318 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



farm. I think I got nearly one hundred pounds of honey on an 

 average, excepting this year, of comb honey. I am favorably 

 situated where our bottom lands are about three miles wide. I 

 do not know that it would average quite as much as that, but I 

 am certain that over sixty pounds has been the usual average. 



Pres. Wilcox: As I said, for a good many years I averaged 

 about eighty pounds of comb honey, and I should call the aver- 

 age this year, in our neighborhood, about one -third. 



C. Thielmann: This year I did not come out even. I have 

 kept bees for twenty-one years, and I always managed to make 

 my bees pay me about as well as anything else . For the last 

 nine or ten years they have paid me better than anything else, 

 even if I take this year's failure in with it. I think my bees 

 have averaged me about one thousand dollars a year for the 

 last ten years, and I have done the work pretty much alone. I 

 have now 220 colonies. Mj average number for ten years has 

 been about 140 to 150 spring colonies. I never had a great 

 many over 140 or 145 until this last spring. My business is 

 farming, but my farm is not an extra piece of land, it is hilly 

 and rough, but we have land enough, about 200 or 250 acres, 

 and all the land, the house, barns, horses and other stock and 

 all the money invested is more than five or six times, yes, ten 

 times the value of the bees, yet the bees for the last four or five 

 years have pjaid a good deal more clear money than the whole 

 farm. 



M. Cutler: Mr. President, I am a green hand in the bee bus- 

 iness, commencing a year ago last spring, but I would not rec- 

 ommend any new beginner to go into the bee business and fol- 

 low that as an occupation alone. As a rule our apiarists who 

 are succeeding at the present time are those who have had a 

 good many years experience, and many of them are doing 

 something else in connection with the business, and even the 

 most successful ones are selling supplies and making supplies 

 in connection with it. I have not heard of that man who has 

 commenced and been successful right along. There is gener- 

 ally about as much luck as skill about it, and according to my 

 observation I believe that nine-tenths of those that commence 

 keeping bees fail. Of course it is merely due to not under- 

 standing the nature of the bees and keeping them up in good 

 condition. I know of a man out in our county who had thirty 

 to forty colonies two or three years ago that have been cut 

 down to ten or twelve poor, weak colonies, some of the hives 

 filled with moths, and comb that is nearly destroyed, and those 



