14 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



GETTING USED TO CRITICISM. 



Do Open Separators Really have any In- 

 fluence upon the Filling of Sections? 



E. A. DAGGITT. 



DEING one of 

 ■^ those whose 

 writings were 

 first criticised in 

 the Review's 

 Department of 

 Criticism, I had 

 intended before 

 this to i^ive my 

 opinion of tlie 

 department, but 

 have failed to do 

 so, owing to absence from home, and 

 other things. At first the new depart- 

 ment seemed to stir up so much strife 

 that I did not hold a high opinion of it; 

 but after it had continued a while, and I 

 became better acquainted with it, and I 

 had read the critic's defense of his criti- 

 cismS, my opinion of it changed; and I 

 now consider it a valuable feature of the 

 Review; and hope it will be continued. 

 Mr. Taylor I have held in high estimation 

 as a bee-keeper and as an apicultural 

 writer, and I would like to see him have 

 a proper latitude in his new field of labor. 

 After the department becomes better un- 

 derstood, all opposition to it will undoubt- 

 edly cease. It is not always pleasant to 

 have one's errors in composition pointed 

 out in a public journal, especially in the 

 one in which they are committed; still, it 

 may be best to do so. I would be g'ad 

 to see our apicultural journals brought to 

 a high literary standard if it can be done 

 without losing some of the best apicul- 

 tural thoughts. If we can attain the for- 

 mer without sacrificing the latter, right 

 and well; but, if not, we would better 

 lower the literary standard. 



There are those who have good ideas 

 but do not have facility in expressing 

 them. These should not be deterred 

 from writing if thev can write reasonably 



well; in fact, there ought to be some way 

 to get such ideas for our journals even if 

 the editors have to re-write the articles 

 containing them. Then, too, there are. 

 no doubt, those in the ranks of apicultur- 

 al writers who, like myself, are sometimes 

 absent minded. Such are very likely to 

 make mistakes, and fail to see them un- 

 til too late Such need forbearance on 

 the part of the critics. The writer of this 

 has, besides, to suffer from the strange 

 fatality of the compositor making mis- 

 takes in putting his writings into type. 

 I seldom have an article published that 

 does not contain at least one mistake of 

 the type-setter. Then, again, we ma}- 

 sometimes get a little careless or indiffer- 

 ent when writing our articles, and if we 

 make mistakes and they are pointed out 

 we may not like it. Strange beings we 

 are. Mr. Taylor will have to do the best 

 he can with us, making due allowance of 

 course, for our infirmities. 



One thing in the new Department of 

 Criticism had a particular interest to me, 

 because it was an old idea of mine. I re- 

 fer to the plan of putting combs above 

 the brood nest in the spring so as to en- 

 courage brood rearing by supplying any 

 deficiency in stores and by affording a 

 place to store honey taken from the 

 brood nest to make room for the laying 

 of the queen. I conceived the idea in 

 this way: About ten years ago I had sev- 

 eral hives of bees packed in chaff in a re- 

 ceptacle for the purpose, and they had 

 built up strong early in the spring. When 

 the fruit bloom came I gave each colony 

 a super of partly finished sections. When 

 the sea.son of fruit bloom ended it seemed 

 as if the bees had stored quite a little sur- 

 plus of fruit bloom honey, but when the 

 sections were removed from the hives 

 and examined I found the honey to be in 

 part buckwheat honey. As there was no 

 buckwheat bloom at this time of year, 

 the bees must have carried this kind of 

 honey u]i from the brood nest to make 

 room for brooil rearing. 



From this experience I developed a 

 system of building up colonies by putting 



