752 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Dec. 1 



i 



Conversations with 

 Doolittle 



At Borodino 



SHOULD A BEE-KEEPER HELP HIS NEIGH- 

 BORS TO START WITH BEES? 



Do I have exclusive right to the locality that my 

 bees cover? My conclusions are that anybody who 

 would encroach on ground already fully occupied 

 by myself Is not quite what a good man should be. 



I would agree with you iirovided the occu- 

 pant is one who is about to change his loca- 

 tion in search of a better one, and therefore 

 comes and settles down near you; but it 

 more often happens than otherwise (at least 

 such has been my experience) that the one 

 who may injure you the most is the man 

 M'ho is already an owner of a large area of 

 farming land, and who, after reading the 

 bright side of bee-keeping, as given in our 

 books and papers, or who, on account of 

 poor health, or because of j/owr rejiorted suc- 

 cess, concludes he will try his hand at the 

 business. Such a man does not wish to 

 leave his present location to start an apiary, 

 and he could not well do so, even if he chose. 

 He reasons that his broad acres of pasture, 

 woodland, etc., produce many pounds of 

 nectar, and that this is his by reason of the 

 cash he paid for the farm; so he starts out 

 with the desire, perhaps, of keeping only a 

 few colonies for his amusement and for the 

 honey that he might get for home use. His 

 first year may be a good one, and he gets in 

 love with the pursuit, when the question of 

 your priority and his extension of the busi- 

 ness is now forced upon him. He feels that, 

 since he owns a large farm, there is no rea- 

 son why he should not keep all the bees he 

 desires, and that, if you think you can crowd 

 him from his own fields by keeping more 

 colonies, he will put in ten colonies to your 

 one. 



Such a man would probably be going to 

 extremes; but could you give any good rea- 

 son why your bees should have a right to 

 forage on his clover or on his basswood that 

 was growing on land that his money had 

 purchased long before you ever thought of 

 keeping bees? All this is not an imaginary 

 case, as I can show you by a bit of personal 

 history. 



I was born and brought up -within twenty 

 rods of where I know sit. Father kept bees 

 when I was a small boy, having as many 

 as sixty colonies at one time; but these all 

 died of American foul brood before I was 

 fifteen years old. AVhen I became of age 

 there were about 250 colonies within a radi- 

 us of three miles of us that were kept by 

 five or six different parties, one man in par- 

 ticular having 120 colonies about a mile 

 away. After reading a book which fell into 

 my hands I became interested, and father 

 and I talked the matter over, with the re- 

 sult that we purchased four colonies some 

 time in the spring when I was twenty-two 

 years of age. The following fall he gave me 



his part of the bees, and I started out alone 

 in the business. After I had increased to 

 30 colonies the man who had 120 colonies a 

 mile away came to me one day, saying that 

 I was injuring his business, and that as he 

 had a large apiary before I started, he had a 

 priority right, and I ought to quit and 

 leave him the whole field. I told him at 

 once that father had kept quite an apiary 

 of bees long before he ever thought of keep- 

 ing any, and that I expected to continue 

 the business as long as it was profitable, 

 furthermore, that we had a farm, while he 

 owned only a house and a half-acre lot, and 

 I said I did not see why my bees did not 

 have a good right to visit the clover and 

 basswood on our own farm. He considered 

 me in the wrong, but I felt justified. Well, 

 right or wrong, I lived to see the time when 

 not one of the owners of the 250 colonies 

 that I mentioned kept bees any longer, and 

 so I had the whole territory to myself. 



Soon after this a colony of bees was given 

 to a neighbor farmer, whose land adjoined 

 ours. As we were the best of friends, he 

 often came to see me, and, of course, we 

 talked bees. The next spring he told me 

 that his colony was doing nothing, and I 

 saved it for him by giving him a frame of 

 hatching brood, after finding that it was all 

 right except being weak in bees. From this 

 one colony he increased after awhile to over 

 forty, and he often said that he would have 

 had no bees if it had not been for me. 



Two other neighbors started in soon after 

 this, and I often went with them to see their 

 bees, and all three came and visited me. I 

 was glad to have them succeed, as they all 

 owned large farms. I well knew that, if I 

 told them I had a priority right, they would 

 be the worst rivals I could possibly have; 

 and I was doing only as I would be done by 

 if I had been the one just starting. After 

 my sixty-odd years of life this has proved a 

 good rule to be governed by. 



As I said at first, if some stranger were to 

 move from 50 to 200 colonies into my im- 

 mediate vicinity when there was plenty of 

 unoccupied territory elsewhere, I should 

 hardly consider him a good man, as you ex- 

 pressed it; but with friendly neighbors who 

 wish to start with bees the case seems differ- 

 ent. I believe in letting live as well as liv- 

 ing; and if my neighbor desires to start in 

 bee-keeping there is no law, moral or legal, 

 to hinder him from so doing; and after he 

 has once started, I believe he will cause me 

 much less trouble if I treat him in a neigh- 

 borly way than if I were to show him that 

 I thought he had no right to keep bees. 



[Our correspondent has answered this 

 much-discussed question very fairly. The 

 legal aspect of cases like this have never 

 come up, and probably never will, because 

 bee-keepers are not agreed as to what even 

 the moral rights are. In cases of old neigh- 

 bors who have for years owned land from 

 which the nectar is gathered there can not 

 be any be any question that the new bee- 

 keeper has as good a right there as the old. 

 Ed.] 



