68-1 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Nov. 1 



Conversations with 

 Doolittle 



At Borodino 



SOME OF THE ESSENTIAX,S FOK SUCCESS IN 

 BEE-KEEPING. 



"Mr. Doolittle, do you think I have 

 brains enough to succeed at bee-keeping? " 



" Success in any undertaking does not al- 

 ways depend on brains. The persistent 

 toiler whose vocabulary does not contain 

 the word fail will, more often than other- 

 wise, outstrip the brainy young man who 

 expects to leap to the front at a bound; and 

 successful bee-keeping, like many other 

 things, requires a jierson who does not get 

 discouraged by slow advancement, nor 

 weary of digging deep into the details. 



"The bright brainy merchant who cares 

 more for gratifying his love of ease or social 

 pleasure than following the daily routine 

 behind the counter or at his desk will hard- 

 ly be the Montgomery Ward of his time; 

 and the bee-keeper who cares to do little 

 more than hive his swarms and take off the 

 little honey he may have in the fall, rather 

 than exert himself by leaving no stone un- 

 turned before he has the maximum number 

 of bees in time for the harvest, will never 

 become a Dr. Miller nor a W. Z. Hutchin- 

 son." 



"But the merchant works at his business 

 for financial success, does he not?" 



"Yes; and we may say what we will 

 about the fun of keeping bees, the prime ob- 

 ject in it all is the financial success, and so 

 it has come about that, if the business does 

 not pay, that bee-keeper is not called one 

 who succeeds. There is no question, even, 

 but that your ardor would soon begin to 

 abate after starting in unless you heard the 

 rustling greenbacks in your cash-drawer. 

 Whether five colonies or five hundred be 

 kept, each one must be made to pay a fair 

 rate of profit on the investment." 



"But bees certainly do not require the 

 labor that a merchant would have to put 

 into his business." 



"No lazy person need expect to succeed 

 with bees. The idea that we can sit idly by 

 and become rich while these little creatures 

 that, 'improve each shining hour' do all the 

 work, is a delusion and a snare. No one 

 ever did or ever will succeed who looks upon 

 bee-keeping as a scheme to secure money 

 without labor." 



"But I was told that bees would work for 

 nothing and board themselve;?!." 



"That might be true if you looked at it 

 as the Irishman did when he invited his 

 brother over to this country. The story 

 goes that he wrote his brother a very pic- 

 turesque letter describing the beauties of 

 America, and finished up by saying, 'Come 

 over, Pat, faith, and all ye have to do is to 

 carry the hod of brick and mortar up the 

 ladder, while the min up there do all the 

 work. ' Now, if one looks at the labor ques- 



tion like that, then the bees are the "min" 

 upstairs who do all the work, our part of it 

 being only to supply the ' brick and mortar,' 

 so that their work may bring us the best 

 results." 



" I suppose you mean by this, supplying 

 the bees with the best hives, etc." 



"That might be considered as a small 

 part of the matter; but the location of an 

 apiary is of the very highest importance. 

 Where no nectar-yielding jilants abound, 

 there must of necessity be only failure; and 

 simply because there are fragrant flowers 

 about you is not sufficient reason for locat- 

 ing an apiary at that place. Years ago, 

 when my departed mother was in her prime 

 she had a yard of very bright flowers, and 

 about that time I produced an average of 

 160 lbs. of comb honey froin nearly 100 col- 

 onies. One day when taking a friend into 

 the honey-room to see all this honey piled 

 up, after looking it over and admiring it he 

 said, ' No wonder your bees did so well, for 

 your mother raised such a nice garden of 

 flowers for them.' There were only two 

 kinds of flowers in that garden which were 

 ever visited by the bees, and these were the 

 least conspicuous of any! 



" Then you should know something about 

 the natural history of the honey-bee. When 

 that expression, ' bees work for nothing and 

 board themselves,' was coined, the mother- 

 bee of the colony was called a king-bee, and 

 it was thought that this king directed the 

 movements of his subjects. The practical 

 apiarist of to-day knows better, because of 

 the amount of thought and study he has 

 put into his business from the love of it. 

 Our much-honored I^angstroth once wrote, 

 'There will never be a royal road to profit- 

 able bee-keeping. Like all other branches 

 of rural economy it demands care and expe- 

 rience, and those who are conscious of a 

 strong dis]iosition to procrastinate and neg- 

 lect will do well to let bees alone, unless 

 they hope by their systematic industry to 

 reform evil habits which are well nigh in- 

 curable.' If you are to succeed you must be 

 so absorbed in it that you Mill think bees, 

 talk bees, dream bees, and never tire of their 

 study. You must be one who anticipates 

 their every want, and one who will do the 

 right thing at the right time." 



Sub-earth Ventilators. 



I vvisli to build a sub-earth ventilator to my bee- 

 cellar this fall: but after reading the article on page 

 517 on the subject, I have decided that I do not 

 know how to build it. I have considered different 

 ways of making it — first, an ordinary drain made of 

 stones; second, an ordinary drain made of stones 

 and cement, water-tight; third, a glazed tile-drain. 

 Of course, all must be put down out of the reach of 

 frost, and as large, at least, as a six-inch tile, or 

 larger. 



Ilasbrouck, N. Y., Sept. 19. Ivan C. Hall. 



[We would by all means recommend the glazed 

 tile, or what we call here sewer-pipe. The joints 

 should be well cemented, so as to keep out moist- 

 ure. There will be moisture enough in the cellar 

 without drawing in more of it through a wet sub- 

 earth ventilator.— ED.] 



