V. 



er 



V.6 

 1893 



THE BEEKEEPERS' REVIEW. 



yioini alone would make a great difference iu 

 the honey yield of hundreus of apiaries ou 

 this coast as well as farther east. 



Another object to be attained is to make a 

 certainty from our uncertainty for there is 

 nothing more discouraging than to patiently 

 and laboriously hold your dish right-side up 

 all through the season and at tlie end find it 

 empty. As long as this condition of things 

 lasts honey will never become a staple arti- 

 cle like butter or Hour which can be depend- 

 ed upon year after year. Speaking from a 

 California stand point we have more difficul- 

 ties to contend with than our Eastern breth- 

 ren : but I am not sure, if sugar honey is to 

 be the honey of the future, but we stand iu 

 a good position to supply tlie world with 

 that, as we could call it beet honey. The 

 feeding of the beet sugar would occupy a 

 good share of the year, and tliat would over- 

 come the intermissions of the present meth- 

 od, and put bee-keeping upon a sure footing. 



These great subjects are, however, all for 

 the future to answer and in these articles we 

 can only speculate upon the probable results. 

 I would, however, advise no one to abandon 

 bee-keeping but try to improve and keep 

 pace with the progress and if the sugar cloud 

 seems dangerous to some of us, and fraught 

 with dire consequences, there may be a 

 silver lining to it. Let us hope and wait and 

 see. 



Redlands, Calif., Dec. 'A, 1S!»2. 



l.i^-i 



Writers Ought to be More Sure of Their 



Premises, and go More Into Details. — Bee 



Keeping is Drifting into Specialty. 



W. (;. l-UAZIEU. 



>ITHI>J the last forty years apicul- 

 ture has made a vast stride for- 

 ward. Forty years since, mova- 

 ble frame hives were unknown or nearly so. 

 The habits of the bee were a mystery, even 

 to those who were the foremost in the bee 

 world and the improvement of bees by the 

 introduction of new blood, through queens, 

 was hardly begun, iu fact the idea was pretty 

 generally prevalent that the drones layed the 

 eggs. 



Such ideas are now seldom met with and 

 when they are found, serve only to cause a 

 smile upon the face of the apiarist, such as 

 is found upon that of the relic hunter when 



he finds some very rare and "ancient relic 

 of the past." 



That we have now a new system of keeping 

 bees and that this new system hih.s^ be fol- 

 lowed if the apiarist would continue in the 

 business, experience and observation will 

 affirm. 



That in time to come other improvements 

 and advances iu the art (for art it is), will be 

 made, there remains not the shadow of a 

 doubt. 



To mark out the course wliich inventive 

 genius will take would possibly be consider- 

 ed presumption in any one man : but if each 

 one would show in what direction he thinks 

 improvement and advancement would be 

 necessary great good might follow. 



It would be desirable, if the writer on api- 

 cutural subjects would enter more into de- 

 tail in describing their methods ; while no 

 one can imitate the methods of another, in 

 all respects, with success, yet many describe 

 practices and inventions in which it is hard- 

 ly possible to follow them or in any manner 

 to imitate. 



If the leaders would take pains to advocate 

 nothing which they had not tried and found 

 superior, their followers would be spared a 

 world of pains and worry iu trying to imi- 

 tate them only to find that the plan or inven- 

 tion had been gi/en out prematiirely, and 

 while in all reason and by all theories it 

 should have been perfection, yet for some 

 reason unforseen the thing would not work 

 as it was designed. While examples may 

 not be in order, yet the Hoffman brood 

 frame as used in the dovetailed hive and 

 the self-hiver are fair samples of this. While 

 they both will no doubt l)e so improved in 

 time so as to till the places perfectly for 

 which they were intended: jet at present 

 there cannot be said to be ou the market a 

 self-hiver that can be depended upon to hive 

 a swarm, at least none that is backed by 

 practical exf)erience, although there are 

 many, that l)y all theories and in all reason 

 should accomplisli this, the end for which it 

 was designed. 



The Hoffman frame was intended to be a 

 frame on which the bees would not build 

 brace or burr combs. But somehow the bees 

 could not see it in this light ; they build burr 

 combs from the frames to the patern slats, 

 and from the frames to the covers so as to 

 inake it almost impossible to separate them, 

 and the frames are as badly joined together 

 by brace combs between the top bars, as the 



