 ers. You see the result of the experiment years ago satisfied 

 me that drones were the game which he was hunting, but this 

 time there was no mistake, sure. Again the rifle came into 

 service, and again a feathered " king " lost his crown. What 

 was my amazement to find the crop of this bird entirely 

 empty! Now I toieu) the little pirate had been robbing the 

 " merchant vessels " of the apiary, but where was his plunder ? 

 I thought of Josh Billings' saying, that " Eney fule kood steel, 

 but it took a wise chap to hide." 



Soon another kingbird perched on a convenient branch of 

 a cherry-tree, and again the swooping tactics were exhibited — 

 a rush and a return to his perch. This was kept up a long 

 time, and I was about to fire at him when he ruffled his feath- 

 ers, shook himself a little, and ejected a mass of something 

 from his mouth, which landed on the flat roof of a hive be- 

 neath. Then I fired and picked him up ; a knife slit showed 

 the crop practically empty, while on the hive-cover was a mass 

 of crushed worker-bees much larger than I should have 

 thought so small a bird could have held. 



Well, the mystery was solved ; I had never fired at the 

 right time before, it seems, and had only secured birds that 

 were catching the honey-laden drones as they were leaving 

 the hive for an outing, or else had killed them after they had 

 disgorged their prey. Since that time I have found them with 

 their crops filled with dead bees, and have several times used 



them as moving targets as they caught bees on the clover 

 bloom. I keep a gun handy to my work, and often kill a half 

 dozen in one forenoon, as they are very plentiful here. 



From a clipping in a recent paper, I learn that the De- 

 partment of Agriculture is preparing Bulletins on several 

 varieties of birds, including the kingbird, stating in the case 

 of this latter one that they do not catch bees, as many bee- 

 keepers suppose. I fear their experiments were (like my first 

 one) conducted on a wrong basis. Monroe, Iowa. 



CONDUCTED BV 



I{e\'. Emerson T. Abhott, St. Josepb, Afo. 



Mr, Clias. E. Parks— A TriMte to His Memory. 



" A ruddy drop of manly blood 

 The surging sea outweighs; 

 The world uncertain comes and goes, 

 The lover rooted stays." — Emersun. 



The late Charles E. Parks was born in Morreau, Saratoga 

 county, N. Y., September 12, 1846. He had the advantage 

 of an early education, as he attended Glens Falls Academy, 

 and later the Fort Edward Collegiate Institute. His after life 

 showed that the time spent in school was not wasted. He 

 seems to have selected the profession of civil engineering, but 

 for some reason he gave it up and went back into the school- 

 room — not as a student, but as a teacher. He taught in his na- 

 tive State for a short time, but at the age of 26 he, like many 

 another pushing young man, came west, looking for larger and 

 better opportunities. For a time he continued to find them in 

 the school-room, as his settlement was in Garnett, Kans.; then, 

 making another move, went further west, accepting the posi- 

 tion of Superintendent of Public Schools at Golden, Col., and 

 subsequently held the same position in Denver. After teach- 

 ing for a number of years, he returned to his native State, 

 possibly drawn there by the memories of some of his early 

 associations. 



Mr. Parks' experience as a teacher made an impression on 

 him which remained with him all his life. It gave him a poise 

 of character and an ability to govern and control men which 

 was of great value to him in his future undertakings. He 

 surely did not leave the school-room because his teaching was 

 a failure, for anyone who knows the necessary qualifications of 

 a successful leacher would have picked him out as peculiarly 

 suited to that work. He had progressive ideas in teaching. An 

 education with him did not consist in cramming facts into the 

 minds of children as a mother pigeon puts food down the 

 throats of her young. His idea of educating a child was to 

 teach it to think, and he left the mark of this idea wherever 

 he went. It may be readily seen in the lives of the three love- 

 ly children he left behind. 



Returning to the West in 1877, Mr. Parks married Miss 

 Lilla, daughter of G. B. Lewis, of Watertown, Wis. At the 

 time of his marriage he was engaged in the milling business 

 at Westport, Mo., but remained there only a short time, when' 

 he moved to Watertown, to enter into a partnership with Mr. 

 Lewis, his father-in-law, in the manufacture of sash, doors and 

 blinds. 



He had now passed the critical point in the history of his 

 life; for it matters not how much experience and education a 

 man may have, his future cannot be fully predicted until he 

 has selected and married a wife. A mistake here may over- 

 throw all that has made for success in the past, just as a good 

 selection sometimes will correct many a blunder, and be the 

 means of starting a very unsuccessful man on the road to pros- 

 perity. I presume I may be permitted lo say, as a friend who 

 has enjoyed the hospitality of his home, that Mr. Parks made 

 no mistake when he selected Miss Lewis for his wife. She has 

 proven to be a faithful wife and an ideal mother. It must 

 have been something of a consolation to him, when he found 

 that he must leave his children, that he left them in the care 

 of a mother who is especially equipped for the increased obli- 

 gations which now rests upon her. 



In ISSl Mr. Parks engaged extensively in the lumber 

 business at various places in the northern part of Wisconsin, 

 and seems to have been quite successful; but, if he had not 

 been, his efforts in that direction would not have been in vain; 

 for he was now gathering information which was of great 



