rHE BEE-KKEPERS REVIEW. 



67 



gested improvements, the majority will be 

 enabled to increase and manage a larger 

 number of colonies, with a much less expen- 

 diture of time and labor. 

 Jaokson, Mich. Feb. 5, 1895. 



The Future of Bee - Keeping. 



EUGENE SEOOK. 



ED. Review : — Your leader in the Review 

 for January covers the ground so fully 

 there is not much left to lie said. 



I notice, however, that you concede, with 

 more grace than you used to, that possibly 

 bee-keeping as an exclusive business will 

 not yield the returns necessary to feed, 

 clothe and educate all the youngsters who 

 happen to be dropped into the lap of some 

 devoted woman, who, willingly or unwilling- 

 ly, is sharing the hard lot of a genuine bee- 

 crank. 



,. It sounds very large to most men to be 

 called a " King " among his fellows. If he 

 is a farmer he wants to own more acres and 

 raise more corn and hogs than any man in 

 the county. If he is a bee-keeper he is am- 

 bitious to see his name in the papers as the 

 " King Bee," that is, to own more colonies 

 and sell more honey than any one for miles 

 around. If he made a success on a small 

 scale, he figures the prospective profits from 

 a large apiary in the same manner that Hor- 

 ace Greeley (according to tradition) com- 

 puted the profits on ten acres of cabbage 

 from one nice one raised in his garden. He 

 stated the question something like this : If 

 one cabbage head is worth ten cents, what 

 will be the profit on ten acres of cabbages if 

 planted two feet apart each way ? 



That's the way for a bee-keeper to get rich 

 producing liouey. If he succeeds in getting 

 one hundred pounds of nice comb honey 

 from one colony in one season, and sells it 

 at twenty cents per pound, it is very easy to 

 compute his profits on two hundred colonies 

 if they will all do as well as his first one. 

 And of course they will I Isn't he learning 

 all the time ? If he can make twenty-five 

 colonies pay, can't 'he, by putting all his 

 mind and energies into the business, make 

 four hundred pay ? 



I think some such reasoning as this leads 

 most of the specialists into the toils. Please 

 do not understand me to l)e against special- 

 izing. As you say, there may be localities 



where it will pay to plant out-apiaries and 

 to devote one's whole time to the business. 

 It seems to me that the same old question 

 recurs to us that has always been a leading 

 one with every thoughtful bee-keeper : 

 •' What is the source and extent of my sup- 

 ply ?" Every man will have to solve the 

 problem for himself and govern himself ac- 

 cordingly. It is not only a question of fit- 

 ness but of environment. What's the use of 

 a man's becoming an enthusiast in apicul- 

 ture if he lives where nothing but buffalo 

 grass will grow, and where the grass-hopper 

 is a burden ? 



But, where white clover abounds, where 

 the beautiful linden has not heard the wood- 

 man's ax, where the farmers have not lost 

 their early love for buckwheat cakes, where 

 the golden-rod fringes the hedge and the 

 Spanish needle stays by the thriftless agri- 

 culturist, there it is safe to plant one, fifty or 

 one hundred colonies, according to circum- 

 stances. I suppose apiculture will have its 

 ups and downs just as it always has had. 

 Some students will come and some will go, 

 but the business will go on forever. 



The law of "survival of the fittest" will 

 solve the problem. Flowers will continue to 

 secrete nectar, apicultural enthusiasts will 

 continue to be born, and if enthusiasm and 

 nectar secretion happen to get together you 

 may expect large crops. This will entice 

 others to try their skill and the same old 

 stories of successes and failures will prob- 

 ably be repeated. 



Forest Citt, Iowa. Feb. 4, 1^95. 



Bee Paralysis is Not Contagious But Hered^ 

 itary— Salt an Apparent Cure. 



JOSHUA BULL. 



JAM inclined to think that bee paralysis 

 is not contagious. It may be of an endem " 

 ical nature, and peculiar to certain local- 

 ities, and climatic influences, like the ague, 

 for example, among mankind, but I am 

 much more inclined to believe that it is 

 hereditary, and may be transmitted from the 

 queen and the drone to their ofspring : as 

 cancerous and scrofulous humors are trans- 

 mitted from parents to children in the hu- 

 man family. If it be a fact that the disease 

 is hereditary and transmissible through both 

 the queen and the drone, it is easy to see 

 how rapidly it would spread through a 



