618 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Here we send our child to school from six to eight months in a year 

 and by the time he is grown we have a dude out of the boy and a wall 

 flower out of the girl. 



I overheard men talking in a hotel some weeks ago. One said, "That 

 a half dozen of his boy companions had been sent to college and beem 

 graduated and not one of them could feed himself." 



Education divorced from avocation is positively harmful. I read that 

 40 per cent of our graduates from our agricultural college return to the: 

 farms and become actual farmers. Would then that we could so arrange 

 it so we could put every farmer's son in our agricultural college. 



And now one word to the Hon. Mr. Barry. When you go to Des 

 Moines to discharge the duty we have delegated to you, don't be stingy 

 with our money when you come to consider the needs of our agricultural 

 college. Better spend a million in experimenting and lose every dollar 

 of it, than cripple our work there and the interests of generations yet un- 

 born, by withholding more than is meet. 



WINTER PROBLEMS. 



C. H, TRUE, EDGEWOOD. 



(Read at the Annual Meeting of the Iowa Bee Keepers' Association.) 

 Recent investigation goes to show that the number of honey bees kept 

 in our state at the present time is less by several thousand colonies than 

 those that have been handled in former years. This great falling off in so 

 important an industry should be a matter of much concern to us all as 

 honey producers, and should lead us to adopt measures if possible to check 

 its further progress. The losses referred to may be attributed to several 

 causes, that of poor wintering being doubtless the greatest. Perhaps 

 there is no other question that relates to the work of bee-keeping more 

 important or that is more frequently and fully discussed or that has 

 brought out such a wide difference of opinions and experiences as the 

 question we are now to consider. I do not care to discuss at this time all 

 of the theories that others have advanced, nor the claims that have been 

 made for the various methods advocated for the safe wintering of our 

 colonies. On the other hand this brief article is presented simply as a 

 nucleus in the hope that it may draw out inquiries and discussions touch- 

 ing the matters that must be omitted in the paper. It would seem that 

 we have had both time and opportunity during all the past years of our 

 investigation to have determined the relative value of the different meth- 

 ods employed, and to solve some of the difficult things concerning the 

 wintering of our bees as to lead us to determine each one for himself 

 which one of the systems in practice is best suited to his individual 

 surroundings. The injunction "prove all things, hold fast to that which 

 is good" may be aptly applied to our efforts in providing the very best 

 protection for our bees during the most critical period of the year. 

 Proceeding upon this supposition, I may simply give the results of my 

 own plan that I have employed for the past eight years with unvarying 

 success. Being located in the northeastern corner of the state just above 



