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ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



121 



honey you sold. If you did not sell it 

 all, you would have the honey, and 

 after a little experience you would 

 know how to manage to keep that 

 honey, not only for six months but for 

 as long as you desire — then there 

 would come a time when you could 

 probably sell it, as was the case in 

 some localities this year, where they 

 have in years past produced lots of 

 honey, there is scarcely any. 



All of these things, as you have 

 heard today, can be managed. It is a 

 question of evolution in the bee-keep- 

 ing business as in everything else. 



Evolution is the crying thing of the 

 age. We are all evoluting, some of us 

 perhaps faster than others. These 

 things are all necessary — all help 

 along. 



I think we should get twenty cents 

 a pound wholesale, retail at twenty- 

 five cents. 



There is more or less breakage that 

 the retailer has to bear with comb 

 honey, and when people get to know 

 that they can get extracted honey that 

 is pure, not adulterated with any for- 

 eign matter such as glucose, it will 

 then be in demand and it will probably 

 sell for fifteen cents a pound in a 

 wholesale way. It ought to bring that 

 now; it is worth the money. 



By the way, I find this year that 

 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and" Gentlemen: 



My subject this afternoon is "Ex- 

 the price of butter, especially, being so 

 tension Work in Bee-Keeping." 

 high, that we are selling lots more of 

 the extracted honey. They are using 

 it on bread instead of butter, and I 

 think it is one of the reasons why 

 there has been a better demand. 



Quite unexpectedly extracted honey 

 fs higher today than it was thirty, six- 

 ty, ninety days ago, by a cent or two 

 in some instances, a pound. 



I see that Doctor (Phillips) has ar- 

 rived. Mr. President, I will politely 

 give him the floor. 



A member — I would like to aslS him 

 a question: I would like to have him 

 tell us how far that net rate is work- 

 ing in the trade in general. In my 

 state I was wondering what to do 

 about it. In some cases it is a great 

 help, in other cases it is not. I think 

 the gentleman could give us valuable 

 information along that line — the net 

 weight law. 



Mr. Burnett — I think that nowadays 

 where honey is put in frames 

 with almost universal weight, the 



same, that the law has not benefited 

 greatly. 



President Miller — ^We will have ten 

 minutes intermission, after which we 

 will hear Dr. Phillips. 



President Miller — (After intermis- 

 sion) We now have an address by Dr. 

 Phillips, of Washington. 



EXTENSION WORK IN BEE- 

 KEEPING. 

 Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 



My subject this afternoon is "Exten- 

 sion Work in Bee-Keeping." 



Last December, while attending the 

 semi-centennial celebration of the 

 Michigan Bee -Keepers' Association, at 

 Grand Rapids, the after-dinner toasts 

 seemed to offer opportunity for dis- 

 cussion of a topic somewhat out of the 

 ordinary for a convention of bee- 

 keepers. It seemed appropriate to give 

 expression to an opinion concerning 

 the ways in which bee-keeping is to 

 advance. Bee-keepers all realize that 

 it must advance. It was pointed out that 

 past and present bee-keepers have 

 toiled laboriously to get the information 

 needed for their work and that the 

 present methods of learning bee-keep- 

 ing are too slow and too uncertain. 



Bee-keeping is often a sort of a tra- 

 dition handed down from one bee- 

 keeper to his successor. There are 

 the books on bee-keeping but most of 

 such literature is not pedagogically 

 correct. A few schools and colleges 

 offer courses in bee-keeping but these 

 reach relatively few. The bee jour- 

 nals are not edited primarily for the 

 giving of the fundamentals of the bus- 

 iness. The bulletins and circulars on 

 bee-keeping from Government offices 

 do not reach enough people, nor are 

 they the most effective method of 

 presentation. 



The apiary inspection system is 

 probably today the most efficient, ex- 

 tensive instrument for the teaching of 

 bee-keeping, and this function is a 

 mere side line of the work. 



In the talks of the Michigan meet- 

 ing last winter, it was prophesied that 

 the present methods of instruction 

 would be replaced by more efficient 

 methods. Professional bee-keepers are 

 not being made fast enough, and with- 

 out an increase among the profes- 

 sionals bee-keeping cEinnot advance. 



A brief quotation will make clear one 

 obstacle in this advancement: "Any 

 bright boy ought to be able to learn 

 the essentials of bee-keeping as prac- 

 ticed by our best bee-keepers in a year. 



