272 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



August 



right. She began to lay soon after 

 she was released, but the other was 

 no good ; she never laid an egg. 

 She remained in the hive one week 

 and then disappeared, making the in- 

 troduction of another queen neces- 

 sary. 



With the exception of a little patch 

 of brood the size of a double hand, 

 which I had given them' when making 

 the transfer from the shipping cage 

 to the hive, neither had any outside 

 help except an additional empty comb 

 whenever they needed one. During 

 the white clover flow both queens 

 built up their colonies at an astonish- 

 ing rate and by the middle of July the 

 first one, that had lost the most bees, 

 was ready for the super. The other, 

 on account of the poor queen at the 

 beginning, was a little slower in build- 

 ing up, but both colonies did remark- 

 ably well. Being so late in the sea- 

 son, I did not expect that either could 

 possibly fill more than one half-story 

 super, but to my surprise they even 

 filled a second and the better one of 

 the two a third one. I extracted about 

 90 pounds from the one and 60 pounds 

 from the other. 



This is not a very big yield, but we 

 must bear in mind that both colonies 

 grew from a little bunch of bees 

 weighing only two pounds each when 

 mailed from the South May 21, and 

 both had unfavorable conditions to 

 contend with — one by the loss of 

 many bees and the other by having a 

 worthless queen. Under more favor- 

 able conditions they would have done 

 much better. At all events, the ex- 

 periment proves that combless pack- 

 ages of bees shipped from the South 

 by parcels post are not questionable 

 undertakings. Under common condi- 

 tions it is perfectly practicable to re- 

 plenish depopulated beeyards in our 

 northern latitude in this way and har- 

 vest a fair crop of honey the same 

 season. 



La Salle, N. Y. 



Please Date Your Articles 



WILL my fellow beekeepers 

 please date their articles in 

 the American Bee Journal? On 

 page 405, December number, under the 

 title "California Weather and Pros- 

 pects," the writer says "this is Colum- 

 bus Day." While this may be very in- 

 structive to the people of the United 

 States, 't is not of much use to peo- 

 ple in other parts of the globe. Then 

 some person comes along and says, 

 "Now the maple is budding, etc., etc.," 

 which no dobut explains the period 

 of the j ear to those "in the know,' 

 but is no guide to me. Why cannot 

 they give the exact date? Then i til- 

 ers would get s-ime idea at what peri- 

 ods their seasons begin and end. An- 

 other rotten habit they have (and it 

 is, I think, peculiar to the United 

 States people) r to talk of five-p = n;iy 

 nails and ten-penny nails, etc., etc. I 

 have not the faintest idea whether 

 these are 1x18 or 4x%. If they would 

 refer to the nails by size, as I nave 

 done every one would know what 

 they meant, 'sails here go by 3ize, 

 and I suppose they do with you. :om- 

 mercially. Two by ten means a nail 

 2 inches long by one-tenth thick, and 



so on all through the sizts. If one 

 speaks of lJ4xi7 he knows it means 

 1J4 inches long by one seventeenth 

 inch thick, or a thin, small nail fur 

 frame nailing. 



We are having a rotten season here. 

 My western farms have so far given 

 nothing and the season there will end 

 in four weeks, although here it may 

 go on for four months. We have dor<; 

 fairly well here and hope to get a 

 fair crop before the season ends. 



On page 406, American Bee Journal, 

 you mention paralysis, or a resem- 

 blance to it, in Mr. Carr's apiary and 

 also in yours. I had exactly the same 

 thing in one of my apiaries at Glen- 

 brook, on the Blue Mountains, but 

 only in about 25 per cent of the hives. 

 The ground in front was covered 

 with bees crawling about unable to 

 fly, and they had crawled up on 

 stones and sticks in small bunches. 

 Very few of the bees died and these 

 conditions only prevailed for a few 

 days. Apparently they all recovered 

 and regained the hives. The 

 weather was excessively hot and dry, 

 being just before Christmas, and no 

 flow on. One of my neighbors com- 

 plained that the bees had taken 

 charge of her preserving room and 

 had sucked all the juice out of the 

 fruit she was preserving. Looks as 

 though my bees were intoxicated; 

 were yours and Mr. Carr's? 



MAJOR SHALLARD. 



I. Woodburn, N. S. W., Australia. 



March 2, 1919. 



Major Shallard is right. We should 

 date our articles. In the case men- 

 tioned the fault is probably with the 

 management of the Journal. We can 

 readily understand that people living 

 at the antipodes, as far south of the 

 equator as we are north of it, and 

 whose summer is our winter, should 

 be anxious — when they take the pains 

 of reading beekeeping news from so 

 far away — to know at what dates the 

 crops reported are harvested. We 

 must try to bear this in mind. It will 

 be useful to our own people. 



As to the naming of nails "five- 

 penny" or "ten-penny," this is a dis- 

 tinctive United States classification, 

 owing, they say, to the fact that a 

 hundred such nails used to cost five 

 or ten pennies, as the case might be. 

 But if we must resort to less anti- 

 quated names, we should certainly use 

 the most progressive, those of the 

 metric system, instead of using inches, 

 feet, ells, yards, rods, chains, etc. It 

 is true that many people do not real- 

 ize how exceedingly simple and con- 

 venient the metric system is. Our 

 scientists use it, in spite of the popu- 

 lar prejudice against it. But as ad- 

 vanced a magazine as the Literary 

 Digest sees fit to sustain the old sys- 

 tem, by publishing (March 15, 1919) 

 a map of the world showing China 

 and Russia, and other backward coun- 

 tries, on a par with the British Em- 

 pire and the United States in a con- 

 tinuation of old systems. We would 

 be equally ridiculous if we were to 

 argue in favor of tin- old gum or the 

 straw skep as against the modern 

 movable-frame hives, on the plea that 



the f • inner wire still I he more wide- 

 spread over the world. 



We should certainly be proud that 

 wide-awake men like Major Shallard, 

 living as far off as Australia, should 

 take enough interest in our contribu- 

 tors to wish to know the time of their 

 honey harvests. — C. P. D. 



Policy and Aims of the National 

 Beekeepers' Association 



By Chas. B. Justice, 



IF the writer properly understands 

 the object of the National Bee- 

 keepers' Association, it is that it 

 may become an affiliation of all State, 

 County or District co-operative mar- 

 keting honey exchanges and associa- 

 tions throughout the United States, 

 but that the affiliation shall have only 

 regulatory powers. In other words, 

 each district or state exchange of as- 

 sociation will handle its own business 

 as a complete entity within itself, 

 and it should be incorporated on a 

 firm contract holding its members to- 

 gether and developing the standards 

 of quality, grading, manner of pack- 

 ing and selling of its products, and its 

 membership in the National Beekeep- 

 ers' Association should be by dele- 

 gate properly accredited with the 

 power and authority of the exchange 

 or association sending such delegate, 

 with the idea that the combined 

 strength of all the State or district 

 exchanges supporting the membership 

 of the National would be sufficient to 

 bring success to its efforts and deter- 

 minations. It is hoped, therefore, that 

 the National Beekeepers' Association 

 might become famous in its worthi- 

 ness for this name, for its higher ser- 

 vices to the beekeepers in a national 

 way, for its truly broad conception of 

 the possibilities of the honey indus- 

 try, and for its practical endeavors 

 to attain a higher position for bee- 

 keeping among the industries, for its 

 success in hastening the time of a 

 more universal consumption of honey 

 on the table everywhere, for having 

 secured recognition of the importance 

 of the industry by all national and 

 state governments and actual assist- 

 ance from the same through educa- 

 tion, appropriations for extension 

 work, and wise laws protecting the 

 purity of our food and safeguarding 

 the beekeeper in his work of produc- 

 tion. 



At the 49th annual convention of 

 the National Beekeepers' Association, 

 held in Chicago on February 19, the 

 following resolution was adopted: 



"Whereas. Your committee appoint- 

 ed yesterday under a resolution au- 

 thorizing its appointment for the pur- 

 pose of formulating and reporting a 

 plan for the organization of beekeep- 

 ers, realizing that the basis of such 

 organization must be laid in the 

 minds and hearts of the beekeepers 

 themselves and must find its approval 

 with them, respectfully recommend 

 that a convention be called sufficiently 

 representative in character to give 

 weight to and command respect of its 

 determinations; to that end he it 



Resolved, That the Secretary of 

 this Association be directed to invite 

 representatives of all organizations of 

 beekeepers, teachers of beekeeping 



