506 



"THB MB€EKICMI«I mMM J©^KffMEf. 



>«^*^*< 



Down in the clingy cellar of Mrs. 

 Green, Eli Whitney toiled nearly all 

 winter, tinkering away on his inven- 

 tion, until he finally machinated the 

 cotton-gin. It has been said, that to 

 get one pound of clean cotton, without 

 wasting any, used to require a whole 

 day's labor ; but Whitney's cotton-gin, 

 instead of taking a handful at a time, 

 could take bushels, and do more work 

 in one day, and neater at that, than 10 

 men could do in 20 days. Hence it 

 has been well said, " The Southern 

 seaports were heaped high with cot- 

 ton," which, but for him, would never 

 have been grown. And so with re- 

 spect to apiculture, we can saj- that 

 the invention whereby the manipula- 

 tion of hives instead of frames can be 

 had, will render the saying, 



"Full many a flower is bom to blush unseen, 

 AnU waste its sweetness on tlie desert air." 



untrue to a great degree, albeit it is a 

 poetic jewel. 



Invention oftlie Movable-Franie Rive. 



The firm beginning of this vast 

 transformation was made by one 

 stroke, and that was the invention of 

 the movable-frame hive, which, with 

 its paraphernalia following soon after, 

 put bee-keeping upon stanch feet, so 

 that it could become a pui'suit capable 

 of giving a person a livelihood, and 

 followed as a money-making occupa- 

 tion, thereby catering employment to 

 thousands of people over our grand 

 and glorious globe. 



Yet, within the shadows cast from 

 the burning and light-giving lamp of 

 bee-lore, prevails the oozy, green- 

 scummed, stagnated fogj'ism, accom- 

 panied with sophisticated stories anent 

 bees, emanating from the fertile brains 

 of reporters (fabricators of cock-and- 

 bull stories), who, in their mind's eye, 

 see honey-comli fabricated from paraf- 

 fine, filled with honey obtained from 

 the parings of rotten apples, and cap- 

 ped over with a red-hot poker, Jiift as 

 the bees (\o it ; a.vn\ yet they say these 

 things in the face of great rewards, 

 offered to any one who will find the 

 place — but, alas ! it seems that it never 

 can be found. 



Persistence of Fogy Bee-Keepers. 



The old fogy still persists in keeping 

 bees in box-hives (maintaining that in 

 the manpulation of frame-hives many 

 bees are killed), who, if his cerebellum 

 had any power at all toward taking all 

 sides into consideration, would find 

 his idea ridiculous nonsense, when 

 compared with the thousands of bees 

 lost annually by box-hive bee-keepers 

 ; during the interval of the swarming 

 season. Moreover, he cannot remedy 

 the histis nutunice among his bees, con- 

 trol the queen, clean out moth-worms, 

 and so forth ; and yet they still use 



box-hives (fit breeders for the con- 

 founded bee-moth), following in the 

 path trodden by their great, great 

 grandaddies, who, if they went to the 

 mill with the grain in one end of the 

 sack, and a huge stone in the other, to 

 balance it over their shoulders, still 

 seem to believe in following out by not 

 becoming cognizant of the great and 

 useful modern inventions in our pursuit. 



Fogyism is a ban to bee-keeping, 

 because many uninitiated, when they 

 embark in that pursuit, through it are 

 caught up into the fiexible web of ig- 

 norance, and failing to see their mis- 

 take, continue in it. It is the coadju- 

 tor of fertile-brained reporters — the 

 bunko-steers of apiculture. Thej' feed 

 their taffy (made-up lies) to the open- 

 mouthed ignoramuses, who stand like 

 gawkies and "take it all in," as corn- 

 cracker farmers are bamboozled in the 

 city of Cincinnati. The consequence 

 is, the rumor — that comb honey (the 

 partitions between ' the cells being 1- 

 180 of an inch thick) is made by hand 

 — flies like wild-fire through our cities, 

 magnetizing and surfeiting on all the 

 compatible material that it can find, 

 becoming more and more portentous 

 as it goes. Its journey is well described 

 in the way Virgil did the supposed 

 nuptials of Dido and .lEneas, thus : 



Extemplo I.ibyae niognas it Fama per urbes. 

 Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum, 

 Mobilitate vi^et. virisque adquirit eundo ; 

 Para raetu priiuo ; niojc sese attollit in aures, 

 int^reditus que sulo, et caput inter nubila condit. 



Think of it, in the United States 

 (where, during the year of 1884, 20,297 

 patents from the Patent Office at 

 Washington, were issued), such ignor- 

 ance should continue ! Fogyism is a 

 drawback to the process of inventing 

 in bee-keeping, the which (inventing) 

 is breathing dephlogisticated air under 

 the sickl3- ribs of umquhile apiculture, 

 and through its arteries sending re- 

 newed strength to every branch there- 

 of. The limners (inventors) of our 

 pursuit have already environed its 

 head with the nimbus of fame, and 

 placed the aureola of glory around its 

 body ; but nevertheless we cannot ex- 

 pect the end desired to be gained in a 

 second. 



Hardships and Triumphs of Inventors. 



"Procrastination is the thief of 

 time," and until we collar him we 

 must take our do.se of being jeered at 

 as other inventors. It was thus with 

 poor Johnny Fitch, who devised and 

 invented the steamboat. He was rich 

 in genius, but penury so held him un- 

 der its sway, that one day, in a crisis 

 of his invention, he said, that "if he 

 could get £100 by cutting -one of his 

 legs, he would gladly give it to the 

 knife." He was the man by whose 

 discovery people now in a week's time 

 can be transported over the briny 



deep, Artie explorers penetrate within 

 a few miles of the North Pole ; and yet 

 he was made the recipient of jeers, and 

 pitied as a bedlam. Cast down and 

 broken hearted, the Jinis of this grand 

 character, I am sorry to say, was 

 suicide, by taking 12 opium pills. This 

 is the way many benefactors of man- 

 kind are treated ; and it is the same in 

 apiculture as in other pursuits. 



Herr Von Hruschka should have at 

 least a line on the tablets of our mem- 

 ories indelibl_y stamped ; but, lo ! how 

 few are they who ever knew the name 

 of the inventor of the " Mel Extractor !" 

 A man who made it possible to obtain 

 honey in a liquid state, clear and pure, 

 free from the juices obtained by 

 squeezing the heterogeneous mass of 

 comb, cocoons, larviB, bee-bread and 

 )-oung bees, should not have his name 

 left to oblivion.* 



How our own inventors have laid 

 awake at night, thinking over and 

 picturing in their minds their inven- 

 tions, even into " that hour, o' night's 

 black arch the key-stone," I leave it to 

 the bee-keeper's fraternization to judge 

 by the above paragon. These men, 

 above all other men, ought to be re- 

 membered ; they are the time savers 

 who have willingly used up their time 

 so as to save time for others. 



Ho%v to Dispose of Fogy Bee-Men. 



Why then should we not, since we 

 live in a country of which Joseph Hat- 

 ton says : "Ten years in the history 

 of America is half a century of Eu- 

 ropean progress," wipe out fogyism 

 and the fertile brains of reporters, 

 which together make up the vile mon- 

 ster to our pursuit ? A regular Poly- 

 phemus stalking through the land. 

 Monstrum horrendum infornie ingens 

 cui lumen adcmjitum — "If its ej'e be 

 not out, let us take it and end the 

 agony." 



Although his body is strong and cor- 

 pulent, and in his hand an enormous 

 bole he twirls, yet like the sparrow to 

 the crow, in the long run we can ex- 

 haust him, and pry out that ej'e in the 

 middle of his forehead, and thus ren- 

 der him hors ilc combat. But is it being 

 pried out by publishing the "extem- 

 poraneous descantings and unpre- 

 meditated exp-atiations " of old fogies ? 

 No ! and it never will be in that way. 



Instead of talking so much about the 

 ways of fogies, apiarists who have such 

 men in their vicinage, should take 

 them to their apiaries — for " a pound 

 of fact is wortli a ton of theory " — and 

 show them with what alacrity they 

 manipulate their hives, how to control" 

 swarms, how to obtain nice, white, 

 comb hone}-, and eradicate that idea 

 of theirs concerning the manufactur- 

 ing of it by some New York firms. 



it seems to me that those firms must 

 be very occult, or else hidden away in 



