372 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



November 



HOW THE WOMEN WIN ^ 



Three School Teachers Who Have Become Very Successful Beekeepers 



WE used to hear much about 

 "woman's work" in days gone 

 by, but we hear less about it 

 every year, for the women are prov- 

 ing that they can do about anything 

 that a man can do, and many things 

 besides. By the time the great war 

 is over, women bid fair to become so 

 commonly engaged in work that we 

 have always regarded as peculiar to 

 men, that there will be no occupation 

 that man can claim exclusively as his 

 own. 



So many women have taken up bee- 

 keeping that there is no longer any 

 novelty attached to a woman bee- 

 keeper. The subjects of this sketch 

 are not primarily of interest because 

 they are women, but because they 

 are successful and practical honey 

 producers. The public is always in- 

 terested in the intimate story of any 

 successful person and to satisfy that 

 curiosity we have endeavored to learn 

 something of the history of the three 

 most conspicuous figures among the 

 women who keep bees on the Ameri- 

 can continent. 



Of the trio, one is a Canadian and 

 two are Americans. All three are 

 educated, refined individuals, who 

 would have made good in other call- 

 ings had they chosen a different 

 course. All three were teachers be- 

 fore they became beekeepers, and as 

 such hid occasion to develop a good- 

 ly degree of patience, which is a very 

 useful quality in the apiary. 



When Miss R. B. Pettit, of George- 

 town, Ontario, decided to be a bee- 

 keeper she plunged in recklessly and 

 bought a hundred colonies to start 

 with, although she was without pre- 

 vious experience. 



Miss Emma Wilson, of Marengo, 

 Illinois, was getting on in the school- 

 room and had no thought of anything 

 else, when the doctor advised her 

 that she must rest for at least a year. 

 Doctors usually have their way, and 

 so Miss Wilson decided to get as 

 great a change as possible, and assist 

 her brother-in-law with the bees. 



Miss Mathilda 

 Candler, of Cass- 

 ville. Wis., just nat- 

 urally liked bees, 

 and started with a 

 few for fun. It is 

 hard to imagine 

 three similar careers 

 with greater differ- 

 ences at the start, 

 yet all have been 

 successful, and bee- 

 keeping seems to be 

 the chief life work 

 of all. 



Miss Pettit had 

 lived in a beekeep- 

 ing atmosphere for 

 years before she 

 contracted the fe- 

 ver. Her 'brother, 

 Morley Pettit, had 

 been for some time 



a successful beekeeper before he be- 

 came Provincial Apiarist of Ontario, 

 and it was to him she went for daily 

 instruction after she had purchased 

 her hundred colonies of bees. All day- 

 she worked among the bees, and at 

 night sought her brother to tell him 

 what she had done and learn where 

 she had made mistakes. The season 

 was not half over when an oppor- 

 tunity came to buy another apiary 

 more than a hundred miles distant, 

 n she took chances by buying a hun- 

 dred hives when all the books say 

 start easy, she was certainly reckless 

 when she bought eighty more colo- 



MLSS Wir.SON IX HER BEE TOGS. 



WHERE PETTIT HONEY COMES FROM. 



nies so far away, after only a couple 

 months of experience. With two api- 

 aries so far apart it Was necessary to 

 anticipate conditions at one or the 

 other for several weeks at a time. At 

 the new 3-ard she was dependent en- 

 tirely upon her own resources, and 

 the bee-books which she studied dili- 

 gently. In the face pf so many ad- 

 vices to start with not more than 

 three or four hives. Miss Pettit 

 should have made shipwreck of her 

 venture the first season, but she 

 didn't. At the new yard, a hundred 

 miles from home, she secured an av- 

 erage of a hundred pounds of surplus 

 honey per colony. 



Next to school teaching, which she 

 followed as a source of livelihood. 

 Miss Candler's chief interest was in 

 art, and she spent some time as a 

 student in the Art Institute in Chi- 

 cago. Her plans for finishing her 

 art education in Paris were over- 

 thrown by the business failure of a 

 relative which consumed all her sav- 

 ings. She returned to Cassville to 

 her school and found rest and recrea- 

 tion with her bees. The number 

 gradually increased until she had 

 forty-nine colonies. In one year she 

 harvested from these forty-nine colo- 

 nies a crop which sold for six hun- 

 dred dollars. This crop not only in- 

 fluenced Miss Candler to pay more 

 attention to bees, but it started an 

 epidemic of beekeeping in the neigh- 

 borhood. Everybody went crazy 

 about it, and decided that it offered a 

 royal road to wealth. One large land 

 holder shipped a carload of bees and 

 located them near her apiary. As a 

 result, nobody got much honey for a 

 time, and it was not long until the 

 carload of bees and equipment had 

 dwindled to junk. Few of the fortune 

 hunters stuck, and soon Miss Can- 

 dler had the field to herself as be- 

 fore. 



As soon as her bees could be de- 

 pended upon to pay as much as she 

 received for teaching, she abandoned 

 the schoolroom en- 

 tirely, and from that 

 day has made the 

 bees her sole de- 

 pendence. 



Miss Wilson went 

 to her sister's home 

 to find health by 

 working in the open 

 air, but she was too 

 much of a student 

 to spend her spare 

 time in idleness. 

 Beekeeping is a fas- 

 cinating pursuit, and 

 few who take it up, 

 lO the point of mas- 

 tering it in its de- 

 tails, ever lay it down 

 again. Miss Wilson 

 read bee-books and 

 bee-papers and ar- 

 gued with Dr. Miller 



