472 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 25, 1901. 



^ ^ Bio^raohical. ^ | 



MR. ROBERT WILKIN. 



We present on the iirst page this week the latest picture 

 of one of the leading pioneer bee-keepers of California — R- 

 Wilkin. His son-in-law, Mr. J. F. Mclntyre, has kindly sent 

 us the following biographical sketch : 



Kobert Wilkin was born near Londonderry, Guernsey Co., 

 Ohio, July 4, 1829, and died at Newhall, Calif., May .30, 

 1901. He leaves two daughters, Mrs. J. F. Mclntyre and 

 Mrs. J. M. Owens, and 8 grandchildren. 



He was educated at Westminster College, New Wilming- 

 ton, Pa. Soon after leaving college he married Eliza Will- 

 iamson, who had attended the college at the same time. He 

 had one daughter, Harriet, by this marriage, his wife dying 

 when the child was 9 months old. About 4 years later he 

 married Isabella Gordon, by whom he had one daughter, Mary. 

 His second wife died in 1888. 



Mr. Wilkin made a specialty of the bee-business for nearly 

 •iO years; he left a journal of the business from 1862 to 

 1901. in which I find many interesting items. His first in- 

 vestment in this line was to buy the patent-right to make and 

 sell the Langstroth hive in several counties in Ohio. This 

 venture was not a financial success. The next venture was 

 to buy up a lot of black bees, transfer and Italianize them, 

 and commenced the business of selling Italian queens, and 

 colonies, at Cadiz, Ohio. 



I find among the first items that he paid L. L. Langstroth 

 •S25 for an imported Italian queen, and sold 20 colonies of 

 Italian bees at S20 each. An item in November, 1871, says : 

 '■ I have 300 nuclei, and have sold this year over 800 Italian 

 queens at $6 each. Nov. 5, 1872: I reared this season 2,000 

 queens ; 400 of these were sold at $250 per hundred, and the 

 balance at S5 to .S6 each ; and bought of A. Grimm 72 colo- 

 nies of pure Italian bees at $11 each." 



This was too good to last, for on May 15, 1873, he writes: 

 "Of my 315 hives of bees in the fall, only 61 are alive now." 

 ".lune 5, 1873, bought of Dr. J. J. Adair, 85 colonies of 

 bees at $6 each." He continued to lose his bees in winter and 

 buy more in the spring to carry on queen-rearing, until the 

 spring of 1874, when he moved all of his bees and family to 

 Oskaloosa. Iowa, to try producing basswood honey. After 

 two seasons of failure and loss of bees here he moved all of 

 the bees he had left — 240 colonies— and his family, to San 

 Buenaventura, Calif., arriving Nov. 6, 1875. 



In 1871 he wrote a book of 96 pages, entitled, "Hand- 

 Book of Bee-Culture;"' price, 25 cents. But he gave away 

 more than he sold, to save himself the trouble of answering so 

 many questions while selling queens. The book is now out of 

 print. 



After coming to California he turned his attention entirely 

 to the production of extracted honey. California honey had 

 not made its reputation at this time, and it was hard to dis- 

 pose of large crops, and on Nov. 1, 1878, he left his bees in 

 charge of E. Gallup, while he went to England to sell his crop 

 of 4o,000 pounds of extracted honey. Subsequently he made 

 trips to Boston and Texas to sell honey. His largest crop was 

 100,000 pounds from 1,000 colonies in 3 apiaries in 1884. 

 He retained his interest and enthusiasm in bees to the time of 

 his death, and was actively engaged in hiving swarms when 

 he was taken with cholera morbus, and after 12 days' sick- 

 ness died on May 30, at the age of 71 years and 11 months. 



Mr. Wiikin was president of the California State Bee- 

 Keepers' Association during the last two years. His hobby 

 was co-operation. He was always willing to lend a helping 

 hand in a good cause, and served his country during the Civil 

 War in the 42d Ohio Volunteer Infantry. 



J. F. McIntyre. 



One by one the bee-keeping pioneers are passing away. 

 Soon there will be none left to give personal reminiscences of 

 the days of Langstroth, and Quinby, and Wagner. 



California has perhaps led in the line of extensive apiaries, 

 Mr. .1, S. Harbison (still living, we believe) leading at one time 

 with his 6,000 colonies of bees — the largest bee-keeper in all 

 the world. Next to him likely came Mr. Wilkin, at least in 

 the size of his honey crops, as mentioned by Mr. Mclntyre. 



But what of the future of bee-keeping ? Will there arise 

 worthy successors of the noble ones who have lived, labored, 

 and then passed on ? Yes, we believe there will be. Already 

 a new interest is being taken in bees and the production of 

 honey in many localities. The bee-keepers of the present are 

 taking advantage of the experiences of the past, and with the 

 progress of the present will undoubtedly surpass even the won- 

 derful results attained by those of the years gone by. 



Our pursuit is an honorable one. Indeed, "Our toil doth 

 sweeten others." And as the years come and go, "others" 

 will include more and more of the sweet-loving public that 

 now know not the taste of " nectar fit for the gods " — deli- 

 cious honey. 



Above all things let us strive to emulate the grand exam- 

 ples as shown by the lives of those who have been translated 

 to that Heavenly sphere, such as Langstroth, Quinby, Cary, 

 Wilkin, and many more that might be named did time and 

 space permit. 



Tbe "Old Reliable" seen through New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By E. E. HASTY, Sta. B Rural, Toledo, O. 



LIVING ON HONEY ENTIRELY. 



I wonder how nearly a man could come to living entirely 

 on honey — a man not a laborer, but one whose work is mainly 

 mental. In other words, I wonder how much of a lie that is 

 on page 365 where it says Pythagoras lived only on honey. I 

 have hung up in my den a funny picture entitled, "George 

 Washington trying to tell a lie." May it not have been that 

 this was the one he was trying to tell ? 



A QUEER KIND OF ORNAMENT. 



We've seen many sorts of things to ornament apiaries, 

 but never strings of decapitated human heads before. Ask 

 Mr. Haun if his State has " done gone " and annexed itself to 

 Borneo. Frontispiece No. 24. 



COUNTING BEES BEFORE THEY'"RE HATCHED. 



My parents came to Ohio in 1843. Suppose I should rea- 

 son on how many Hastys of the stock there ought to be here, 

 instead of saying how many there are. When a chap starts 

 in to count a colony of bees by saying : " The queen has laid 

 so many eggs per day for so many days ;" then's the time to 

 hustle him toward the door — just a little, you know. Count- 

 ing bees before they are hatched is not better mathematics 

 than counting chickens before they are hatched, but decidedly 

 the reverse. Amount of inside surface In the hive, and gen- 

 eral number of bees to the square inch, will yield a better ap- 

 proximation than, egg-counting can do. Yes, we'd like to 

 know who's got the most numerous straight colony ; and it's 

 sadly awkward that weighing bees Is so much trouble except 

 at swarmiug-time. Page 371. 



A HOMELESS QUEEN. 



I would say to Mr. Crafton, page 381, that it isn't very 

 common for queens to be 'lighting down upon us at our work. 

 As for one way it might have happened, perchance a colony 

 had been superseding its queen, and as usual reared several of 

 them. Two chanced to emerge about the same time. One 

 was accepted ; and the other (the bees not wishing to swarm) 

 was driven out of the hive. Finding herself homeless she 

 prospected the open hive you were at work at to see what it 

 might offer in the way of a home. 



BEES .\ND GROCERIES. 



Dr. Mary McCoy writes up an exceptional location in an 

 entertaining way on page 387. Abundant pasturage on two 

 first-class honey-plants, and scarcely anything else. One 

 could well afford to do some feeding in spring if tolerably sure 

 of a midsummer and fall with fair honey-flow of white honey. 

 It looks as if grocers as well as other men are reasoning crea- 

 tures. Unusual (juantities of bees shipped with the fruit, 

 when a masked apiary close by begins to need shipping. In 

 a small city, where the number of dealers having exposed 



