114 



^ 



seventeii;nth annual report of the 





learned how to do without that extra 

 work. Don't make the paste too thick. 

 I usually make about a half a pint or 

 a pint at a time, but it must be cooked a 

 long time in order to break the cells of 

 the starch. Before it is done cooking, 

 put in a table spoonful of honey, not 

 necessarily thin honey, any honey will do. 

 If you put in this much in a pint of this 

 paste, you will have no trouble making it 

 stick, whether it goes clear around the 

 pail or not. 



A Member — Flour paste? 



The President — Flour paste or starch. 

 It will work all right if you put in some 

 honey and cook it long enough, of course 

 not so it will burn. Cook it about thirty 

 minutes. 



The Secretary — The advantage of this 

 other paste is that j^ou don't have to 

 bother to make it. 



]Mr. Dadant — If you make paste and 

 don't use all of it the same day, put on a 

 few labels at a time, put a little alum 

 powder in before j'ou make the paste and 

 it will keep it from souring. Your paste 

 will remain fresh for weeks or months. 



A Member — Does it take much? 



Mr. Dadant — No, probably a teaspoon- 

 ful to a gallon would be sufficient. 



A Member — It is often considerable help 

 to put in a little vinegar. 



A Member — A little concentrated lye 

 will give the same result as the alum. 



Mr. Moe — ]\Ir. President, I do not wish 

 to keep you waiting, but I would like to 

 ask the professor from the Ohio University 

 in regard to a theme that has been bother- 

 ing us in our state. He suggested a com- 

 bination of fruit growers and bee-keepers. 

 In our state, somehow or other the com- 

 bination never worked very successfully. 

 The bee-keepers complained that the fruit 

 growers were killing their bees by spraying, 

 and that the honey was being poisoned 

 during fruit bloom by spraying. I think 

 we gain here much knowledge that we 

 might dissemminate through our neighbor- 

 hood in certain localities, and sometimes a 

 little thing like that will save no end of 

 ill feeling. 



Professor Hine — So far as harmonizing 

 the spraying that is complained of, to keep 

 he fruit growers from sprayin when trees 

 are blooming, I think that is probably a 

 thing that may trouble a little now, but I 

 believe that is soon going to remedy itself ; 

 that is, the fruit growers are recognizing 

 now that they can't very well get along 

 without bees, and it seems to me an educa- 

 tional matter simply to inform them in 

 some way that they are really injuring 

 themselves as much as they are injuring 



the bee-keeper, by spraying when the trees 

 are in bloom. That is, they are killing 

 the very agents which are fertilizing their 

 blossoms-and therefore injuring themselves. 

 I think that is being talked at all the bee- 

 keepeis' conventions, and as I see it, a 

 great deal of good can be done by simply 

 keeping talking about that and telling 

 those fruit growers that bees are fertilizing 

 their blossoms, and have them get some 

 bees, if you can't do anything else, and go 

 into the bee business. 



A f^Tiit grower, as I said, is almost always 

 an enlightened fellow and he makes a good 

 bee-keeper. You can get him interested 

 in the bees, and when he gets interested in 

 bees he surely won't spray any more to 

 kill them; he knows there is some good to 

 come from them. I believe it is an educa- 

 tional matter, and can be gotten at very 

 easily. 



Mr. Dadant — Mr. President, I have had 

 a little experience in speaking to a mere. 

 I have been employed three or four times 

 to speak at Farmers' Institutes , and I have 

 found that the most important thing that 

 we could say as bee-keepers to-the farmers 

 wa|.not how to keep bees, but the benefit 

 of ^ees to agriculture and horticulture. I 

 find that a great many orchard owners are 

 still uninformed as to the possibility of 

 bees damaging blossoming fruit. I believe 

 it would have been a good plan to have 

 passed a resolution urging the farmers to 

 employ bee-keepers to lecture to the 

 agriculturalists throughout the country, 

 in order to inform them of the benefit and 

 harmlessness of bees to orchards. 



Mr. Hine — We are going to have a 

 farmers' week in the Ohio State University 

 in a few weeks. It comes between semes- 

 ters, about the first of February, and one 

 of the efforts which we are makihg, is to 

 have a bee-keepers' day in that farmers' 

 week, or have a day where we get in some 

 speakers that speak along practical lines. 

 "That is one of the lines which we are going 

 to push. We want ^to make this bee- 

 keepers' day and farmers' week a per- 

 manent thing. We get several thousands 

 of farmers and fruit growers engaged in 

 various kinds of agricultural pursuits, to 

 come in and spend a week at the University, 

 and it makes it a general movement along 

 agricultural lines, in anything that pertains 

 to agriculture, that will bring out the 

 farmers to talk things over. 



Of course, it is pretty hard to get them 

 all talked over in the same line, but as 

 these things come up and are called to our 

 attention, speakers are employed to talk 

 along those particular lines. 



