28 



TBE BEE-KEEPERS' REV 12.* 



cult to characterize it. Very different from 

 the Apiculturist and Heddon's Quarterly, it 

 still belongs to the same class of papers — the 

 editorial paper. Quite likely it intends in 

 the ultimate future to be much less so as 

 its Southern supporters develop in(o writer?. 

 Meantime both the senior editor, Mrs. 

 Atchley, and the junior editor Willie Atchley, 

 suffer somewhat, I think, from too mai y 

 irons in the fire — < )r am I getting billions ? 

 And does nursing babies, only to see them 

 all die with the chicken-pox, eventuate in a 

 baby-hating frame of mind, and turn the 

 critic into a Herod ? At any rate this Herod 

 will so far relent as to hope that the South- 

 land Queen will not take on the chicken-pox 

 in the form of a poultry department. We 

 all know what comes next when we see that 

 setting in. 



Besides the Atchley family C. B. Bankston 

 of Chriesman, Texas, has an editorial oar in 

 the queen rearing department The Octo- 

 ber number is largely made up of the chap- 

 ters of Mrs. Atchley's book. Profitable 

 Bee-Keeping, a work which ranks very fair 

 in ability and usefulness. I will only dip 

 in at one point. Chapter 12, the prevention 

 of swarming. Mrs. Atchley is emphatic 

 that there are two practical ways to prevent 

 it, the caging plan so largely in use in New 

 York and elsewhere, and the plan of re- 

 moving all the sealed brood to emerge in 

 special quarters. The young bees are to be 

 Uied where they will do the most good, often 

 in the very hive they came from. But she 

 laughs at non-swarming bees. The Decem- 

 ber number opens with a pop-gun shot at 

 them, thusly ; " Non-swarming bees — 

 when there is no honey. " 



A Mexican Indian, as we learn from the 

 Oct. number, page 11, carried a l.'> pound 

 nucleus of bees 300 miles on his back (only 

 waytogetan Italian queen through alive) 

 and only charged two dollars for the tran- 

 sporation. The apiarit-t to whom the nucleus 

 was sent raises honey and charges a dollar 

 a pound for it. Query ; Which is the 

 more of a Christian the Indian or the white 

 man ? 



Willie Atchley says he finds it much easier 

 to carry out the drones to supply an out- 

 apiary before they have emerged from the 

 comb. 



Live oak honey, so thick and waxy that it 

 cannot be extracted, is mentioned. Who 

 knows whether it is a floral secretion, or an 



insect secretion, or a direct exudation of the 

 oak ? If the latter, some one would be do- 

 ing good and timely service to apicultural 

 science just proving the facts. 



Beeville is " sc me " on skunks. A benevo- 

 lent supply of drone brood and strychnine 

 in the out apiary turned up the toes of eight 

 at one time. 



Here is a heavy editorial shot against the 

 doctrine that drones of the first generation 

 are not affected by the mating of the moth- 

 er. 



"We never saw a bright yellow drone from 

 BD imported queen in our lives. We have been 

 mating the daughters of lmpt)rted queens with 

 five-band drones ; and the drones from these 

 8 ime queens siiow about half yellow." Page 8, 

 Nov. 



L. L. Skaggs tells us how to discriminate 

 the very youngest larvae from those not 

 quite so young — this being of some impor- 

 tance when the best possible queens are to be 

 reared. Immediately after hatching, the 

 larva swims in a fluid that is nearly trans- 

 parent, or bluish. A little later it will be 

 seen that the fluid is more and more white 

 as time passes. PagojlO, Nov. 



According to Mrs. Atchley the man who 

 furnishes the most beeswax of any man in 

 the world is Mr. Negligence. So kind of 

 her to see something good in a gentleman 

 who is very seldom well spoken of ! But in 

 our part of the world Mr. Negligence mere- 

 ly dumps the material he has provided into 

 a box in the back shed, for Mrs. Negligence 

 to try out ; and she, good soul, lets the moth 

 worms eat it up. 



It is somewhat discouraging to hear, from 

 so thoroughly posted an authority as Mrs. 

 Atchley, that there is no safe way to intro- 

 duce a virgin queen which is over six hours 

 old to a full colony of bees — and that virgins 

 caged before mating seldom get over the 

 effects of it. Page i">, Dec. Some, if I re- 

 member aright, have spoken very confident- 

 ly about success in introducing virgins re- 

 ceived by mail. 



With the December number an everlast- 

 ing department is begun which is to be kept 

 standing in every number as an answer to 

 the everlasting questions. Not a bad idea. 

 But the chances are that half the everlasting 

 questioners will fail to see it, and ask the 

 questions just the same. 



On the whole I imagine a beginner in our 

 art reading the (^ueen would feel much as 

 if he had been conversing with an able teach- 

 er on topics he especially wanted to hear 



