282 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



May, 1919 



than willfulness is the cause of spread of 

 bee disease thruout the country. What is 

 needed is insti'uction, not force. It is Mr. 

 Pellett 's idea, and the editor emphatically 

 agrees with him, that the bee inspector 

 should be a bee advisor. Instead of trying 

 to inspect only beekeepers who are reported 

 to have bee diseases, he arranges for a 

 series of field meets at some beekeeper's 

 yard where there may or may not be bee dis- 

 ease. With a crowd of two or three dozen 

 beekeepers he gives lectures and demonstra- 

 tions. There is no suggestion of a " big 

 stick" back of him, as he has none. In- 

 stead, he is sent by the State to extend the 

 glad hand, or helping hand, if you please, to 

 the beekeeper who voluntarily will cure his 

 bee disease himself as soon as he is taught 

 how to do it. It takes a lot of personal in- 

 struction before the average man can clean 

 up without putting in jeopardy every bee- 

 keeper for miles around. 



Some months ago the editor called upon a 

 beeman who had a pretty yard of about a 

 hundred colonies. The hives were well 

 painted, and everything looked neat and 

 orderly. When we asked if we might see his 

 bees he remarked that he had no objections, 

 but stated that the bee inspector had made 

 him a lot of expense and trouble — in fact, 

 had ordered him to treat his bees or pay a 

 fine. He had complied, he said, but seemed 

 to be a little sore about it. On looking thru 

 his api9.ry we discovered American foul 

 brood in the first hive. We thought we 

 w-ould see just how this man would operate. 

 His very movements showed that he did not 

 know how to open a hive, for the bees re- 

 sented his bungling movements at the be- 

 ginning. He did not know how to open a 

 hive properly — much less how to treat dis- 

 ease. With the sharp point of his hive-tool 

 he dug into some suspected cells that roped 

 out very badly. ' ' That looks like foul 

 brood," he said. We certainly agreed with 

 him. Into the next hive he took the same 

 point of the tool, without cleaning it, and 

 dug into some healthy brood to see if it was 

 all right. Then we explained to him how 

 by that procedure he would scatter foul 

 brood all over his apiary. He seemed grate- 

 ful for the information and promised to do 

 better. 



Down the road, perhaps half a mile fur- 

 ther, we met a good beekeeper who com- 

 plained that he was going out of business 

 because the other fellow down the road had 

 made it impossible for him to keep his bees 

 clean. He said the inspector had ordered 

 his neighbor to clean up, but in the clean-up 

 he had started robbing on infected material. 



We hap'pened to know that the bee inspect- 

 or was a good man, but it perhaps had not 

 occurred to him that what that man needed 

 was instruction, and a great deal of it, be- 

 fore he ordered him to clean up. It would 

 have been infinitely better for him to call 

 two or three dozen beekeepers to the yard 

 and give them a demonstration on how to 

 treat. The trouble is now that many bee- 



keepers, when ordered to clean up, are so 

 unsanitary in their methods because they do 

 not know how, that they clean out all the 

 beekeepers in the territory by scattering 

 foul brood far and wide. They don 't do it 

 viciously but ignorantly. Phillips is right. 



At this point it may be argued that a law 

 that creates a State apiarist, or bee advisor, 

 with only the function of State lecturer, 

 would not make the man clean up who willful- 

 ly harbors disease. Mr. Pellett 's idea is to 

 have enforcement provisions in the law, but 

 the enforcement of it not to be in the hands 

 of the bee advisor, but with the county 

 prosecutor or sheriif, where it logically and 

 legally belongs. Any bee advisor, or any 

 beekeeper, can, in the case of willfulness or 

 continued negligence, compel treatment; 

 but that compulsion would come from the 

 regular constituted authorities whose busi- 

 ness it is to enforce all laws, including the 

 bee law. 



There is scarcely a State in the Union 

 where inspectors are able to cover more 

 than one-tenth of the territory with the ap- 

 propriations at their disposal. Under the 

 new plan the same money would go much 

 further, because the State would require 

 the State lecturer and his deputies to ar- 

 range for meetings of three or four dozen 

 beekeepers. These beekeepers would then 

 be instructed, just exactly as the farmers 

 are by the county farm advisors or the coun- 

 ty extension men under the Lever law. In 

 this way the same appropriation would go 

 vastly further in the matter of eradicating 

 bee disease alone, to say nothing about mak- 

 ing better beekeepers who would themselves 

 become educators among their neighbors. 



In short, the Pellett plan of bee legisla- 

 tion is a general application of the Lever 

 law under which the farm advisors or coun- 

 ty extension men work, only in this case the 

 erstwhile bee inspector, instead of becoming 

 a police officer, becomes a bee advisor and a 

 lecturer. 



WE USED TO SAY that O. 0. Poppleton of 

 Stuart, Fla., was the greatest migratory bee- 

 keeper that ever 



Migratory 



, Beekeeping. 



bees in other 



lived. Perhaps he 

 was, if we consider 

 the business of 

 than carload ship- 

 mi- 



movmg 



ments. But there is another form of 

 gratory beekeeping that has in late years 

 grown to enormous proportions. This in- 

 volves the movement of cars of bees from 

 one State to another. During the past year 

 or so bees have been moved from Texas, 

 Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, to Califor- 

 nia and back again in thousand-colony lots. 

 Into Riverside County alone there have been 

 moved something like five thousand colonies 

 of bees from other States. 



The plans seem to be this: A crop of honey 

 is caught in Idaho or Montana, and the bees 

 moved, as cold weather comes on, into Call- 



