AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



551 



Stray Stra-ws from Gleanings for 

 Oct. 15, are as follows, from the pen of 

 Dr. C. C. Miller, and they are very 

 interesting, too: 



Shake hands with me at Albany. 



Sunday seems to be the favorite day 

 for bee-conventions among the Germans. 



Good honey should be a little more 

 than a third heavier than water. 



A remedy for stings, given in Leipziger 

 Bienenzeitung, is to cut an onion in two 

 and apply the cut surface to the part 

 stung. 



Bees fly 60 to 100 miles an hour 

 under favorable circumstances, D. A. 

 Jones thinks. M. Teynac, when using 

 bees as carriers, found a loaded bee to 

 make '6 miles in 15 or 20 minutes. 



A melilot stalk, that I found growing 

 in a clay bank on the roadside, meas- 

 ured 10 feet 4: inches in height. I can 

 easily believe that a few years' grow^th 

 of such plants in clay land would make 

 it quite fertile. 



Record-books have one advantage that 

 is not to be despised. They are safe 

 against the meddling of other people, 

 animals, or winds. One year I had 

 manilla tags on all my hives. Some 

 person or thing, I never knew what, tore 

 off nearly every one. If my only records 

 had been on them, it would have left me 

 in bad shape. 



Robbing bees can be stopped, even 

 when thoroughly under way, by wet 

 straw or hay at the entrance. Pile it a 

 foot thick all about the entrance, and 

 thcQ pour on water until everything is 

 flooded. I have tried it a number of 

 years, and this year saved a queenless 

 colony thus, when robbers were at it 

 wholesale. The robbers did not attack 

 it afterward. 



Bees as Dispatch Carriers. — A French- 

 man, M. Teynac, has been experiment- 

 ing, and seriously considers the advisa- 

 bility of substituting bees for carrier 

 pigeons in carrying messages. A tiny 

 piece of paper is pasted on the back of 

 the bee, with a cipher number on it, 

 and, when the bee returns to its hive, 

 it can enter only through round perfora- 

 tions which will not let its paper 

 through, so that the message is easily 

 found. 



Swarming was considered a desirable 

 thing 50 years ago. Every year the 

 desire for non-swarming bees increases. 

 If all who are anxious for non-swarmers 

 would breed only from those colonies 

 which swarm least, it ^seems reasonable 



to suppose that some one oT the number, 

 in the course of a few years, would 

 strike a strain that would be valuable 

 in this respect. Because many have" 

 failed is no reason that some one else 

 may not succeed. It is worth much 

 trying. 



The Punic queen that I succeeded in 

 getting to lay seemed to be doing a good 

 business, but suddenly disappeared, I do 

 not know why, and the bees have raised 

 a successor from her brood. The curious 

 part of it is, that, of the progeny. of the 

 Punic queen (she was fertilized in my 

 apiary), not one in 500 shows any black 

 blood. A careless observer might readily 

 take them for pure Italians. I still 

 think it was a big thing. to get a virgin 

 queen from England, and get her to 

 laying. 



Metltegflin. — Here is a recipe for 

 making this delicious beverage, given in 

 the British Bee Journal for last month : 



Save all scraps from the extractor, 

 and spare pieces. At the end of the 

 season collect all broken combs which 

 are clean and free from mould. Put 

 them into a copper with sulficient water 

 to cover them, boil until the combs are 

 dissolved. Get a large shallow pan and 

 strainer with a cloth in, bail out into the 

 cloth, and wring the liquor well out from 

 the cloth, and empty the wax back into 

 the copper; repeat this until all is used 

 from the copper. Let this stand all 

 night ; when cold take off the wax. 

 Now put all the liquor back into the 

 copper again, and boil for one hour. 

 Add some ginger and a little nutmeg, 

 according to the quantity of liquor made. 

 Put in about half or three-quarters of a 

 pint of " yeast ;" stir up well ; when cold 

 put in small cask or stone bottles. Save 

 sufficient liquor to fill up the cask, as it 

 wastes in fermenting. When fermenta- 

 tion is over, bung up ; it will then keep 

 for years. 



'Wlien 'Writing a letter be sure 

 to sign it. Too often we get letters 

 with the name of the post-office, but no 

 County or State. One such came 

 recently, and we looked into the Postal 

 Guide and found there were places by 

 that name in 13 States. That order for 

 goods will have to wait until another 

 letter comes to give the proper address. 

 Be sure to stamp your letter, or it may 

 go to the dead letter office. 



