620 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



And so we have frequently seen that the same methods employed by dif- 

 ferent individuals in nearly the same locality meet with opposite results. 

 But of course there are reasons for these differences which may not al- 

 v>ays be clearly seen or easily accounted for. My advice to all wherever 

 located is this: If you have followed any special plan of wintering for a 

 series of years with uniformly reasonable success, let that be your settled 

 system and hold to it at least until by careful experimentation, with a 

 few colonies at first, you have become convinced that you have discovered 

 a better way. I mean to say by this that it is not safe to attempt in a 

 v/holesale way to follow some method that has proven satisfactory to some 

 bee keeper at a distance far remote from you and whose surroundings may 

 be far different from your own. My observations for many j^ears past 

 have led me then to the final conclusion that at least in our northern 

 latitudes, cellar wintering as a rule is the plan for us to follow, inasmuch 

 as it is attended with smaller losses of bees and a saving of a considerable 

 amount of honey as compared with other methods. Possibly after one 

 has provided himself with the required number of suitable double walled 

 chaff hives, he may be able to winter his bees on their summer stands 

 with less labor and inconvenience than by the plan which necessitates the 

 carrying in and out of cellar wintered colonies and yet I believe that we 

 can each well afford almost any extra expense that will bring about the 

 very best results. 



FARMING ON A BUSINESS BASIS. 



BY DALLAS N. MC GREW, EMEESOX, L\. 



(Before the Mills County Farmers' Institute.) 



Farming is the base upon which all forms of business stand and is 

 conducted in the least business like way of all business. This is done 

 by owners and renters alike. 



Formerly it has been that the farmer could put in his crop, harvest it, 

 and realize a good profit even if his methods were not the best, but now, 

 with the increase in the price of land and of equipment, a profit is not 

 so easily obtained. 



Every agricultural paper that we pick up has some article referring to 

 the rapid increase of population and the smaller increase of production. 

 Our population has, in the last ten years, increased 21 per cent, our farm 

 area 4.8 per cent and the production of cereals less than 1 per cent. Dr. 

 Hopkins, of Illinois, at a recent meeting in Chicago, gave figures which 

 showed that the average farm acre is producing less each year and ex- 

 plained why we had not felt a shortage of food stuffs as yet. These figures 

 showed a decrease in exports of corn for 136,000,000 bushels and of wheat 

 for 82,000,000 bushels for the five years previous to 1900. Now even with 

 our increase in production this enormous decrease in exports makes it 

 very evident that the question of feeding the increase of population, 

 thought to be groundless by some, is going to be a real issue before many 

 years. Some people are afraid of an over-production of grain and are 

 of the opinion that prices are going to lower. The figures that I have 



