718 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



November, 1919 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



One of the most interesting cases that I 

 dug up was that of the presidency of the 



Association. They had slipped up 



by putting a real beeman in for a year, and 

 he worked up a whale of a meeting with 

 all sorts of papers by beekeepers on bee- 

 keeping subjects. Something had to be done 

 about that, for a lot of folks who wanted to 

 talk didn't have a chance. Now the presi- 

 dent was a good fellow, and they didn't 

 want to hurt his feelings, but everybody 

 felt that to break all the precedents of as- 

 sociation work in that manner was a thing 

 not to be tolerated again. Eight at what 

 you call the psychological moment in came 

 the man who saved the day. It 's funny how 

 this psychological-moment stuff works. I 

 guess it 's something to do with the fact that 

 angels watch the feeble-minded. 



The fellow who turned the trick here is 

 one of the leading stove manufacturers of 

 the State. He 's also quite a Baptist, a 

 member of the state legislature, one of the 

 big bugs in things generally. He had two 

 colonies of bees on his big farm just out- 

 side the city, into which he sinks some of 

 the stove money, and he had heard that 

 there was to be a bee meet. I forgot to say 

 that he is also a leading joiner in secret so- 

 cieties. Just as soon as he got fairly seated, 

 the matter of buying supplies cheaper came 

 up. Now that is no sort of a subject to 

 take up at a meeting of beekeepers, for that 

 means that somebody ought to talk about it 

 who knows something about business; but 

 the beekeeper who had slipped in as presi- 

 dent didn't understand. This was a great 

 opening for the stove man, and he was on 

 his feet in a minute. Something ought to 

 be done about this; the man who took care 

 of his bees had complained that supplies 

 cost too much. He told them all about the 

 way business is conducted, how everybody 

 ought to pull together and co-operate, and 

 about the great success he had made of the 

 stove business by being on the job. It took 

 about an hour to tell this, but that was a 

 short speech for one in training. The re- 

 sult obviously was that they made him presi- 

 dent. At first some of the beemen thought 

 he ought to be secretary, but that means too 

 much work in sending out the notices of the 

 annual meeting, so they decided not to give 

 him the lower job but go the limit. 



No, of course he didn 't do anything about 

 the association business during the year, but 

 you can bet that all the papers of the State 

 carried the joyful news about his election. 

 When the next meeting came around he was 

 in the middle of the campaign for state 

 senator, so he sent the vice president to do 

 the job, also one of his lieutenants to tell 

 the beekeepers that they ought to stand be- 

 hind the president in the election, and, amid 

 applause, how much he had done for bee- 

 keeping in the State. I can't understand 

 just why he was not re-elected, except that 



there was a fellow there on the ground from 

 the northern part of the State who is inter- 

 ested in selling real estate. He comes from 

 a great bee country and he did sell a lot of 

 land to the beekeepers. They made him 

 president — not that he was in the same class 

 as the senator, but he was on the ground 

 and the senator was busy. 



The best case that I 'm going to tell you 

 about I 've saved for the last. I could go 

 right on in this line for some time, but by 

 this time you fellows ought to have a pretty 

 good idea how to get an office. However, 

 your education will not be complete until 

 you hear about this one. It has to do with 

 the biggest association in the country. It 

 had been going along all right and had 

 stuck pretty close to the bee business for 

 several years, and some of the fellows 

 thought that there ought to be a change. 

 The secretary was a commercial beekeeper 

 who had given a lot of his time to the asso- 

 ciation and had helped out a lot of the bee- 

 keepers who had been in trouble from vari- 

 ous causes. Just in the nick of time the 

 man who saved the day appeared. He had 

 15 colonies of bees, 14 (to be charitable) 

 rotten with foul brood. He has a country 

 store in a little town in the hills, and is the 

 champion organizer of the world when it 

 comes to getting up ideas that will not work. 



He blew into the meeting at the moment 

 of greatest dissatisfaction and when oppor- 

 tunity offered (which was mighty soon) he 

 arose to comment on the downtroddenness 

 of the beekeeper, the robbery of the honey- 

 buyer, the rascality of the supply dealer, the 

 ulterior motives of everybody that was not 

 one of the big producers. The remedy was 

 co-operation. I've often wondered about 

 that word co-operation, and, even if I did 

 get to be president of our club, I haven't 

 found the magic of that word yet. You can 

 get it off anywhere and get away with it. 

 You really don 't have to have a real use for 

 it or to have a plan of co-operation that will 

 work. All you have to do is to use the 

 magic word and you have turned the trick. 



Co-operation in this case meant, as nearly 

 as anyone could find out, that the beekeep- 

 ers were to organize with paid officers and 

 by that means they were to put the honey- 

 buyers, the supply dealers, and all other 

 parasites of the bee business out of commis 

 sion. It would take $25,000 a year to get 

 the right sort of man to do all that ought to 

 be done, and the beekeepers were at once to 

 take steps to perfect the organization. At 

 once the regular program was dropped, and 

 the meeting took up the matter of co-opera- 

 tion. Thomas Jeff — but I'll not give his 

 name, quietly told some of the beekeepers 

 that he was willing to make the big sacri- 

 fice and that if they would make him the 

 general manager of the outfit he would be 

 willing to take it for $10,000 a year. Of 

 course, they didn't have any money at all 



