148 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



" O'lT all the world a golden ray 



Of peace ami happiness is cast. 

 While nature's myriad voices say, 

 Old winter Krini and cold, is past." 



W. W. Mitchell, pase :«. 



" Well ! Here we are, bat we don't know; as 

 much about running a bee journal as we did a 

 mouth ago." New editor, page 50. 



By the way, Progressive hardly got a fair 

 show in my comparative count. The Jan- 

 uary number was mostly taken up with the 

 report of a bee convention, all chopped up 

 into little short paragraphs, and thereby it 

 missed wurds, missed more than a thousand 

 of them. In fairness we should accept the 

 February count, 7,124, instead of January 

 with r>,;».")9. Also -4. i?. J. calls attention to 

 the fact that its count was not full justice, 

 owing to the fact that five numbers a month 

 come in four times a year. Allowance for 

 this would raise its monthly total from 58,- 

 ^u.'^ to GS.i'MM. 



THE GENERAL ROUND UP. 



'Nother baby to spank, there's going to be. 

 It expects to arrive in this baby-devouring 

 world May 15th ; and Burton L. Sage, New 

 Haven, Conn., will rock it. The youngster's 

 name is The Bee-Keepers' Enterprise. But 

 no undertakers need apply just yet, as the 

 editor claims to see his way clear for two 

 years ahead without asking baby to pay 

 board. 



Saul among the prophets I Demaree comes 

 out in the Guide with a new kind of sugar- 

 honey. We shall almost expect to see Bro. 

 Newman putting an improved glucose on the 

 market now. 



An interest seems to be developing in the 

 beautiful Italian clover that may result in 

 advantage to the bee fraternity in some lo- 

 calities. I believe I saw no bees visiting 

 mine ; but I had only a very few, and long 

 ago. 



Weygandt, a German, thinks he has suc- 

 cess in supplying bees with pulverized wax 

 inside the hives. He reduces the wax to 

 powder with alcohol. A. B. J., 208. A Yan- 

 kee might guess that those bees simply blew 

 the powder away, and then drew on their 

 own pockets for the wax. 



An isolated case of a drone mating with a 

 worker bee is said to be proved up in Ger- 

 many. A. B. ./., 208. 



During one fall and winter Mrs. Atchley 

 had 100,000 pounds of honey retailed in the 

 two cities of Dallas and Fort Worth. -^4 . B. 

 J., 301. Looks like biz. And she tells us not 



to sell the dark honey, but to eat it our- 

 selves. Not right. With some of us half 

 the crop is dark ; and it takes me several 

 months to eat .50,000 pounds of honey. With 

 both on the wagon, and a reasonable con- 

 cession in price, I find the dark honey sells 

 as readily as the best. 



" Years of experience have proved to me that 

 each of the united colonies would often pull 

 through alone, while if united [in early spring 1 

 all would perish." Doolittle, A. B. J., :W6. 



Hear the Canadian on the difficulty of re- 

 porting conventions with satisfactory accu- 

 racy — 



" The best reporter on the face of the earth 

 will make mistakes; if he doesn't the speaker 

 whom he is elaborating will ; if either or both 

 forget this plain part of their (luty they may rest 

 confident that the compositor will attend to it." 



If anybody has thought Rambler's vein 

 exhausted he should read Ramble 79 in 

 Gleanings. He is still quite able to get into 

 queer situations, and " sling English " with- 

 out being troubled with a lame arm. Notice 

 how the skies cliange from blizzard to Indian 

 summer when a season-footed resident drives 

 up and lends them a whiffletree. 



"Here we are, ten miles from a house, in a 

 howling wilderness, with bears, wildcats, coy- 

 otes, and a broken whiffletree— its all your fault. 



* * Blessed he the name of Joe Beals and his 

 Spanish wife. Blessed be his dozen (more or less) 

 half-breeds; and blessed be his horses and oxen, 

 his dogs and his bees." 



Next I think I must read Gleanings a little 

 lecture. It not only inserts the following 

 rank nonsense, but actually heads it " sen- 

 sible words." Page 178. 



'"In England a fruit grower was surprised to 

 find that, in one corner of his garden, in which 

 were placed colonies of bees, the trees were 

 heavily laden with fruit, while those more remote 

 had set very sparingly. Then he called to mind 

 the circumstance of its being very dark and 

 foggy during the blooming of the trees, so that 

 the bees flew but a short distance from their 

 hives." 



Of course if the fog and darkness were 

 such that bees could not find the way from 

 one tree to another throughout a garden they 

 would not come out at all. Moreover they 

 show no preference for flowers near the hive 

 over those 40 rods away — probably prefer a 

 moderate fly. How easy it is to attack wrong 

 statements when they are of no profit to us, 

 and yet cravenly take the advantage of mis- 

 conceptions when they happen to be in our 

 favor ! By the way Isn't the above yarn an 

 old customer that we have been dealing with 

 for the last 25 years ? Brethren, let us 

 straighten up. 



