122 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 14 



approach that are advocated for foulbrood control — the one being 

 through education and the other through the adoption of legal measures 

 for the control and eradication of disease. Some advocate chiefly the 

 one and some chiefly the other. The very finti belief of the writer is 

 that either measure without the help of the other will be a failure. 

 The reasons for this belief are fundamental. Perhaps in a great many 

 cases educational measures might be all that would be necessary. In 

 other words, if all the beekeepers are made to understand the nature of 

 bee diseases and to know the possibilities of these diseases as a menace 

 to the beekeeping industry, they would be only too glad to take advan- 

 tage of this knowledge and to use the proper methods for eliminating or 

 reducing to a minimum all loss from such diseases. But because of 

 certain elements which go to make up the sum total of human nature, 

 there will always be a number of beekeepers or perhaps I should say 

 people owning bees, who either through carelessness, indifference, or 

 possibly through the possession of even more undesirable traits can be 

 handled in no other way than by the arm of the law, and this number 

 will always be large enough to prevent the eradication and complete 

 control of bee diseases through educational methods alone. Even this 

 perhaps comparatively small percentage, which refuses to be influenced 

 by educational methods, is in actual practice reduced to a still smaller 

 percentage by the knowledge that if they fail to be affected by the 

 educational doses, a still stronger medicine may be administered in the 

 form of legal compulsion. 



As to the educational methods which may be used, I would say that 

 every educational agency which can be brought to bear upon the 

 problem should be employed, such as courses in beekeeping in Agri- 

 cultural Colleges, state and county beekeepers associations, extension 

 service, farmers' institutes, special schools in beekeeping, printed reports, 

 circulars, bulletins, etc.; but in addition to all this, and I believe of 

 even greater importance than all this, the men who go out to do the inspec- 

 tion work and control work generally, as authorized by the law, should 

 be men thoroughly competent to do whatever educational work is neces- 

 sary and should be men who would go out with the attitude of being 

 friends and helpers of the beekeeper rather than with the attitude of one 

 who goes out merely to do police control work. He should fall back 

 upon the authority with which he is armed by law, only as a very last 

 recourse, but in case it is necessary to attain the desired end he should 

 use his authority to the fullest extent. The methods follov/ed will 

 naturally differ somewhat with the different people whom the inspector 

 meets. It can be seen from the foregoing that the inspector should be 

 not only a man competent to do the educational work, but he should be 



