1883 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



539 



men and bee-women. By all means, let us 

 hold to the command, to ''Remember the 

 Sabbath-day, to keep it holy." I confess I 

 feel troubled about arguing on a matter so 

 important and so sacred ; and before I at- 

 tempt to answer, 1 pray that the kind Savior 

 may guard me from saying any thing that 

 might have the appearance of argument or 

 controversy. You will remember, dear 

 friend, that our Savior vehemently reprov- 

 ed the Pharisaical class that seemed to hold 

 to the letter of this law, without having the 

 spirit. You will remember, too, that they 

 with awful presumption presumed to dic- 

 tate to Jesus what he should do on the Sab- 

 bath-day, and what he should not do. They 

 found fault with him because he healed the 

 sick, and did good, as if their foolish inter- 

 l)retation of the law were higher authority 

 than the word of the Lord and Savior him- 

 s.elf ! They fflso found fault with his disci- 

 ples because they plucked grain on the Sab- 

 bath-day ; and you remember what he told 

 them. I presume you know, too, that there 

 are very diilicult points to decide in this very 

 matter. For instance : Y'our position 

 might be carried to such an extreme that 

 cows should not be milked on the Sabbath- 

 day. Of course, every one admits that farm 

 stock must be fed, and animals should not 

 be allowed to suffer. Well, if this is so, who 

 shall draw the dividing line, and say what 

 labor is necessary, and what is not? It 

 seems to me, as I said, that it is proper to 

 hive a swarm of bees hanging on a limb, 

 even though it be on the Sabbath ; yet it 

 seems to me I should hardly want to remain 

 away from church, or ask anybody in my 

 employ, for the sake of, saving the bees that 

 might come out. I do not believe in running 

 factories or railroads on the Sabbath. In 

 regard to harvesting grain, although I should 

 hardly want to dictate to others what their 

 duty is, it seems to me I should never feel 

 right to be found in the harvest-field on the 

 Sabbath-day. A very good friend of mine, 

 and the one who first led me to the Savior, 

 in fact, had a very wise way of answering 

 such questions, as it seemed to me ; and this 

 answer was, to tell every inquirer to do that 

 which he thought would give the most honor 

 and glory to his Savior. 



My natural disposition is restless, and I 

 want to be busy at something. I used to 

 think, that, if I became a Christian, I must 

 sit down and read all day Sunday, or listen 

 to sermons. Now, I can not tell you how it 

 rejoiced my heart when I found, or at least 

 thought I had, that God did not call on me 

 to do any thing of the sort. I am as busy on 

 Sunday as any dayintheweek.and^surely as 

 profitably employed. If one were to ask me, 

 amid all my busy duties what ones I enjoy 

 most, and m what way I feel God's approv- 

 ing voice most, I should say, with the in- 

 mates of our county jail. I often work very 

 hard with them, for most of my.talk is plead- 

 ing and teaching. I suppose many might 

 think that some of my talk with these friends 

 was hardly the proper thing for the holy 

 Sabbath ; but for all that, I feel sure' that in 

 it I am doing the very work that God has 

 especially called me to. If the heart is full 

 ,of love to Christ, and a devotion to the cause 



of humanity, which always springs out of 

 this love, how can one go very far astray V 

 and if such is the case, should we not be very 

 careful about deciding what course our 

 neighbor ought to follow V If you think it 

 wrojig to hive bees on Sunday, I would say, 

 by all means let them go ; for no great harm 

 can come to the bees, or to anybody that I 

 know of, by so doing. But if I had a good 

 neighbor whom I had every reason to think 

 was following the text, '' thou shalt love the 

 Lord thy God," etc., and he at the same 

 time thought it right to hive his bees on 

 Sunday, or perhaps to even stay away from 

 church to look after them, I should hate to 

 find fault with him for so doing. In regard 

 to the latter part, I might suggest to him 

 my views. 



1)0 you remember, my dear friend, which 

 one of the virtues it was that Paul says is 

 greater than all the rest V — " But the great- 

 est of these is charity." Now, then, shall 

 we not unite, by precept and example, to do 

 all we can to induce mankind to ''remember 

 the Sabbath-day to keep it holy " V 



BEES AND HONEV IN THE BLUE RIDGE 

 COUNTRY. 



ADVANTAGE OF LARGE WINTER ENTRANCES, ETC. 



^ AST winter was numbered as one of the sever- 

 Jjy]| est here as elsewhere; but there was not a 



week when the bees were not out flying one 



or more days; and, judg'ing from appearances, I 

 don't think a table-spoonful of bees to the hive per- 

 ished. At intervals through the winter, when the 

 sun was bright, and bees out, I would examine the 

 guilts, and those I found damp I removed — all but 

 the under one— dried and warmed them at the stove, 

 and covered the colonies again with the dry warmed 

 cloths. The colonies with the widest entrance kept 

 their covering driest, while one with a four-nick V- 

 shaped entrance cut in tbe bottom-board was invari- 

 ably very damp when examined, and had to be 

 dried frequently. The colony I purchased late in 

 the fall with but live or six frames, some of them 

 only partially built out, leaving a wide vacant space 

 at the back end of those frames, came through 

 bi-ight and lively. 



The first day of March was a warm bright day, and 

 the bees were carrying in natui-al pollen, which they 

 found somewhere in the mountain glens. One warm 

 day in early spring, when the bees were sporting in 

 front of their hives, I noticed the Italians in the L. 

 hive were showing no »igns of life. I knew at once 

 something was wrong, and opened the hive. There 

 they sat, still and quiet on the combs, with scarcely 

 a bee moving. Every drop of honey had been oon- 

 sumed, and the colony had huddled together with 

 the calm of despair settled over them. With no 

 honey in the combs, and no nectar In the fields, the 

 little folk felt that death stared them in the face. I 

 was not long in placing a shallow pan with warm 

 syrup in the bottom of the hive, and the next day 

 they were out as lively as any in the yard. 



I had 500 lbs. of honey from 5 colonies, which as- 

 tonished the natives, and they want me to get them 

 "some of them Italian Aiiia-beeR." 



My season's experieace In the " land of the sky " 

 as a bee country, will make another and more inter- 

 esting paper. E- E. Ewing, 



Highlands, N. C, 



