TTHK mjs/imMiQmM 



® JOtJlRNSXr. 



645 



I^ook at Yoiir IVrappei* Isabel. 



— Tlie date there indicates tlie eud of tlie 

 moDtti and year to which your subscription 

 is paid. If that date is past, we liope you 

 will sit down at once and send us the neces- 

 sary dollar to move the date a year ahead. 

 The following inrident, from the Breeder's 

 Jounial, illustrates the danger of procras- 

 tination in this matter of punctually paying 

 subscription for your paper : 



Not long since, says a writer, I dropped 

 into a pioniiuent newspaper oRice, and, 

 while chatting with the editor, a well-to-do 

 stock-raiser of that county dropped in and 

 planked down the necessary amount (or 

 two years' subscription in advance for the 

 paper, and at the same time remarked : 



" I want the tag on my paper to be in such 

 a shape that 1 need not be ashamed, when 

 a friend calls at my house, to let him see it. 

 Tou may believe me or not, but it is a fact 

 all the same," he continued, " that a little 

 matter like that has already saved me con- 

 siderable money ; and one particular in- 

 stance I want to tell you about. 1 had some 

 dealings with a certain man," said he, "and 

 one day, while at his house for the purpose 

 of selling him some sheep, I chanced to 

 pick up his newspaper. 1 observed by the 

 tag upon the margin that he was terribly in 

 arrears for it. The fact that a man would 

 allow his newspaper account to run on, 

 year after year, to such an extent, set me to 

 thinking, and 1 resolved that should he ask 

 me for credit— he already owed me for titty 

 head of line sheep — I would respectfully de- 

 cline his request. As I had anticipated, he 

 did ask for time, which 1 not only refused 

 him, but demanded the amount already due 

 me. He was unable to meet the obligation 

 just then, he said, but would do so very 

 soon. 1 sold my stock elsewhere, but I 

 never got the money out of the man for the 

 sheep 1 had previously sold him, nor do I 

 expect to. Had 1 not seen that tell-tale 

 newspaper tag he might have stuck me still 

 further. Now, when 1 am in doubt as to a 

 man's responsibility, all I want to enable 

 me to accurately size him up is, to get my 

 optics on his newspaper tag, and in nine 

 cases out of ten I will never be mistaken in 

 my estimate of him." 



We commend this item to the careful 

 perusal of all those who are in arrears for 

 their reading matter. Good credit is better 

 than a fortune— nay, it is a fortune itself. 



Riislio Superstition<ii about the 



Bees.— We clip the following from the 

 Seottigh Fa>-mlng World : 



Many curious and quaint traditions, dat- 

 ing from a remote past, still linger around 

 the venerable straw hive, and upon which 

 we may dwell more at length on some future 

 occasion. Not a few cottage bee-keepers of 

 the old school still devoutly believe in the 

 efficacy of adhering to old customs to the 

 very letter, absurd and amusing as they ap- 

 pear to outsiders It is considered indis- 

 pensable at the outset that the swarm be 

 paid for in gold ; silver coin is supposed to 

 be " unlucky," and, accordingly, the lesser 

 gold coin is tendered almost invariably in 

 payment. It is just possible, however, that 

 this tradition may have originated on the 

 part of some shrewd bee-keeper anxious to 

 keep up the price at a time when swarms 

 were many and sales few. In some places 

 it is the practice to put a little sugar at the 

 hive-entrance on Christmas Eve, and at the 

 stroke of midnight the bees are believed to 

 come down and eat it. If a death occurs in 

 a family, the hives must be draped with the 

 insignia of mourning, and at night the bees 

 are "woke up" by sharply rapping the 

 hives with the knuckles, and each is then 



informed of the event ; the sound caused by 

 the humming of the bees inside the hives, 

 alarmed at being " woke up " in such a 

 manner, is considered to be tlieir response 

 to the communication. A generation ago 

 this belief was very general, and it has still 

 many adherents. 



Quite recently a couple of old bee-keepers, 

 Sam Goodheeve and Phil. Hackles, charac- 

 teristic representatives of the old school, 

 discussed the topic, happily unconscious of 

 a " chil " standing by " taking notes." We 

 subjoin it verbatim : 



" Our Joe tells me that poor old Tom 

 Hedgestake's heeves be all dead arter all," 

 said Sam, " and he fed 'um too, all the time 

 he could still get about." 



" What else could 'ees widder expect," re- 

 plied Phil. "She ne'er woke 'era up when 

 the old man died, and ne'er put one of 'em 

 in mourning." 



" Well, I told how't would be," Sam re- 

 joined ; " and now she sees plain enough 

 how my words become true. But there be 

 a many people that'll ne'er be told nothing, 

 and so she must put up with consequences." 



" Bees be curls things now," observes 

 Sam musingly, after lighting a fresh pipe ; 

 "and I well mind how, when Uncle Jim 

 died— that was in the 'ear '60— his heeves all 

 perished the followin' winter, as there was 

 not a scrap o' black put on any on 'em. 

 Now when my feyther died, and that nigh 

 on thirty 'ear ago, I took care to wake the 

 bees up and put all the heeves in mournin'. 

 I cut up his old black weskit on purpose, 

 and not one on 'em perished ; and they was 

 the forridest too swarm of anybody's round 

 about that spring. What a whoppin' lot o' 

 honey 1 had that 'ear surely ! 1 sold £6 

 worth, 'sides what weateinside,and brewed 

 a big barrel o' mayde in t' bargain." 



COIVVENTIOIV DIRECTORY. 



1888 Time and Place of Meeting. 



Oct. 3-5.— North American, at Columbus. O. 



W. Z. UutchinBOn. Sec Flint. Mich. 



Oct. 4.— Ohio State, at Columbus, O. 



Frank A. Eaton, Sec, Bluffton, O. 



Oct. 6.— Susquehanna County, at Montrose. Pa. 



H. M. Seeley, Sec, Harford, Pa. 



Oct. 16, 17.— Union, at Clavton. Ills. 



. S. N. Black, Pres., Clayton, Ills. 



Nov. 21, 22.— Pan-Handle, at Wheeling, W. Va. 



W. L. Kinsey, Sec, Blaine, O. 



Dec. —.-Michigan State, at Jaokson, Mich. 



, H. D. Cutting. Sec, Clinton. Mich. 



J^" In order to have this table complete. Secre- 

 taries are requested to forward full particulars of 

 time and place of future meetings.- Ed. 





Results of llie Season. — J. E. 



Boyles, Nelsonville, O., on Sept. 17, 1888, 



writes : 



i 



I wintered .30 colonies, spring count, on 

 the summer stands. 1 have always win- 

 tered my bees that way, and generally with 

 success, but not always. They came 

 through in nice condition, and all bred up 

 early except one which was queenless. 1 

 gave them brood with adhering bees, and a 

 queen-cell, and they soon became strong, 

 but too late to store surplus. 1 have five 

 new colonies by natural swarming. The 

 last gne on June IS was a large one, and be- 

 came very strong, but too late also for sur- 

 plus. All of the 33 colonies stored more or 

 less honey in the sections, amounting to 

 about 1,000 pounds, although a portion of 



the sections were unfinished. I sell in my 

 home market, and mostly at the stores 

 where 1 sell garden stuff, as I am in the 

 garden business. 1 get 16 cents per pound 

 for honey, in cash, or 20 cents in merchan- 

 dise. I could always sell more if 1 had it. 

 The present crop is about two-thirds gone, 

 and I could have sold all of it by this time, 

 had i not been crowded with my other 

 work. Our honey harvest was ended by 

 July 5. We never look for a fall crop here; 

 yet the bees have had much better late 

 forage than usual, as we have had plenty 

 of rain. 



Decidedly (be Best Season.— N. 



C. Clayton, Central, S. C, on Sept. 19, 1888, 

 says : 



I have been a bee-keeper several years in 

 a locality that, years ago, was exceedingly 

 good for bees, but of late it has been the re- 

 verse, some years having no surplus at all. 

 But since applying modern improvements I 

 get some honey every year, and my report 

 for this year is decidedly the best it ever 

 has been. I began in the spring with 31 

 colonies, controlled swarming pretty well 

 by extracting, and took about 75 gallons of 

 honey. There is not much market for 

 honey here. 



Wbat a tVonian Can I>o.— Mrs. 



Harriet A. Gale, Shelby, Lake Co., Ind., 

 thus writes of her season's work and the 

 cash results : 



My bees have done well for the past sea- 

 son. I have 18 colonies now with honey- 

 boxes on the hives. When those on are 

 finished, my crop will amount to over a 

 thousand pounds, which I have already sold 

 for IS cents per pound, and a part of it is 

 already shipped. 



]>etei-niining tbe Sex o4 Bec- 



Esss.— M. S. Morgan, South Elgin, Ills., 

 on Sept. 27, 1888, writes : 



I am obliged to dissent from the com- 

 monly received theory that the volition of 

 the queen determines the sex of her eggs. 

 In my opinion, after her fertilization any 

 one of her eggs will produce a worker, a 

 queen, or a drone, according to the purpose 

 and manipulation of the workers. A proof 

 that a worker egg may be made to produce 

 a drone, may be obtained in this way : 

 Divide a colony, giving to the new hive, 

 bees with sealed worker-brood only, to- 

 gether with a queen-cell. Be sure that there 

 are no drones in the new hive. Now from 

 a colony that have killed off their drones, 

 select any one frame of entire worker bmod 

 having a few uiihatched eggs : place this 

 frame in the new hive ; and 1 will guaran- 

 tee that upon this frame will be found the 

 elongated cells of drones, whilst in the col- 

 ony from which it was taken, there will be 

 workers only. The egg with the sperm at- 

 tached produces a worker ; the same egg 

 with the sperm detached, produces a drone; 

 the separation being made by the volition 

 of the worker, and not by the volition of 

 the queen. 



^Vetvill Present a Pocket Dictionary 

 for two subscribers with $2.00. It is always 

 useful to have a dictionary at hand to decide 

 as to the spelling of words, and to determine 

 their meaning. 



Tour Fnll Address, plainly written, 

 is very essential in order to avoid mistakes. 



