OcTdiuMi, 1919 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



lit'iir tlio \(Mv Noit'o of God calling me. I shall 

 be a piit'st and serve Him contimuilly in his 

 tcmj)le. " Oh, tliese things that have called 

 to men 's hearts thru the ages ! These call- 

 ings the" p.eople have heard and followed! 

 These vocations! 



I think avocations must have come later, 

 perhaps when the calling voices were less 

 plainly lieard amid the riisliing clangor of 

 a civilization growing constantly more com- 

 plicated, and men had come to choose theii- 

 work for its expediency or its profit rather 

 than in answer to the summoning force of 

 its appeal. For an avocation is a calling 

 away, a distraction, some interest that calls 

 our hearts away from the main work we 

 have set them to — something that calls and 

 calls, insistently, irresistibly, until we take 

 it up as our very own secondary work, a 

 lesser occupation, a something else to do 

 that we can love and enjoy — a sideline that 

 carries us merrily away from the steady and 

 all too often uninteresting main line. 



So I love to think that beekeeping is for 

 each one of us either a real vocation or a 

 real avocation; the one work that called to 

 the hearts of those who follow it profession- 

 ally — the one interest that calls away from 

 other work those of us who claim it for a 

 sideline, those of us who are most of the 

 time merely business men or housekeepers or 

 lawyers or railroad conductors. Indeed we, 

 of all others, have heard with the outer ear 

 as well as the ear of the spirit, the magic 

 humming of an irresistible voice, calling to 

 us from the apple blossoms of spring and 

 the clover fields of summer or across the 

 blue and gold sunshine of October, when 

 goldenrod and aster are in bloom. 



Here's the kind of letter that so often 

 gets written to the daily papers all over the 

 country, and sounds so convincing to read- 

 ers who don 't know any more about the sub- 

 ject, nor think any more thoroly or clearly, 

 than the writer. It appeared a day or two 

 ago in a Nashville daily: 



"To the Editor of the Banner: Here is 

 a ray of light which may prove interesting 

 and })robably helpful to your ' fair price ' 

 committee: 



' ' On Aug. 27 I received, laid down in my 

 house, postage and insurance paid, from an 

 apiary at Aspen Hill, Tenn., ten pounds of 

 first-class strained honey for 25 cents per 

 pound, net. On the same day the Banner 

 carried the following advertisement from a 

 Nashville self -serve store: 'Honey, 5-oz. 

 jar, 20 cents.' Undoubtedly the honey I 

 bought at 25 cents a pound could have been 

 bought at wholesale for 20 cents per pound, 

 or less. 



' ' This would show a clear profit of some- 

 thing like 300 per cent, for your retailer, 

 which is going some, I think. Yet the mid- 

 dleman says he is not to blame." 



Three hundred per cent profit! Poor Ee- 

 tailer! In the first place the Aspen Hill 

 producer sold too low; every one around 

 here is getting 30 cents in 5-pound tins, no 



IKistagc nor insurance. In the second i)lace, 

 the letailer almost certainly did not buy 

 in bulk and bottle it himself. He undoubt- 

 edly paid a bottled price for it. In the third 

 place, even if he had bottled it, that pro- 

 cess would have cost time and labor (as it 

 surely did cost someone) ; he would have 

 had to pay, and pay high, for the little jars 

 (as some one surely did pay); 32 glass jars 

 against one tin bucket! In any other than 

 a self -serve store, a clerk would have had to 

 wait on 32 different customers to sell it; 

 and in any kind of store, it meant 32 wrap- 

 pings and 32 times to make change. 



Don 't you wish people would think 

 thru a proposition, instead of dashing off 

 public letters about 300 per cent profits? 



* * * 



On our upper back porch there are two 

 water faucets and a sink. During the hot 

 days of midsummer one little bee found this 

 hitherto undiscovered water supply. Trip 

 after trip she made to where the drops of 

 water stood shallow and inviting on the 

 smooth enamel of the sink. For days she 

 came, and I called her Eebecca. To all ap- 

 pearances, she was as faithful and gentle 

 as that other young Eebecca who took her 

 pitcher to the well an<l found the courier of 

 Eomance there begging for a drink. 



The only time my winged Eebecca acted 

 unhappy was when hot water came jjouring 

 into the sink and the steam floated up and 

 around. Then she would protest mightily, 

 tho I do believe she was more puzzled than 

 provoked — much as that other Eebecca 

 might have been if her well had occasional- 

 ly sent up clouds of steam and buckets of 

 hot water. One day one of the family 

 threatened her. "If this pesky bee doesn't 

 quit hanging around here, she 's likely to 

 meet an untimely end, ' ' I heard. ' ' Why, 

 she 's not pesky at all, ' ' I protested. ' ' That 's 

 Eebecca; she comes every day." 



First there came a laugh, our friendship 

 and her name having been until that mo- 

 ment unconfessed. Then came a low solemn 

 warning. ' ' Well, all right. Miss Eebecca, 

 draw all the water you want. I've got just 

 one thing to say to you. If you're not 

 mightily careful, you '11 get written up in 

 Gleanings! ' ' 



Which is probably the only reason she is. 



* * * 



DEATH IN OCTOBER. 

 I think I shall not mind it much to die. 



But, Death, please wait till I am very old! 

 Then some October, come. When earth is gold 

 And heaped with garnered fruits and roofed on 



high 

 With blue that lures our longings past the sky, 

 When bees drift gently home to hives that hold 

 Tlieir dreams, come true; these restless hands 

 I'll fold 

 And in the flame-tippcid earth contented lie. 



Yet I shall not be here, but, oli, so far — 



Some place, perhaps, where it is always spring. 

 With forward-lookingness in everything 



And beauty still to break in soul and star. 

 But, oh, October earth, I love you so 

 I hope it may be autumn when I go! 



