48 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



located ; so I will put it in subsequently, 

 after you get to reading. The first to come 

 to my table for the new-born year is — 



APICULTURIST, 



Really looks as though editor Alley per- 

 ceives that improvement of contents is the 

 word that has been going round. It opens 

 with — 



" I reared five-banded bees as far back as 1883. 

 They were a cross between the Italian aud Cyp- 

 rians. * * I never had better bees ill my apiary. 

 * * Friend of mine sent me some five-banded 

 Italians. * * j know them just as a man 

 is supposed to know his brother. There are cer- 

 tain marks about them that identify them so 

 plainly that the running man may read." 



G. W. Demabee. 



"Told you so." Some that offer them for 

 sale may not know this, preferring to cling 

 to the queen-breeders " rot " that secret 

 crosses with drones from afar seldom or 

 never take place. 



Next comes the Mocco Stingless Bee, a 

 queer chap, the size of a grain of wheat, 

 which — 



" Makes its nest only in the grround, boring 

 into the hard red soil like the ants. The nest is 

 pear-shaped, of the capacity of about three gal- 

 lons ; contains very little comb, but a gallon or 

 more of liquid honey at the bottom, slightly 

 acid, good eating The nest is lined with wax, 

 and the entrance is a small narrow spout, less 

 than one half of an inch in diameter, which pro- 

 jects about an inch above the ground, and has an 

 ingenious sort of flexible lid of wax." 



H. A. Wolff, 

 Baberton, South Africa. 



Here's richness, indeed ! Don't believe 

 any insect that preserves honey by putting 

 acid in it can quite touch the level of a civi- 

 lized city market ; but what a boon for col- 

 ored boys and girls in Texas and Florida I 

 The fact that the Mocco digs the cave for its 

 own domicil is a pretty strong hint that a 

 single female begins the establishment bum- 

 ble-bee fashion, the children enlarging the 

 hole and building up into a nation. Before 

 Uncle Sam spends some thousands in the 

 desperate effort to import that wild open- 

 air savage Apis Dorsata, he had better carve 

 out by the roots and bring to Texas a few 

 Mocco colonies. What pleasure to lie in the 

 shade and suck honey with a straw direct 

 from the cistern of its unsuspecting owners ! 



Along amidships we find the editor has 

 been reading his back numbers, and finding 

 valuable articles which the present subscrib- 

 ers never saw, he proposes to reprint them. 

 Not a bad idea. 



Four pages are given to the opening of 

 what appears to be a new book, to be first 



published as a serial. (How the serial idea 

 spreads, does'nt it ?) The title is " Practi- 

 cal and Profitable Bee-keeping," By a prac- 

 tical bee-keeper. A Bluenose might so blun- 

 der as to suppose the P. B. friend Alley him- 

 self incognito. The quality and diction is 

 fair ; but some of the statements sound rath- 

 er reckless for a standard work, as — 



•'All who intend to make the keeping of bees 

 their only means of gaining a living will soon 

 come to grief." 



"The bee flies swiftly— at the rate of about a 

 mile a minute." 



Next, aged 32, comes the Dean of delega- 

 tion — 



AMERICAN Bee journal, 



And editor York thinks the two portraits 

 of our editor in the December Review al- 

 most illustrate the theory of evolution. Mid- 

 dling fair, friend Y. ; go and do likewise. 



Hello ! Here's our esteemed comrade B. 

 Taylor in the evolution business too, at the 

 head of an interesting life sketch. Finished 

 off the inside of a church when he was seven- 

 teen. And later on he saw his bees finish off 

 26,000 lbs. of sections in one season. 



Compliments to Jennie Atchley, who is 

 worthily trying to give the southern subscrib- 

 ers something which is their very own, and 

 the fruit of their own soil. 



Soon the Michigan convention opens out. 

 President R. L. Taylor notes a general un- 

 rest among bee-keepers and regrets it. 

 Golden age gone by. Expect nothing, and 

 be blest in getting it. But he just hits the 

 mark when he tells how far nature has car- 

 ried the improvement of the bee already and 

 how hard it is to carry the work much fur- 

 ther. Prof. Cook gets back at him to the 

 effect that (in the right way) bee folks ought 

 to be dissatisfied in the direction of finding 

 some remedy for the unendurable. One of 

 the most remarkable of remarkable speeches 

 was James Heddon's plea for letting alone 

 adulteration and adulterators. Perhaps it 

 might as well be left in its entirety to just 

 weigh its own weight. Condensation would 

 be very apt to show the bias of the conden- 

 ser. Our hatred will not keep truth from be- 

 ing true. Per contra, sin has no power of 

 its own to strut in martyr white. Soon W. 

 Z. patiently explained once more the sugar- 

 honey muddle, too familiar to present com- 

 pany to need comment, except to comme^d 

 the plucky vigor of this one sentence, which 

 takes a disagreeable bull right by his naughty 

 horns — Tut, tut ! Don't you wish you knew, 



