94 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OP THE 



DEVELOPING A BEE-KEEPING BUSINESS. 



{By Morley Pettit.) 



Of the different classes of bee-keepers we have perhaps the great- 

 est hopes for the amateur. By an amateur I mean one who takes 

 up the keeping of bees because he wants to, not because his father 

 died and left some hives sitting out in the orchard, or because a swarm 

 of bees came and lit on a tree and he took pity on them, put them into 

 a hive, allowed them to remain and perhaps hived the swarms there- 

 after. He follows bee-keeping for the love of it. 



We have found the most hopeful amateurs amongst the back- 

 lotters, professional or business men who have room in the back lot 

 for some hives of bees, with which they amuse themselves out of hours. 

 Very often the avocation outgrows the vocation and the amateur 

 becomes a professional, and a very successful one. His mental train- 

 ing gives him an advantage. 



Success in bee-keeping depends primarily on a knowledge of the 

 behavior of bees under various conditions. You have just been speak- 

 ing of their activities in defending the hive. Then there is their be- 

 havior in swarming, in wintering, in queen-rearing and so on. These 

 various things the interested person studies. He spends his spare 

 hours watching the activity of the bees at the entrance. When weather 

 favors he studies inside hive conditions, the appearance of the brood, 

 the laying of the queen, and so on. At swarming time he studies the 

 conditions under which they swarm. He discovers that when they 

 are preparing to swarm they first have drone brood, then later, queen 

 cells, and when these are capped the swarm emerges with the old 

 queen. Then the winter season comes on and he observes how they 

 form their cluster and dispose of their stores for \vinter. If he gets 

 a few favorable seasons he learns the supering and taking off honey. 

 If he uses sections he has trouble getting the bees to go into them and 

 perhaps learns to produce section honey. If he gets an extractor he 

 does not have so much trouble, but learns when the honey is ready to 

 extract, and begins on the selling problem. 



With the increase of his knowledge, interest and success, his 

 apiary develops and soon his pasture is well occupied. The matter 

 of an outapiary comes up, and with it the swarming problem. If he 

 has not already taken up the control of swarming he must do it now. 

 There are some who drive to an outapiary every evening during the 

 swarming season to harvest the swarms from the neighboring trees, 

 but this is not satisfactory. It is also too expensive to have someone 

 watch for swarms, at present cost of labor. , Along with the prevention 

 of swarming our amateur must face the matter of requeening. That 

 is where a number of beekeepers fail. When bees swarm they requeen 

 themselves automatically, but when we begin to interfere with nature 

 we must carry the interference through to its logical conclusion. As 

 swarm prevention prevents natural requeening the latter must be 

 carefully looked after by the bee-keeper. 



The next point in the business of our amateur bee-keeper is sys- 

 tem. At best, bee-keeping is a business of details, consisting of small 

 bees, small units of equipment, and small items of attention. Unless 

 these are organized pretty thoroughly the bee-keeper is going to spend 



