1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



163 



pursuit and one of value to those who 

 are willing to work and learn. Iwery 

 farmer could produce his own supply 

 of honey by keeping and properly car- 

 ing for a few colonies of bees. 



SELLING HONEY. 



Honey is a product of the farm 

 which will practically sell itself if it is 

 properly prepared for the market. The 

 marketing of a small surplus is a sim- 

 ple matter. Let your neighbors know 

 you have the pure unadulterated article 

 and they will be glad to relieve you of 

 your surplus. The marketing of u large 

 crop may not lie so simple, as you may 

 have more than is needed for your 

 immediate neighborhood or city mar- 

 ket. For disposing of large surpluses, 

 advertising in newspapers and other- 

 wise will increase the demand from 

 cities and from a large country district. 

 One Missouri beekeeper, this season, 

 had 30,000 pounds of honey which he 

 marketed largely in his own county, 

 and he says he could market much 

 more if he had more good white clover 

 honey. White clover honey is our 

 most important honey crop, and it 

 usually sells more easily than the 

 darker honey. 



Columbia, Mo. 



Results of Apiary Inspection 



BY E. F. PHILLIPS. 



( This is the second of the papers read at the New 

 York meftifje of officials in charge of beekeepinff, 

 Mr, PelletCs paper, ' ' Problems of Bee Inspec- 

 tion,'^ appeared in the ^farch issue,) 



THE inspection of apiaries in the 

 various States is unfortunately 

 conducted according to many dif- 

 ferent systems, and in some cases with 

 little apparent system. This work can- 

 not be cast in a mold, because of the 

 wide divergence of conditions in the 

 various beekeeping regions of the 

 United States, but it would seem pos- 

 sible to standardize the work to some 

 extent ,by discussions in this associa- 

 tion and elsewhere. To show the diver- 

 gence more clearly, some of the differ- 

 ences in plans may be mentioned. In 



some States it is the policy to do in- 

 tensive work by attempting to visit and 

 idvise all the beekeepers in a locality 

 before the inspector leaves ; in other 

 cases inspection is made only on re- 

 quest, and only a few beekeepers are 

 visited on each trip from the central 

 office. In some cases emphasis is 

 placed on work with the individual 

 beekeeper; in other States meetings 

 and demonstrations are held to reach a 

 large number nf beekeepers. In some 

 States the supervising officer has a 

 bird's-eye view of the situation through- 

 out the State, made possible by ade- 

 quate records and maps; in other in- 

 stances the inspector has no such effi- 

 cient records and wanders more or less 

 aimlessly about, helping wherever he 

 can but without a broad outlook. To 

 obviate some of the grosser errors, the 

 Bureau of Entomology has advised 

 supervision of the work by an already 

 existing office, not only to save admin- 

 istration expense, but especially to 

 make the work constructive, compre- 

 hensive and efficient. The history of 

 inspection proves conclusively the 

 advantage of such a system, and shows 

 the relative inefficiency of an independ- 

 ent inspector. 



The title of the present paper indi- 

 cates a desire to know whether the 

 apiary inspection is profitable. At the 

 request of beekeepers, the various 

 States are spending thousands of dol- 

 lars annually in this work. It has been 

 in operation on an ever increasing scale 

 since the first law was passed in Wis- 

 consin in 1897, and enuogh experience 

 is available to warrant the demand for 

 a showing of results. 



If conclusions are based on observa- 

 tions of a general character, one must 

 believe that inspection is a decided 

 benefit. Even in those States where 

 there is little or no system, and where 

 the most careless work is done, we find 

 individual beekeepers aided to better 

 beekeeping and enabled to combat dis- 

 ease with success. The making of one 

 good beekeeper in a country may re- 

 sult ultimately in greatly increased 

 wealth to the State, so that one cannot 

 easily measure the economic value of 



such work. In spite of validcriticisms 

 and there is abundant room for criti- 

 cism in various States, we must con 

 elude from such an examination that 

 apiary inspection is economically aound 

 and that the expenditure is warranted. 



But so far the general approbation 

 of the work has been based on just 

 such general observations, without ana- 

 lyzing the situation carefully. It is now 

 well after 20 years of trial to examine 

 at least some of the available data to 

 make the criticism more valuable. 

 Such an examination cannot be made 

 comparative because of the divergent 

 systems just mentioned and often be- 

 cause of lack of available records. It 

 is entirely just to conclude that where 

 intelligible records are lacking the 

 work IS least valuable. To analyze all 

 the available data is an enormous task, 

 which cannot be undertaken at present, 

 but a few specimens may stimulate the 

 administrative offices in this work to 

 apply this test, and it is hoped that the 

 analyses will be published. These re- 

 sults should be announced even though 

 the results are not all that might be 

 desired, and if possible the results 

 should be interpreted. This is the type 

 of comparison and tabulation which 

 the author recommended to this sec- 

 tion at the annual meeting in 1915. 



In the Mohawk Valley, New York, 

 European foulbrood broke out in 1894, 

 but it was not until 1899 that apiary in- 

 spection was established, as a result of 

 the efforts of the organized beekeeper$. 

 The inspectors made an efTort to deter- 

 mine the loss in colonies actually de- 

 stroyed by disease, and while this rec- 

 ord is probably incomplete, they found 

 that colonies valued at $39,487 were re- 

 ported lost. In 1899 (the first year of 

 inspection) and successive years to 

 1904, the loss of colonies that died was 

 given in the 1904 report as follows: 



1895-1899 $39,487 



1899 25,420 



1900 20,289 



1901 10,853 



1902 5,860 



1903 4,741 



1904 2,220 



When we consider the fact that in 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE IBEEHIVE EXHIBIT AT COLUMBIA, MO.. IN JANUARY-MissOHri Apicultural Society 



