1188 
October 2, 1915. 
manager, and when any crop is unable to bear 
its honest share of the expense there should be a 
pretty rigid investigation to find out why, and if 
the answer is not satisfactory it should require a 
pretty good reason to keep that crop in the rotation. 
It is true that factory bookkeeping methods can¬ 
not be applied directly to farming, but that is no 
reason why we cannot get a lot of valuable informa¬ 
tion from a system of cost accounting adjusted to 
farm conditions, which will be of great value in in¬ 
creasing the efficiency of our farm management. 
The value of such figures, however, must come from 
making them as complete as possible, and profiting 
by the suggestions they may offer, rather than from 
juggling the figures to make them seem to prove 
some pet theory. Perhaps A. O. can produce wheat 
for It) cents a bushel on paper, but I am still privil¬ 
eged to doubt if he can do it on New York State 
land. OKA LEE, JR. 
Orleans Co., N. Y. 
Honey from Wild Bees. 
ILD honey is a product of wooded farms in the 
Northeastern States which more farmers 
should harvest. In locating swarms not much skill 
is required, the labor involved need be but little, 
and sometimes the returns may be quite large, 50 
to 00 pounds in a single tree not being unusual. Es¬ 
pecially on the back farms of New England, where 
wild bees are plentiful, there should always be 
honey, either in the comb or strained, ready for use 
as the housewife and family decide. What better 
breakfast combination is there than buckwheat 
cakes and honey? 
Most farmers are acquainted with the district 
bee-hunter, that personage who appears in the Fall 
with a mysterious box and lines bees. His appar¬ 
atus the farmer or the farmer’s boy need use only 
in part. The expert bee-liunter catches a bee, al¬ 
lows him to feed on bait—honey or a combination 
of honey, sugar and water, or sugar and water, 
marks him with chalk or paint and at that time or 
on some subsequent departure gets the line. Gen¬ 
erally the bee returns and the hunter is able to time 
him. Tie imprisons the bee, moves up on the course, 
and again releases him. This sounds very simple; 
sometimes it is such and fairly rapid. But the 
amateur will not find it so satisfactory as the fol¬ 
lowing process: 
Take with you when you go to an outlying field 
(supposing, for example, it is haying time)—a 
cigar box or some other small box with the top or 
cover removed. You will need for bait one of the 
preparations mentioned above. Comb honey from 
which some of the honey has drained the writer has 
found very satisfactory. Break off the limbs of a 
birch or other sapling and in a crotch three or four 
feet, from the ground place the box containing the 
bait. On a knot above it hang a handkerchief or 
other cloth on which has been sprinkled a few drops 
of oil of anise. The latter may be secured at any 
drug store. A bottle costing 15 cents will last for 
many months. In the course of an hour or so, or 
as it is convenient, visit the box. If honey blooms 
do not happen to be extremely abundant, as for 
instance when sumac is being worked by the bees, 
and if wild bees are in your locality, you are al¬ 
most certain to find 10, 15, 20, sometimes as many 
as 50 bees working on the bait. Watch them as they 
come and depart, and in 10 minutes if you are or¬ 
dinarily keen you will have a well-defined course, 
or line, to the bee tree. 
In his impetuosity, the farm boy, if he is doing 
the lining, will probably move up on the course sev¬ 
eral hundred yards and set his box as before. There 
is no objection to his doing this. It is simply more 
time-consuming than it is to set the box at one’s 
convenience, on another day perhaps, in a location 
some distance to the right or ‘ft of the original 
setting. Here a cross course is secured, the bee 
tree being at the intersection of the two courses. 
Going about farm work, while after the cows and 
doing other things taking a member of the family 
over the farm, courses and cross courses may be 
secured incidentally; and by the end of the Summer 
a very fair idea, if not accurate knowledge, of the 
location of one, two, perhaps several bee trees, will 
be had. 
Timing the bees is sometimes of great assistance 
in giving an idea of the distance to the tree. Mark¬ 
ing a bee with paint or chalk is an easy thing when 
she is feeding on bait. Some bee hunters figure a 
bee will go a mile and empty in seven minutes. But 
calculations as to speed vary greatly with the sur¬ 
face of the district. When the country is heavily 
Avooded, hilly or mountainous, a bee’s speed is nat¬ 
urally much slower than where level lands and fields 
are traversed. The bee tree may be pine, rock ma¬ 
ple, walnut, wild pear—in fact, any variety of tree 
'f'lWri WjrAL N ii v\j R l-C* 
of fair size containing a hollow and a small aper¬ 
ture through which it may be entered. The en¬ 
trance may be high or low on the trunk. Bees sel¬ 
dom store honey in the ground. 
In cutting the tree and taking the honey a few 
precautions will prevent stings. A wide-brimmed 
hat should be worn and mosquito netting placed 
over it and tied about the shoulders. Trousers 
should be tied at the ankles, coat at the waist and 
s ] Peves a t the wrists; and gloA-es should be worn. 
The bees should be smoked with a smudge imme¬ 
diately after the tree falls. When they are to be 
killed, most bee-liunters use brimstone. Only suffi¬ 
cient smoke is required, Avhen they are to be hived, 
as will stupefy them and drive them into clusters 
on the comb. 
In taking out the honey a very satisfactory uten¬ 
sil is a fritter turner. When the bees are to be 
captured, the hunter takes some of the brood comb 
to place in the new hive. The most essential thing 
in taking wild bees, any bees for that matter, is to 
get the queen. She is much larger than the workers 
and will be recognized on sight. When the bees are 
killed the best time to cut the tree is in the late 
Fall, when the honey stores are greatest. When 
tiie bees are also to be taken early Summer is gen¬ 
erally considered the best time. J. t. bartlett. 
New Hampshire. 
The Auto and the Mail Carrier. 
There have been a number of statements from Wash¬ 
ington about substituting automobiles for the usual 
rural carriers’ wagon for the distribution of the rural 
mail. The Postmaster-General put out the suggestion 
as a sort of “feeler” some months ago. There was at 
once a fierce opposition from the rural carriers and 
their friends, who felt that the present system should 
be continued. The chief argument is that the rural 
carriers are usually local men who know every patron 
personally, so that the whole thing is pretty much of 
a family matter. These men live in (he community, 
spend their money there and make it a local institution. 
They deserve the job and do it well. In case autos were 
substituted, with quicker service and longer routes, 
the argument is that there would be no need for car¬ 
riers. These local men would lose their job and the 
service would gradually fall into the hands of largo 
contractors or big corporations, which could run a few 
automobiles from some central locality and cover the 
ground no\\ r occupied by the rural carriers. Granted 
that there might be a saving in this service, carriers and 
their friends claim that in the end the public would 
be worse off, as they would be at the mercy of con¬ 
tractors Avho had no personal interest in their well- 
fare, while patrons would lose the service of their 
personal friends. These arguments were strong and 
popular, and it was thought that the Postmaster- 
General had abandoned the idea. It seems, however, 
that this is not so, for Mr. Burleson has just signed 
orders introducing automobiles in the three counties of 
Delaware as an experiment. He gives the following 
figures to show the final result of such change. 
County. Cost of Present. Cost of New. 
Sussex . $54,648 $43,044 
New Castle . 24,576 17,472 
Kent . 41,112 30,360 
Total . $120,336 $91,776 ‘ 
It is said that these motor routes will vary from 50 
to 57 miles each, and that in the present condition of 
the roads the auto can be operated for at least nine 
months in the year. It is probable that the use of the 
auto in this way is inevitable, as it will, without ques¬ 
tion, give a quicker service. It will be a mistake, how¬ 
ever, if through this change the business of delivering 
mail is really taken from the friendly mail carrier and 
put into the hands of a business corporation. Even though 
the old carrier service costs more there are other con¬ 
ditions which make it exceedingly useful and desirable. 
“ Spontaneous Combustion.” 
PONTANEOUS combustion is exactly the same 
thing as any other fire, a union between the 
oxygen of the air and anything which can unite 
with it. We have spontaneous combustion all 
through our own bodies all the time. When we 
chop wood or pump up a tire it increases and Ave 
notice the increase as heat, but it is going on to 
some extent all the time; if it stops, we die. 
LikeAvise, it is going on wherever there is life, 
the yeasts, molds and bacteria, plants so small that 
a camp meeting of them could be held on a pinhead, 
take in free oxygen or pick out oxygen from some¬ 
thing else. As they use it, the freed energy shows 
as heat. (“Heat” is merely our name for one of the 
ways “energy”—which Ave know little about—affects 
our bodies.) 
Now if Ave moAV aAvay a lot of very dry hay, noth¬ 
ing happens. All the life of the hay is gone, and the 
germs, which are everywhere, are in their dry, 
resting state, so they do nothing but AA r ait for better 
days. But if—as in many cases this Summer—the 
hay is not Avell cured, it may continue to strug¬ 
gle for life, and the unstable compounds in the 
leaves continue to take up oxygen. Plants only take 
carbonic acid and give out oxygen in full growth in 
sunlight, the rest of the time they burn oxygen just 
as Ave do. 
If the hay is damp enough, a lot of seeds may 
begin to sprout. It seems remarkable that a sprout¬ 
ing seed gives off heat, but a thermometer stuck into 
a quart of them will show they do. When sprout¬ 
ing grain in quantity, for malt, the control of the 
heat is a serious problem. Furthermore, every 
germ, finding itself moist, begins to grow, that is, 
to increase and divide, the Avay germs do, and give 
off heat; not much heat from any one speck of life, 
but there are millions of specks. The industries 
which use yeast on a large scale have special ar¬ 
rangements for cooling the A’ats. 
8o the damp hay begins to heat and lose value, 
j list as manure “fires.” Silage goes through a sim¬ 
ilar process, if air gets in; germ life continues till 
it spoils, that is, the decay germs have eaten all the 
food. If the silo is tight, the heating stops. There 
are germs which can live without air, but they only 
affect “spontaneous combustion” indirectly. 
The center of a mow of hay gets pretty warm, and 
some of the hay is practically tinder; if a draft 
of air strikes in, there may be a flame. Cases have 
been reported Avhere opening the hay to cool and 
dry it started it burning. Quicklime, sprinkled on 
as the hay is mowed away, is often advised. It 
acts partly by slaking with the water and partly 
by acting on acids. Salt is a moi’e popular and 
probably better addition ■ to the hay. It acts by 
taking up the water to form a strong brine which 
discourages plant groAvth and germ life, and makes 
the hay more palatable when it is fed. Any new 
hay Avill warm up more or less, and clover and Al¬ 
falfa on account of their lush leafage are likely to 
heat strongly. Keeping the heat beloAv the damage 
point is largely a matter of judgment and manage¬ 
ment. But nothing in this article will excuse going 
into the hayloft with loose matches in your pocket. 
f. d. c. 
Fencing the Pasture. 
HE pasture fence problem looms up big when 
the grass begins to get short and dry, and the 
corn on the other side of the fence is just getting 
to that stage in its growth that tempts the stock to 
make an effort to break in; 25 or 50 cows as the 
case may be having the range of a cornfield Avhen 
the crop stands shoulder high, results in great dam¬ 
age, not only in what is eaten off but in Avhat is 
broken down and trampled underfoot. Proper cai’e 
of the fences AA’ill avoid all this loss and worry. I 
find that although Ave have a number of makes of 
wire fencing that are strong and durable, they have 
this fault: the spaces near the top are large enough 
so that a dishorned cow can force her head through 
them. Pushing against the fence with those ox¬ 
like shoulders in order to reach all the forage pos¬ 
sible the fence as Avell as the posts are subject to 
a great strain, and the Avliole structure is often 
pushed over. If this does not occur, she will, in 
the effort to withdraw her head, strain the fence 
back again, often loosening or pulling the staples. 
I find that there is a fence made having the spaces 
all so close that it is impossible for cattle to 
get the head through and although this is made of 
lighter wire, making a cheaper fence, it serves a 
better purpose, as not being able to get the head 
through there is no strain on the fence. This Sum¬ 
mer our purebred Holstein bull acquired the habit 
of roaming at will. He was then placed in a yard 
by the barn that had been fenced in with heavy 
poultry fencing, and there Avas no more trouble. 
As to the question of posts for fencing, the expense 
of digging the holes and setting wood posts, even 
Avhere these are available, is considerable, especially 
Avhen the ground is dry. They soon decay and are 
easily broken off. There are a number of styles 
of steel and galvanized iron posts on the market, 
and I have found the round hollow galvanized iron 
post to be the most practical. This tube is larger 
at the bottom end, and the slit on the back of the 
post is left unwelded, while there are clips on the 
front in which the wires of the fence are hung, 
the clip being bent in over the Avire by a tap with a 
hammer. When the ground is soft these posts can 
be driven doAvn without the use of a bar to make 
a hole, but when the ground is dry and hard it is 
much better to drill a hole. A small malleable cap 
is placed over the top, so that the maul will not 
batter the post, Avliich is easily driven down the re¬ 
quired depth. The posts cost no more than the 
wood posts we buy, and are a permanent fixture, 
although they are easily pulled out of the ground to 
be used in some other place if it is desired to move 
the fence. henry e. cox. 
