304 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



cases; and certain buyers who are ac- 

 quainted with his goods will take it every 

 year at an adv^ance of one or two cents 

 above the market. With all of his other 

 qualities the Captain is exceedingly mod- 

 est — never given to courting notoriety, 

 yet always willing to assist others in the 

 pursuit. He has repeatedly declined to 

 furnish articles for Uie bee-journals, as 

 the publication of his views brings down 

 upon him such a mass of correspondence 

 that, with his other duties, he is unable 

 to attend to it. 



■■^u»u»u««^«^ 



WARMING BEE- CELLARS WITH OIL- 

 STOVES. 



In reply to a correspondent's inquiry, 

 the editor of Gleanings sa3's: "If the 

 oil-stove was turned down too low it 

 might possibly have been an indirect 

 cause of the death of the bees. We 

 would not advise putting a stove of that 

 kind in the cellar and keeping it there more 

 than two or three days at most." Oil- 

 stoves are as good as any stoves for warm - 

 ing bee-cellars, providing there is some 

 way of carrying off the gases of combus- 

 tion. Any fire uses up the oxygen of the 

 air. Of courst, more air finds its way in 

 to replace the oxygen burned, but the air 

 that comes in is not all oxygen, and, bj- 

 the continual burning of the oxygen, a 

 point is finally reached where the air is 

 ver}' deficient in this life-giving fluid. In 

 the case of bees, however, I think that 

 this condition of the air is not so harmful 

 as the gases of combustion that are 

 thrown into the air by the ordinary use 

 of an oil-stove. One or two years I used 

 an oil-stove for heating my office before 

 the weather was cold enough to need a 

 coal-stove; but I was obliged to discon- 

 tinue its use, as it almost invariably 

 brought on a headache. 



Two or three 3'ears, when I had only a 

 few colonies in the cellar, and there came 

 some unusaully cold "snaps," I kept up 

 the temperature by means of a large oil- 

 stove; but I had it arranged especially 

 to avoid the undesirable features that I 



have mentioned. I had a tin hood made 

 to fit over the top of the stove, and this 

 hood was connected with the stove-pipe 

 in the room above by the means of a two 

 and one half inch tin pipe that passed up 

 through the floor. With this arrange- 

 ment I could not discover that the air in 

 the cellar was vitiated in the least by the 

 use of the oil-stove. 



*«««ir^«^^^^«^ 



ALFALFA AND ITS FUTURE. 



R. Wilkin, of California, in an article 

 in Gleanings, tells how he moved his 

 bees, in a dry season, to a valley that was 

 favored by a flow of water from the snows 

 on the Sierra Nevada mountains. The 

 cold prevented a flow of water until in 

 June, but even the meager growth of al- 

 falfa that resulted impressed Mr. Wilkin 

 with the fact that alfalfa, which yields 

 such an extraordinary amount of food 

 for animals, will, in the near future, be 

 cultivated wherever conditions favor its 

 growth; and the alfalfa will be followed 

 by the bee-keeper, that he may profit by 

 its wonderful yields of lione3\ Some- 

 where, during the last few days, I have 

 read that the most promising field for ex- 

 tensive, commercial bee-keeping was, 

 at present, in the alfalfa fields of the West 

 — Colorado, for instance. I think that I 

 read this in Gleanings. 



PROMPTNESS VP:RSUS INFORMATION. 



My trip to the fairs prevented me from 

 catching up any on this issue of the Re- 

 view; and this reminds me that there is 

 an occasional complaint because the Re- 

 view is not always out on time. One man 

 once suggested that if "I would stay at 

 home, instead of gadding around the 

 country, I could probably get the Review 

 out on time;" and he described the situa- 

 tion exactly. If I should stay in my of- 

 fice every day, it is quite likel}' that the 

 Review could be mailed exactly the same 

 da}- of the month, each month. But 

 would it come with the same sparkle and 

 vim ? Would it have that crisp freshness ? 



