84 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



reliable treatment of American foul brood without shaking. We find 

 men in all classes of bee-keeping who dream and it is a good thing to 

 dream too, because I might say that it is pretty hard to accomplish 

 anything successful in bee-keeping unless you think about these 

 things and the more we think about them oftentimes the greater will 

 be our results. The thing we have to guard against is, not be a narrow 

 minded bee crank. We have all met some men who are so narrow, they 

 get one idea and are not broad minded enough even when the idea is 

 found to be useless to acknowledge their fault and proceed along 

 other lines. If we become bee cranks, and most of us will, let us have 

 more than one idea which we will try to solve. Do not be narrow, 

 but be broad minded and if we find that we cannot work out the 

 principle which we had in mind, why, then read up some more and 

 think about it some more and probably you will find some other 

 problem equally interesting and which requires quite a lot of time and 

 thought to solve. 



One thing we do know, that is, that we do not know a great deal 

 about bee-keeping today, but we are just starting and there are all 

 kinds of opportunities for all of us to devise a great many things which 

 will be of benefit to bee-keeping and we might find out what has already 

 been tried if we look up some of the old bee journals. We have a 

 great many ideas which we think are absolutely new and we find that 

 they have been tried out many years ago. While we may keep on 

 trying to solve different problems that are troubling us to-day, we 

 must guard against getting narrow and we must proceed along proper 

 lines. 



Now, a word about the inspector. The apiary inspector, to be 

 successful, must be first of all a practical bee-keeper. You would be 

 surprised if you visited a few bee-keepers how soon they can tell, in 

 fact it is the first thing they do in many cases. They put out a few 

 feelers, ask a question here and a question there and another question, 

 and they are feeling you out to see whether you are a practical bee- 

 keeper and the only man that can be successful as an apiary inspector 

 is a practical bee-keeper. Theory in bee-keeping is all right, we can 

 read it up in books but unless we have actually handled bees we cannot 

 be successful as inspectors who own and keep bees and who have R'ad 

 practical experience in handling and in that way are able to help the 

 bee-keepers more. As I stated before, apiary inspection work, while 

 its end is to eradicate foul brood, that end can often times be reached 

 a great deal quicker by enabling the apiarist to become a better bee- 

 keeper than we can by cleaning up his apiary right away without 

 telling him why and wherefore and showing him where he can improve. 

 So the inspector must be a practical man and he must be tactful. You 

 would be surprised some times even in this day and age when you go 

 into a man's apiary and you start talking to him about foul brood and 

 he does not believe that there is such a thing. Many bee-keepers do 

 not believe there is any such thing as foul brood and if you do not start 

 out on the right road, if you are not tactful, you can hurt a bee-keeper's 

 feehngs considerably and the next thing you know that bee-keeper is 

 hard to handle. But if you are tactful in handling the bee-keeper, then 

 the first thing you know he is interested in the work, and, if the disease 



