COTTON 
255 
plus comb honey, and by that I mean more 
than an average in good seasons. Now it 
has come to be a fond dream of mine that 
all reasonably good colonies having good 
queens can be brought to the swarming 
point by that time.” 
The poor seasons continued for many 
years in the clover region when comb honey 
was produced. In 1901 in a personal inter¬ 
view with the writer, James Heddon, who 
at that time was a leader in American bee¬ 
keeping, stated that his location had failed 
during the preceding 15 years, and that he 
had given up hope that the State of Michi¬ 
gan would ever produce another crop of 
honey. 
GOOD SEASONS ARE RETURNING. 
Gradually, however, the tide turned in 
the direction of better crops, as beekeepers 
learned to leave more honey in the hives 
and quit nursing .along little colonies in 
little brood-chambers by furnishing them 
food on the “from hand to mouth” plan. 
Gradually the colonies of better beekeepers 
have grown larger and larger until now 
even the 10-frame Langstroth hive has be¬ 
come too small in many cases to hold all 
the brood of a good colony at the begin¬ 
ning of the honey flow, and those who are 
using a smaller hive now usually expect to 
have two stories better filled with brood at 
the beginning of the honey flow than was 
the single story of 25 to 30 years ago. The 
comb-honey producers of the present who 
are still using the eight-frame hive do not 
find it necessary to take out empty combs 
from the brood-chamber and insert dum¬ 
mies to fill the vacant space. Instead of 
this they are making increase with the 
extra frames of brood left over when they 
reduce this hive from a two-story hive to 
a single story at the time the comb-honev 
supers are put on at the beginning of the 
honey flow. 
These changes for the better have come 
about so gradually that many beekeepers 
have failed to notice the changes in their 
management which are largely responsible 
for them, and some are inclined to believe 
that the seasons are growing better. Others 
say that we have developed better queens 
which can fill 12 to 15 frames with brood 
instead of 5 to 8 as during the days of ex¬ 
tremely small brood-chambers. 
But to be convinced that the greater 
amount of stores which the better beekeep¬ 
ers are now leaving with the bees is largely 
responsible for the better conditions of to¬ 
day, it is only necessary to visit a few of 
the many beekeepers who still compel their 
colonies to live from hand to mouth, for 
some have not yet learned the lesson from 
the period of depression from which our 
industry has not yet fully recovered. 
CORAL-BERRY. —See Buckbusli. 
CORN SYRUP.— See Glucose. 
CORN SUGAR.— See Sugar. 
COTTON (Gossypium ).—The number 
of species of cotton have been placed from 
five to fifty-four, but conservative author¬ 
ity admits of seven well-defined species. 
The number of varieties with English 
names is very large, but the common names 
give no assistance; they even tend to lead 
the botanist astray as to the origin of the 
species, e. g., a cotton called Siamese comes 
from America. Only four or five species 
are of interest to the beekeeper. The Asi¬ 
atic cottons (Gossypium herbaceum) are ex¬ 
tensively cultivated in India and China, 
and have been known for more than 200(5 
years. American upland cotton was long 
referred to this species by mistake. Tree 
cotton ( G. arboreum ), a taller species with 
purple flowers, is a native of Africa, but 
was held sacred by the Hindus of India 
and cultivated about their temples. The 
botanical name of the Egyptian cottons is 
uncertain, but by many they are considered 
forms of G. barbadense. 
Two species of cotton are cultivated in 
the United States. They are Sea Island 
cotton ( G. barbadense ) and American up¬ 
land cotton (G. hirsutum ). Sea Island cot¬ 
ton yields a very fine long staple (IV 2 to 2 
inches in length), but it is grown only 
along the coast of South Carolina and in¬ 
land in southern Georgia and northern 
Florida. Upland cotton (G. hirsutum) 
forms more than 99 per cent of the cotton 
crop of the United States. Two principal 
commercial types are grown in the United 
States—short staple upland cotton (fibers 
under 1% inches in length), which has by 
far the largest acreage; and long staple 
upland cotton (fibers U/g to lfl /2 inches 
long), which is largely confined to the Ya- 
