AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



607 



directed to the one object of the preser- 

 vation of their hive ; and, as to the 

 inspiration, no one can deny that an in- 

 terview with a bee that means business, 

 is decidedly and intensely inspiriting. 

 The interviewer is inspired with feelings 

 of — well, they need not be recounted 

 here, as everyone who has had the pleas- 

 ure (?) of an interview with the bee, can 

 supply the ellipsis to suit himself. 



As a mathematician, the bee can prove 

 Euclid mistaken, when he said, "There 

 is no royal road to learning," since it is a 

 geometrician par excellence, and reached 

 that state, too, without any of those 

 weary interviews in which the human 

 student questions the advisability and 

 accuracy of the Great Mathematician's 

 geometrical plans, but in which the 

 student invariably comes out second 

 best. 



Look, for example, at the mathematical 

 ingenuity exhibited by the bee in the 

 formation' of the cells in the comb of the 

 hive. They are hexagonal in form, the 

 shape which, as every mathematician 

 knows, will combine the greatest economy 

 of space and material, since the hexagon 

 being perfectly regular, there can, there- 

 fore, be no interstices between, and,- 

 consequently, every atom of space is 

 economized. 



Besides the hexagon, the bee con- 

 structs other mathematical figures of 

 various forms that are necessary to the 

 strength and continuance of the hive.. 

 And then, in respect of the construction 

 of these mathematical figures, the bee 

 is always ahead of the human student 

 again, for it never makes mistakes. All 

 its proceedings are founded on sure and 

 infallible principles, and you never find 

 a bee unwise enough to question those 

 principles. 



The bee furnishes a lively testimony 

 to the proverb " Familiarity breeds con- 

 tempt." With what supreme and whole- 

 some contempt for the insect are you 

 permeated after an interview, in which 

 the bee, to say the least of it, has been 

 decidedly familiar, and how feelingly 

 you remark to yourself that you will 

 keep it at a distance evermore. 



What a lesson is furnished to us, too, 

 in the provident industry of the bee. 

 Observe, will you, how instinct, which is 

 merely a blind impulse as far as the bee 

 is concerned, leads it to provide for a 

 possible future, to care for its young, to 

 provide, in fact, in every way for the 

 healthful continuance of the community; 

 while man, whose superiority over the 

 insect is asserted in the fact that he is 

 provided by the Creator with reason, the 

 noblest of all God's good gifts to man. 



will look upon to-day only as the day 

 before to-morrow, and defer being 

 prudent to old ago, looking forward to a 

 promise of wisdom as a patron of his 

 latter years, and who, when he arrives 

 at old age, finds that his years have far 

 outstripped his wisdom, and that he has 

 now neither the opportunity nor the 

 capability for the wisdom that might 

 have been his portion had proper pru- 

 dence been exercised in his earlier 

 years. 



In studying the habits and work of the 

 bee, we cannot help referring to the in- 

 stinct shown in their work to a higher 

 power, which makes the instinct sub- 

 serve the highest ends for which it was 

 created, and we must conclude also that 

 the Creator, in showing His perfect work 

 in the bee, has also shown His perfect 

 love to man. May we have, in a meas- 

 ure, the true philosophy displayed by 

 that wise insect. — California Fruit 

 Grower. 



Close Spacins, Early Drones, FoDl-Brooi, 



REV. W. P. FAYLOE. 



I wish to thank the many readers of 

 the Bee Journal who have written me 

 personal letters of thanks for my articles 

 against close spacing. Indeed, I did not 

 suppose there were so many bee-men on 

 my side of the question. 



My five-banded Italians are first on 

 the list to be sending out drones this 

 Spring. I never saw drones reared so 

 early before in this latitude. 



I am now satisfied that the queen, 

 worker-bee and drones all come f ronj the 

 same kind of an egg. Eepeated experi- 

 ments prove this to be a settled fact. 

 Drones of an inferior class or kind can 

 also be bred from unimpregnated eggs. 



I hope that the Illinois bill on foul- 

 brood may never become a law. Suppose 

 a Government officer comes to my apiary 

 and forces me to permit him to examine 

 a hundred hives, charging me $2 for 

 doing what I wished him not to do ; and 

 how about my neighbor across the way 

 with a half dozen box-hives ? Would it 

 not be a nice protection against such an 

 intruder ito have all our bees in box- 

 hives ? The facts are, that three-fourths 

 of the bees are in hives that cannot be 

 examined at all ; and shall we who use 

 the modern system bear all the intrusion? 



In the State of Illinois one thousand 

 colonies of bees die of starvation to one 

 of foul-brood, and half that number are 

 destroved by the moth to one by the so- 



