ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPEKS' ASSOCIATION". 79 



successful, that it requires time and that it requires a great deal of 

 knowledge and information of the life history and habits of the. bee, 

 so that the benefit which the bee-keeping industry derives from those 

 amateur bee-keepers is much greater than any harm they can possibly 

 do to the bee-keeping business. 



Now another point I wish to make with regard to the making of 

 amateur bee-keepers is this — in almost every case where an amateur 

 gets a few colonies of bees, those amateurs will create a much greater 

 demand for honey in their immediate locality than they can possibly 

 supply. That gives the larger bee-keeper an opportunity to get rid 

 of considerable honey, so that from that point of view alone, the ama- 

 teur bee-keepers are really a benefit to bee-keeping rather than a 

 source of danger. Of course we want to start them on the right road 

 and keep them on that road, then there will be no danger. 



We also sometimes meet amateurs who provide us with a good 

 deal of humor, and they can often see the humor themselves, after- 

 wards, but at the time the humor amounts to near tragedy. I re- 

 member one case especially of a lady who had taken a few lessons in 

 bee-keeping and had gone out into the apiary with a number of other 

 ladies and you know when there is a crowd, it is wonderful how quiet 

 the bees are when they are handled. In those classes the ladies wore 

 their summer dresses, with short sleeves, without veils and without 

 gloves. They saw the bees handled and handled them themselves 

 and they began to think that they could go right home and handle 

 any bees in that way. One lady had about five colonies and last 

 summer one of the colonies swarmed and she went out without a 

 smoker and hived the swarm and got through in fine shape, did not 

 get a sting at all. Then in a few days she thought she would like to 

 put on a few supers. She went to the apiary, minus the smoker, and 

 opened one colony and started to put on a super and before she could 

 put the super on she was very badly stung and was in bed for two or 

 three days afterwards. She realized then that there is not much use 

 trying to manipulate bees unless you have the requisite knowledge 

 and the appliances with which to work among those bees, and while 

 she smiled about it, afterwards, she is still a bee-keeper and I think 

 she will develop into a real bee-keeper, she realized at the time that 

 it was amusing for those in the vicinity but there was no humor in it 

 for her. Those are the things we have to guard against in giving in- 

 structions to amateurs. Give them a true idea of the necessary amount 

 of knowledge that they require and then I think that the amateur 

 bee-keepers are a benefit in every way to the bee-keeping industry 

 and we must remember that it is from those amateurs that the special- 

 ist will be developed to a very large degree. 



The amateur bee-keeper is usually a pleasure for the bee inspector 

 to meet. We do not like to meet bee-keepers who have no interest 

 in the work and from that standpoint, of course, the amateur is full 

 of ideas, full of the bee fever and is always asking questions and a great 

 many of the answers to those questions will benefit the bee-keeper quite 

 a little, so that the amateur bee-keeper is usually a friend of the inspector 

 and we like to meet him and talk with him. 



