190 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



years I have had from none to eight or 

 ten swarms from thirty to fifty colonies. 

 But each season the bees have to be 

 •watched, and this watching is what we 

 want to do away with. 



There are many plans of dividing and 

 uniting in the fall and thus keeping down 

 increase after a fashion, but we want the 

 whole force of one queen to stay together 

 through the honey flow in order to get 

 good crops of fancy comb honey. 



How to do this without anyone on band 

 to watch fo'' swarms is, in my judgment, 

 the greatest problem now before the bee- 

 keeping fraternity. 



DeniSON, Iowa, May 9, 1900. 



<fjr^ SSOCIATION AND CO-OPER- 

 // \\ ATION THE MOST HOPE' 

 ^/[ y\^ FUL FIELD. BY C. A. 

 HATCH. 

 Along the line of hives, supers and 

 fixtures, there does seem to be much 

 chance of great improvement. Our im- 

 plements have 

 been so simpli- 

 fied and improv- 

 ed that he would 

 be a bold spirit, 

 indeed, who 

 would start with 

 the idea that he 

 could much 

 shorten or 

 cheapen opera- 

 tions, and there- 

 by add to the income by lessening the cost. 

 Methods have been explained, discuss- 

 ed and examined so often and so fully 

 that a practical man can not hope for 

 much along that line, to either increase 

 the crop or income. 



But when we have got the crop pro- 

 duced and ready to fix for market, the 

 whole mass of bee-keepers are at sea; no 

 fixed and uniform method of grading or 

 style of package prevails. If a dealer 

 orders a certain grade of honey from 



twelve different producers, he is liable to 

 get one dozen kinds as to grade and pack- 

 age, even if the quality is uniform, and 

 it is the producer who has to stand the 

 loss to even it up. One or two of the 

 twelve producers will undoubtedly sell at 

 a different price than the others; maybe 

 at a loss through ignorance of its true 

 value. Every producer is not by nature 

 a salesman; then why should he keep 

 trying to be one? Are we, as a class, so 

 stupid, or full of conceit, that we are un- 

 willing to sa}- there is something we do 

 not know; something someone can do 

 better than we can? 



Co - operation and association would 

 give us a chance to put the selling of our 

 crop into the hands of a good salesman, 

 to have all our honey graded by a com- 

 petent grader who works under instruc- 

 tions from a properly authorized person 

 competent to establish a grade. 



Our packages, both for comb and ex- 

 tracted honey, would be uniform ; so 

 that a dealer could buy a carload all alike, 

 and a sample would be a sample of the 

 whole. 



Packages, being ordered by the carload 

 for the association, could be purchased at 

 greatly reduced prices and shipped to the 

 user at much less cost for freight. 



Below are given, in a condensed form, 

 some of the essentials for co-operation, 

 any feature of which admits of much 

 elaboration. 



In order to establish a bee-keepers' and 

 honey exchange there must be enough 

 beemen of one mind who produce enough 

 of bee products to make it an object, and 

 the nearer it comes to embracing all of 

 the beemen in the territory covered, the 

 better it will work; for it is the outsiders 

 and those who wait to "see how it works" 

 that make trouble; it is much easier to 

 criticise and find fault than it is to be a 

 pioneer and bear the brunt of organiza- 

 tion and starting the machinery necessary 

 to carry on a successful exchange. 



This means a giving up of many of our 

 individual rights for the common good. 

 "The greatest good to the greatest num- 



