fso 



GLEAKINGS IK BEE CULTUHE. 



t>BC. 



friend, winking hard with his left eye, " if that don't 

 beat all creation ! What won't they git up next?" 



"But the freezing of cream," I continued, "is but 

 one of the uses of this instrument. It is primarily 

 and chiefly a churn; one of the best, if not the very 

 best, that is made. It is rather large for a family 

 freezer, but as a churn it is just the thing; and then 

 it is always on hand for parties, weddings, fairs, and 

 such gatherings." 



"Well, I vum, mister, if that don't take the cake 

 of all the things I've seen at the fair, you may shoot 

 me." And with a wink so hard and tight that I veri- 

 ly feared that his left eye would be obliterated, he 

 walked away. 



It was not long, however, before he returned; and 

 upon his arm hung a country maiden, whom I set 

 down at once for his sweet-heart. He expounded to 

 Amandy Jane — I think that is what he called her — 

 the uses of this wonderful combination, with an ac- 

 curacy and fluency of language which showed that 

 he had learned well the lesson which I gave him. 



I was busy with a local editor at the time; but my 

 rural friend claimed the chief part of my attention. 

 His earnest manner, and the fact that I caught him 

 several times winking altogether out of time, con- 

 vinced me at last that he was not the .iokcr I sup- 

 posed him to be. 



My first impulse was to apologize, and correct his 

 erroneous ideas of my extractor. But on second 

 thought I concluded not to do so. I felt a tender re- 

 gard for his feelings. I preferred to have my ex- 

 tractor go forth to the world as an ice- cream freezer, 

 a churn, or even a sausage-stufifer, rather than be- 

 iittla my earnest friend in the eyes of his Amnndy 

 Jane. 



The scientific bee-keeper presiding over an exhibit 

 at a county fair enjoys rare facilities for studying 

 human natui-e. From his loftj' elevation he looks 

 serenely down upon the common throng, and meas- 

 ures each individual in inches on his yard stick. As 

 the philosopher or the statesman contemplates in 

 august dignity the wrangling of lesser minds over 

 questions which his acute and profound mind has 

 dissected and analyzed, till what is right and wrong 

 in them has been relegated to the store house of 

 axiomatic truths, so the scientific bee-keeper, with 

 that self-complacency which superior knowledge im- 

 parts, holds up in his dissecting forceps the box-hive 

 bee-keeper who turns up his nose at " pattenfixios;" 

 the old woman whose father kept tees, and who 

 knows all about them; the prig who has read an ar- 

 ticle in the enc5clopedia on bees, and who would try 

 to persuade you that he knows as much about scien- 

 tific bee culture as you do j^ourself, and the enthusi- 

 astic novice of three hives and one season, who cor- 

 roborates all that you aflirm, and helps you enter- 

 tain the bystanders. 



In phrenologic parlance, the first-mentioned indi- 

 vidual is possessed of large bumps of firmness and 

 veneration, while the bumps which give liberal and 

 progressive views are deficient. He reverences 'iie 

 box-hive, because he has kept bees in it all his life, 

 and his father before him, while he as stubbornly 

 resists any new notions as if it were sacrilege to en- 

 tertain them. He estimates his success in bee cul- 

 ture by the number of swarms. In seasons when he 

 doubled or trebled his skeps, he had good luck, and 

 In severe winters, when they nearly all died, he had 

 bad luck; but you can't get him to estimate his 

 "luck" on a substantial basis of dollars and cents. 

 He will tell you of the great pans of honey that were 



always about the house, and he will expect you to 

 open j'our eyes in astonishment when, to give you 

 an idea of the stupendous magnitude of his bee- 

 keeping, he tells you that he once got up to as many 

 as 107 skeps. 



The old lady is enough like the box-hive bee-keep- 

 er to be an elder sister. She is loquacious, self-pos- 

 sessed, and positively refuses to give you the satis- 

 faction of feeling that you are giving her any new 

 ideas. She never kept bees herself, but her father 

 was a noted bee-keeper in his day, and she knows all 

 about them. Here she will recount the wonderful 

 exploits of her father with bees; how he would pick 

 out the king from the swarm, and then the rest of 

 the bees would follow him wherever he went. "The 

 king, you know, is the leader," she adds, in an ex- 

 planatory way; "and if you only get hold of him, 

 you can do what you like with the rest of the 

 swarm." 



I mildly suggest that she probably refers to the 

 queen when she speaks of the king, and venture to 

 enl'ghten her on the pec\iliar function of each of 

 the three kinds of Lees which make up the swarm. 

 But she refuses to be enlightened. The king is ev- 

 idently her favorite bee, and she stands by him most 

 faithfully. 



Then 1 go into the subject more minutely; tell her 

 all about the queen's cgg-Iaying, how the bees pro- 

 ceed when they wish to raise a new queen, how the 

 breed of bees can be chuneed by simply introducing 

 a new queen, etc , till I feel certain that I have de- 

 throned the king, and reinstated the queen. But 

 when the old lady again gets the floor, and she says 

 king eleven times in the next minute and a half, it 

 begins to filter through my cranium that she is do- 

 ing it just out of spite. 



There is another class of people, who appear to 

 take in all that you saj', with a greedy car. You 

 seem to carry them right along withyou. Theirfre 

 quent exclamations of wonder and admiration are 

 exceedingly stimulating to your descriptive powers, 

 and you feel the liveliest satisfaction in being able 

 to instruct them on a subject in which they are so 

 highly interested. But suddenlyin the midst of your 

 exaltation, out pnps an unfortunate question which 

 proves that they have not taken in the very funda- 

 mental idea of your discourse. 



Here is a case in illustration: A young lawyer and 

 his pretty wife stood before my observatory-hive, 

 watching with lively interest the bees running over 

 the comb. A single question from them wound mo 

 up and set me going. I showed them sealed and 

 unsealed brood. Explained to them the different 

 stages through which the bee passed from the time 

 the egg was laid till it came forth a perfect bee. 

 Having gone over the same ground hundreds of 

 times before, and having a frame of brood in all 

 stages before me to illustrate my subject, it would 

 certainly seem that I ought to have made myself 

 perfectly clear and intelligible, especially to the 

 comprehension of a lawyer. And as if to make the 

 picture complete, just as I was finishing my descrip- 

 tion, I observed a bee gnawing the capping of the 

 cell which imprisoned it. 



" There, " said I, " you see a bee just gnawing his 

 way out. Watch and see how he cuts the cap, and 

 crawls out to the duties of existence." 



" Well, well!" exclaimed my delighted friend of 

 the law, "isn't that wonderful ! exceedingly wonder- 

 ful! Isn't this whole subject exceedingly interest- 

 ing, Maria? 



