THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



75 



take Von Planta's analysis with thankfulness 

 and respect — take it as one of the things 

 which we need to know. But we shall be 

 very great fools if we take it as a finalty, 

 beyond which no one must inquire, and 

 which must be allowed to brush off the 

 track all work not done with lenses or chem- 

 ical re-agents. Perhaps I had better paddle 

 back far enough to admit that Von Planta's 

 analysis does seem to decide one matter of 

 importance, namely, that royal jelly is not 

 identical with the first food given to the 

 worker larv;e. This is counter to a very gen- 

 eral impression among wise heads. The dif- 

 ference is mainly in the fatty ingredients, in 

 which the royal jelly exceeds the worker food 

 by more than one-half. And that the Alad- 

 din-like transformer we are in search of may 

 be a fatty acid, is among the imaginable 

 things. 



The apiculturist. 



The Apiculturist is especially interesting 

 of late on account of its attempt to evolve a 

 new sort of journal and editing — a style in 

 which the editor is always "at bat" — not 

 indeed furnishing all the matter, but using 

 the matter other than his own rather as a 

 set of texts to preach from. Early volumes 

 of Gleanings made a success of the everlast- 

 ing foot-note, but Alley is varying the pro- 

 ceedings by putting the notes into still more 

 prominence and abolishing the articles, as 

 it were. Of late his turn of thought is to 

 pour considerable contempt upon nearly all 

 the current topics of apiculture .as worn out 

 and exhausted — crying very loudly for some- 

 thing different, but not indicating very 

 clearly where it is going to come from. When 

 we are out on the lake canoeing we don't 

 want to sink the old canoe till we have the 

 new one ready to step into. And if that 

 bomb which he calls for is actually to be 

 dropped into camp we all want to remove 

 our own little traps and i)ersonalities first. 



On the question of the silence or low mur- 

 mur of bees in the winter cellar Mr. Alley is 

 a murmurer. See page 7. 



Perhaps the most important thing in re- 

 cent pages is the account of the origin of 

 the golden Carniolans. It rather puts mat- 

 ters before us in such a way that each man 

 can form for himself his own opinion wheth- 

 er they are strictly Carniolans or a cross be- 

 tween Carniolan and Italian. Presuma'^ly 

 most brethren will take tlie former ground 

 who accept Mr. Alley's dictum as given be- 

 low — 



"Half a mile is suiEcient to isolate two races 

 of bees in order to maiutain pure fertilization. 

 That is our claim " Page 5. 



" There was but one colony of Italian bees 

 where drones were allowed to fly, and they a mile 

 and a half away." Page 6. 



Now I presume that most of the fraternity 

 will agree that queens do not usually mate 

 with a drone that lodged the 2)revious night 

 as far away as a mile and a half ; yet for all 

 that some of us are pretty stubbed in the be- 

 lief that nothing less than twenty miles is 

 secure distance, unless a body of water or an 

 utterly barren desert intervenes to prevent 

 the daily visiting and roving of drones from 

 hive to hive. That raising a multitude of 

 drones of one strain, and trying to repress 

 another strain, seems to result in a mating 

 of queens just the opposite of that desired, I 

 can testify from experience. Yet opinion is 

 opinion ; and we must let our brother have 

 his opinion — and here it is — 



" We do stoutly deny that there is any mixture 

 of Italian blood in our golden Carniolan bees, 

 except what came direcit from Carniola." 



The fact that there were 3,000 Carniolan 

 drones in the yard, and no Italians to his 

 knoivledge ; and the further fact that every 

 queeti fertilized in the yard varied from the 

 original type and showed some yellow in the 

 worker progeny, convinced Mr. Alley that 

 the putting on of golden stripes was a natur- 

 al development, and not the effect of cross- 

 inir. But probably some of the brethren will 

 take the liberty to think that the matter in 

 evidence is not convincing — except to con- 

 vince one of the opposite belief. 



The General round Up 



That molded foundation should crumble 

 when cold much more than rolled foundation 

 is just what we ought to expect. Wax cools 

 in rudimentary crystals, and rolling spreads 

 them out into plates — precisely the same 

 thing which takes place when iron is put 

 through the rolling mill. But as bees evi- 

 dently object to having their wax a-la-sheet- 

 iron we naust keep our foundation out of the 

 frost, or some way. See Oliver Foster, Re- 

 view, 43. 



High scientific authority has tried to sug- 

 gest a doubt whether foul brood is ever com- 

 municated by honey. Against this skepti- 

 cism practical men have all along stood firm 

 as a wall. Yet experimenter Taylor does 

 well to give us such knock-down evidence as 

 he does in Review, 34. One per cent, of 

 contaminated honey in their feed caused the 

 disease to break out in 29 colonies out of 30, 



