The Honey Bee 1521 



The first summer was hard, and we made many mistakes. To 

 make matters worse it was a poor season in our locality, owing to 

 the extremely late spring and succeeding severe drouth. From 

 our 200 colonies we harvested slightly over 6,000 pounds of comb 

 honey, and about 2,000 pounds of extracted. 



The season of 1908 again proved a poor one, owing to the same 

 conditions of drouth as in the previous summer. But 1909, how- 

 ever, gave us a good crop of fine-quality honey. 



I found that 200 or more colonies were more than I could prop- 

 erly manage with numerous other duties depending upon me, so 

 we gradually reduced our number to about 170. From these we 

 harvested, the past season, 11,500 pounds of comb honey, and 

 about 2,200 pounds of extracted. 



The work in producing these crops was all done by women, 

 with the exception of putting the bees in and out of their winter 

 quarters, moving them to and from the out-apiary, and drawing 

 the honey to the freight house when it was ready for shipment. 

 For this work we hire men from the neighborhood. 



Mother and I make all our supplies, including comb founda- 

 tion, and we do the extracting. My only help in working the bees 

 is my sister, during the two months she is with us. A 15-year-old 

 niece assisted with the fijiishing of the sections the past season. 



Beekeeping for women, although a healthy, and for the most 

 part pleasant occupation, is by no means all easy work. To 

 carry tons of honey from the hives into your honey house., or 

 bend all day over bee hives, handling and shaking heavy combs, 

 would soon scatter illusions to the winds, and probably end in 

 prosaic backache and kindred complications for a woman not 

 accustomed to strenuous work. For a woman to plunge into bee- 

 keeping with the hope of at once deriving a competent income 

 from it would, in most cases, end in discouragement and failure. 

 If, however, she is content to begin with a few colonies, and 

 study the habits and management of her bees before she ventures 

 deep, she will in time find it a remunerative business. She will 

 also find her endurance gi-owing with her colonies, for cultured 

 woman is but the weaker sex because for centuries she has 

 pampered herself, and allowed herself to be pampered. The 

 peasant women of Europe who go into the fields and work, 



