692 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 



have bought queens of friend Heddon, and intro- 

 duced them to full colonips, and reared queens from 

 a tested queen obtained from him, and introduced 

 them to other full colonies. I have also obtained a 

 few queens of the Arkansas brown variety trm Geo. 

 B. Peters, and shall probably commence another 

 season with few, if any, pure Italians in my yard. I 

 had, perhaps, a dozen colonies of hybrids this season, 

 and the work that they did will certainly bear me 

 out In drawing the above conclusions. For fear 

 that some may think that my having hybrids in my 

 yard was not justice to queen-buying customers, I 

 will say that, by the use of fdn., the production of 

 drones was controlled. Another season, comb hon- 

 ey will be my specially ; and if any one wants queens 

 of the Heddon strains I can supply them. In tak- 

 ing this position in regard to the best bees, I expect 

 that friend Heddon and myself, and perhaps a few 

 hundred others, will stand alone; but If, by taking 

 this position, we get comb honey by the carload, I 

 think we can afford to " stand alone." 



VISIT FROM ERNEST R. ROOT. 



Two or three weeks ago 1 was sitting upon one end 

 of the work-bench writing, when a young man step- 

 ped in at the door and asked if this was "Mr. Hutch- 

 inson, ' W. Z.' " I replied, " Yes, sir." The stranger 

 said, " My name is Root;" and as I looked at him in- 

 quiringly he said, " Ernest." The pen was laid down 

 and his hand was grasped; and as he had had a 

 tramp of about 8 miles, not having come on the reg- 

 ular train, we sat down and chatted an hour or two, 

 and then went out and caged queens, and introduc- 

 ed virgin queens, and " talked." In the evening, 

 Ernest and my brother and myself held one of those 

 unconventional conventions, and we showed Ernest 

 the "lixings " that I was getting ready for the State 

 Fair. The next morning friend E. went on to the 

 north-west. He was swinging around quite a large 

 " circle," visiting bee-keepers. Friend Root, if I am 

 any judge, you have, in Ernest, a good son — one 

 who will be generally liked and respected. 



OFF FOR THE STATE FAIR. 



Yesterday morning, half a carload of bees, honey, 

 bee-keeping implements, etc., were started on their 

 way to our State Fair at Detroit, and to-morrow 

 morning I shall start. If I have time, and I will try 

 to, I will send you a short description of the bee- 

 keeping part of the Fair, in time for the Oct. No. 

 W. Z. Hutchinson. 



Rogersville, Gen. Co., Mich., Sept. 13, 1883. 



Friend H., tbe great reason why we pre- 

 fer metal corners is, that they make the 

 combs movable, and it seems to me a mova- 

 ble comb was really never movable until met- 

 al corners were put on them. You object to 

 their being so very movable, I know ; but 

 we want every comb in every hive so it can 

 be picked up with one hand, if need be, with- 

 out any jar or snapping, or without being 

 obliged to use the screw-driver, or lever of 

 any kind. Again, our metal - cornered 

 frames weigh, on an average, about 4 ounces, 

 whereas some of your old wooden frames 

 weigh pretty nearly a pound ; and even then 

 they are not so stiff and true as our wired 

 metal-cornered frames. It would seem al- 

 most like box hives to think of going back 

 to the old way. Whenever we want frames 

 fixed in their places, we do it by spacing- 

 boards. But I would by no means think of 

 having all my frames stick in their places, 



just because, when a hive is to be moved 

 about, we want the frames immovable. It 

 has been objected, that the metal frames cut 

 the fingers. We have never experienced 

 much if any trouble of that kind ; but per- 

 haps it is because we do not handle large 

 crops of honey. We are now considering a 

 plan for obviating this difficulty. — It seems 

 you have also decided to drop queen-rearing, 

 and, if I am correct, you rather take excep- 

 tion to pure Italians. I should think, old 

 friend, you had been visiting around lately. 

 May an old friend caution you about being 

 hasty, and taking up many new departures V 

 — Thank you for your kind words in regard 

 to Jirnest. — Judging from your report in 

 this number, it seems no one can any more 

 say that W. Z. Hutchinson, who occupies 

 the first place on the pages of Gleanings has 

 never yet raised a crop of honey. I am very 

 glad indeed you have succeeded so well, even 

 if you have seen fit to change your views on 

 several things. 



— ■■■ •■ 



THE CONVENTION IN TOKONTO. 



THIRTEENTH CONVENTION OF THE NORTH-AMERICAN 

 BKE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION. 



/(f^N Sept. 17th 

 mM in Canada. 



I started for the meeting 

 ^^ I went by the way of the 



^~~^ Nickel-Plate Railway, getting an ex- 

 cursion ticket from Cleveland to Toronto 

 and back for the small sum of $5.6U. The 

 regular fare would have been $17.00. It 

 is an excellent idea to have our conventions, 

 and especially our national conventions, held 

 at such a time and place that the bee-friends 

 of America can take advantage of these low 

 rates of travel. Our trip on the Nickel- Plate 

 was more pleasant on account of the pres- 

 ence of the gentlemanly manager, M r. Pate, 

 who attended us the whole way, made ar- 

 rangements for our hotel lodgings, took us 

 to the right boat, and made himself a gen- 

 eral father to the many who, like myself, 

 were comparatively unused to travel. The 

 Nickel- Place is a beautiful new road ; and 

 when I expressed my surprise to him that 

 our cars moved with so little noise, he ex- 

 plained to me that we were traveling on car- 

 wheels made of paper ! if they can make the 

 wheels for railway trains of paper, why can 

 we not have paper bee-hives V 1 presume we 

 might do so without any trouble; but the 

 chief obstacle in the way now is the expense 

 compared with our modern wooden hives. 

 When we arrived in Buffalo, our manager 

 took us to a very pleasant and comfortable 

 hotel. After supper I began to wonder 

 whether this hotel, too, had a bar somewhere 

 behind the scenes. In truth it did, and I re- 

 mained in the room much of the evening, just 

 to study human nature — especially human 

 nature as we find it in beer-saloons. I must 

 confess, friends, that when I went to bed at 

 9 o'clock I could not help a sort of feeling 

 that it would be in some respects a little hard 

 to close up such a place as this. The man 

 who stood behind the bar seemed full of the 

 milk of human kindness, and it was hard to 

 imagine that he would harm any one. His 

 customers seemed pleasant, well-to-do peo- 

 ple, about of the same class as I used to be 

 when I used to take a glass of beer of an even- 



