1514 Department of Agriculture 



keeper. If located in a good honej section, with an apiary of 

 fifty to a hundred colonies, beekeeping as a side-issue should 

 prove helpful in providing for the rainy day or make possible 

 pleasures otherwise denied. 



Beekeeping is full of potentialities for the professional man 

 and especially for the minister in charge of a rural church. The 

 rural church problem is a vital and pressing one. The scope of 

 church work is enlarging and methods are chanoino-. The 

 country minister must know the problems of the community, he 

 must understand the "rural mind;" he must be a leader in the 

 fight for economic as well as for social and spiritual salvation. 

 The minister that spends all his time in his study with his books 

 and in making professional parish calls will never get the " rural 

 view point." That knowledge comes from sharing a common 

 lot, manual labor and contact with the soil. 



Beekeeping will give the minister a point of contact with the 

 work-a-day life of the community. Able to stand forth, a skilled 

 laborer, he will command a greater faith and a larger hearing 

 among others that labor. 



The country parish offers great opportunities for service, but 

 it is a service that does not yield great financial returns, in very 

 many instances not even a fair living. Facing such conditions, 

 the value of beekeeping as a side-issue becomes self-evident. I 

 dare say that many ministers having acquired experience and 

 skill, by properly systematizing the work of parish and apiary, 

 could, without destroying their professional efficiency, keep from 

 one to two hundred colonies, and those colonies would help tre- 

 mendously in making ends a little more than meet. 



Mr. Beekeeper, for pleasure, health, and for the sake of his 

 pocket-book, urge your minister to keep a few bees, and 1 e in 

 turn will work out with you more efficient methods, and help you 

 to estal)lish beekeeping as one of the most skilled and desirable 

 of agricultural pursuits. 



