874 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Dec. 29, 1904. 



might possibly be 200 in the United St.ites. I would make 

 that gness. 



Dr. Miller— About that time will he tell us what would 

 be the subscription price of the Review? [Laughter.] 



Mr. Hutchinson — The subscription price of the Review, 

 if it were published, would be the same. There might not 

 be any Review. But there might be a time when there would 

 be enough sole bee-keepers who could afford to pay to have 

 such a paper printed. 



ilr. Hardy (N. Y.) — I believe Mr. Hutchinson is very 

 severe in his paper. I, lor one, think I am the hardest hit 

 in that paper because I am engaged in three or four different 

 businesses. I am not only a farmer of 220 acres, but also 

 a commercial photographer — what I call an expert — I get the 

 very best furniture factories to photograph work for agents' 

 samples; I am also a bee-keeper. It all depends, in my 

 estimation, on conditions. Conditions have a great deal to 

 do with a man's business. We may be successful bee-keepers 

 and also run another business, in my estimation. Conditions 

 alter cases. I started in the business three years ago. My 

 father was one of the old school. I was in Syracuse, N. Y., 

 in the photograph business. On the death of my father I 

 went' home. Mother had eighteen swarms of bees in Lang- 

 stroth hives in very bad condition; my sister had taken care 

 of them for two years. They were in a weakened condition, 

 full of worms. I said, "I believe I can run these bees." 

 My mother says, "You will never make a bee-keeper; your 

 father said you were afraid of them and did not dare to go 

 into the yard." I said that I would like to try it. In the 

 first season I had IS swarms and sold $154 worth of honey 

 from them and I had a little honey to give away and got 

 $100 for 34 colonies. The second year I did $750 worth of 

 commercial photographing and the farm turned about $2,750, 

 and that year I bought bees and sold $262 worth of honey. 

 This summer since June 10, my bees did not get ready to 

 swarm, and at the shaking time my photographing season 

 came on. Since June 10 up to the present date I have made 

 $592 from photographing, and turned out two tons of honey 

 from 70 colonies. 



Dr. Bohrer— I don't know exactly the object of a paper 

 of that kind at this time before a convention of this character. 

 I am sure that my feelings have always been in the direction 

 of disseminating all knowledge and inforrnation possible 

 among the people concerning the habits and scientific manage- 

 ment of the honey-bee. I believe that with all we can do 

 there is not any danger of there ever being an over-produc- 

 tion of honey. We want the proper legislation, and the 

 character of some of the resolutions that have been adopted 

 here today were of that tendency. That is pointing in the 

 direction of wholesale legislation that will protect, not only 

 the bee-keeper, but Ms product, as well as the consumer. I 

 would make a terrible fight before a legislative committee 

 if it was intended I should abandon the pursuit of honey 

 making. If it is the aim and object of this paper to dis- 

 courage the dissemination of knowledge as to honey and 

 honey bees, I am opposed to it. 



Dr. Miller — In sober earnest, I do believe that the general 

 welfare of the public demands to a certain extent that bee- 

 keeping shall be specialized. If it goes no further than to 

 have a farmer keep a few bees — and I am not saying any- 

 thing against that either — if we are to limit it to that there 

 will not be the advancement made that there is. I believe 

 the more it is specialized the more likely we are to have a 

 larger amount of honey produced ; the larger amount the 

 better it is for the nation. If we can get it and have it used 

 largely as a matter of every day diet we are doing the public 

 a benefit. So that I believe Mr. Hutchinson is doing a good 

 thing in urging that bee-keepers keep a larger number of 

 bees. 



Mr. Abbott — This bee-keeping as a specialty is a dream 

 that we have been dreaming for a long time, and while these 

 brethren have been dreaming that, I have been trying to 

 educate the farmer to keep bees, and I have been publishing 

 a little paper that goes to that class of people and it talks to 

 about 20,000 of them every month, and that class of people 

 buys about $25,000 worth of supplies from the first of January 

 to the end of the season ; and if you think you can eradicate 

 that class of bee-keepers who can buy $25,000 worth of bee- 

 supplies, and with something like 4,000 of them supporting 

 a paper that believes in bee-keeping and general farming, you 

 will make a serious mistake. This is kind of talking behind 

 the scenes and giving a little private business, but I want to 

 tell you the farmer bee-keeper is here to stay, and there is 

 a whole lot of him, too, 



Mr. Hutchinson — If bee-keeping would be advanced by 



doing away with the bee-papers I would be willing to step 

 out and do something else. 



Mr. Rhees (Utah) — As a specialist in bee-keeping I am 

 not at all opposed to the farmers keeping a few bees, but I 

 would discourage farmers keeping bees without knowing any- 

 thing about bees. Anyone who will encourage a man to buy 

 a few colonies of bees in order that he might have a little 

 honey, without encouraging him to know something about the 

 habits and diseases of the bees, is doing a great injustice. 

 We spend a lot of money in keeping our yards free from 

 disease that is spread by these people who do not know how 

 to keep bees. I believe that the farmer can produce his own 

 honey if he wants to. I would like to see him do it; at 

 the same time I would like to see him become familiar with 

 the habits and diseases of the bees so that by keepmg a few 

 bees he would not do a great injustice to his neighbors who 

 are trying to make a living by bee-keeping. In my locality I 

 am getting my living from bees. I have run a thousand 

 colonies and over, for some time, and always succeed in 

 getting eough to live on. 



Mr. Calhoun (Mo.)— Mr. President, I really owe it to Dr. 

 Miller, that I am today able to put on the market 15,000 

 pounds of honey this fall, and 10,000 pounds last year, but I 

 am not a specialist. At our National Convention at Hamil- 

 ton, 111., some years ago, I asked the question — I was feeling 

 my way — if there was anyone in the Convention that had 

 made any money out of bee-keeping, if it landed any of them 

 at the bank — that was what I was looking at. At that time 

 I was a mechanic, a blacksmith, and I was making a living 

 at the farm, and I knew how to raise corn and hogs and 

 pumpkins. With regard to Mr. Hutchinson's paper, I am 

 glad he has brought the subject before us. It puts us to 

 thinking, but I believe that we are apt to get the wrong 

 impression from his paper. Because men make a specialty 

 of telling us how to farm, that does not say that the general 

 public shall not farm. I believe in having specialists in the 

 bee-business, to go on and tell us what to do, but that does 

 not cut us off from doing that thing. Conditions change, 

 and nothing takes place until the conditions get ripe for that. 

 Honey ought to be shipped out of our country by the car- 

 load, just like wood and corn. All over Missouri honey 

 ought to be shipped out by the car-load. When I was a boy . 

 I was ashamed to go to town with a basket of eggs, simply 

 because there wasn't a demand for them. Why? The idea 

 had not obtained in the minds of the people that eggs could 

 be shipped successfully, and the machinery had not been 

 gotten up to make packages so that the eggs could be shipped 

 to market. I remember when they used to take oats and 

 bran, put the eggs in it and haul them to Hannibal, and of 

 all mixtures you ever saw when they got there, they had it! 

 Now conditions have changed, and I thank God specialists 

 have gone forward and shown us we can put up our honey 

 in a marketable condition so that we can put up our produc- 

 tions together, send them to the market, and get a market 

 price for them. Some say, how are you going to sell this 

 honey? Last year I called their attention to this fact that 

 there is no one so far from market as he who has nothing 

 to sell. I am interested in the producing part of the honey 

 season, to produce the honey, and between times in the winter 

 I can sell what I have produced. I go right around among 

 the retail merchants in the large towns, and in the outskirts, 

 and I take their orders for so many cases of honey. I go 

 to some wholesale man and say, "Here is an order for so 

 many thousand pounds of honey, can't you handle a few 

 thousand pounds at that price throwing in this order with 

 it?" I sell to the wholesalers by the ton that way. The con- 

 ditions are ripe for every farmer to produce honey so that 

 there will be a market in our towns for shippers to the great 

 markets of the world. I am glad we have specialists, special- 

 ists in the line of bee-journals and specialists in supplies to 

 put it into marketable shape. I believe the time will come 

 when we will take our honey to the towns and there will 

 be a place there to sell it as we do our eggs and butter. 

 I believe we really lose sight of the real worth of the bees 

 over the world. I believe we have our eyes on the central 

 benefit of bees, and that is the production of honey. If I 

 understand from the writings of these men in their journals 

 they hold that the primary work of the bee is to fertilize the 

 flowers, and we are getting our minds upon this central fact, 

 the production of honey, and we are getting a better class 

 of farmers ; they are gaining, and you are going to find out 

 they do not have to be specialists in the way of producing 

 honey. Tlie time was when, if we had a boy that we couldn't 

 make .i doctor or a lawyer out of, we would say, "Give him 

 a mule and plow and let him go out and plow the ground." 

 The conditions are changing. The time is coming when we 



