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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAi... 



Mr. Charles Dadant, of Hamilton, 111., 

 honorary member of the Association, 

 having been prevented, through illness, 

 from preparing the essay, " Bee-Keeping 

 in France," announced on the program, 

 the Association by a unanimous resolu- 

 tion requested him to present such an 

 essay for publication in the proceedings 

 of the convention. Mr. Dadant has com- 

 plied by sending the following interest- 

 ing article: 



Bee-Culture in France. 



The recent progress in bee-culture has 

 been accepted very slowly in France, 

 and I think that this slowness can be 

 attributed to the profits obtained by the 

 methods used in that country before the 

 invention of the movable-frame, and to 

 the relatively advanced knowledge of 

 bees, as well as to the poor results given 

 by the first experiments made with mov- 

 able combs and frames, which were, at 

 first, far from giving as good results as 

 the straw hives with or without surplus 

 caps, or made two or three stories high. 



A considerable industry in honey-pro- 

 duction had grown, not far from Paris, 

 in Gatinais, where the best known 

 honey-producing plant, the sainfoin or 

 esparcette, was largely cultivated. This 

 sainfoin (healthy hay), which belongs to 

 the leguminous family, like alfalfa and 

 clover, and which, unfortunately, does 

 not succeed here, not only gives the best 

 food for farm animals, but it gives also 

 the best honey, and about as abundantly 

 as the sage of California. Yet, as the 

 flowers of Gatinais, save during the 

 blooming of the sainfoin, were unable to 

 support a number of bees adequate with 

 the honey which could be harvested in 

 this part of the country, its bee-keepers 

 became bee-buyers and bee-killers ; so, 

 two large occupations, one of rearing 

 bees, and the other of harvesting honey, 

 were created. 



For several hundred miles around, 

 most of the bee-keepers reared bees with 

 the purpose of producing not honey, but 

 swarms, which were sold from three to 

 four dollars apiece in the spring, some 

 Oatinaisicns buying a thousand of them 

 or more. These swarms transported to 

 the fields of sainfoin, were smothered 

 with sulphur, as soon as they had filled 

 their hives, to get their honey and bees- 

 wax. 



As this mode of bee-culture, or rather 

 bee-killing, was profitable to both the 

 bee-breeder and the bee-killer, progress 

 was to them undesirable ; for they an- 

 ticipated that a change of method would 

 ruin their business, by teacihing bee- 

 keepers at large, how to produce honey 



without destroying bees ; and Mr. H. 

 ELamet, founder and publisher of the 

 joural, L'Aplculteur, of Paris, sided 

 with them to stop the progress. 



I ought to say that bee-culture with 

 fixed combs had progressed as far as 

 possible in France, under the influence 

 of the writings of Reaumur, Palteau, 

 de Gelieu, Lombard, Huber, etc., and 

 that the attempts at using movable- 

 combs, according to the teachings of 

 Delia Rocca, Debeauroys and others, had 

 failed. 



Such was the condition of bee-culture 

 in France when Mr. Bastian tried to in- 

 troduce the German movable-frame hive, 

 and Mr. L'ahbe Sagot a hive of his own 

 invention, with movable ceiling, like the 

 Langstroth, but smaller in size. Both 

 these bee-keepers had described their 

 hives and methods in the Apicxdteur of 

 Mr. Hamet, when one of my neighbors, 

 while in Paris, visited this editor, to 

 subscribe to his paper for me. Mr. 

 Hamet entreated him to ask me to send 

 him some articles on bee-culture in the 

 United States. Of course I complied 

 gladly, especially when I saw how far 

 behind France was in bee-culture. 



It was in 1868. My first articles 

 were welcomed ; but as soon as I began 

 to praise the Langstroth and Quinby 

 hives, ranking them above all the fixed- 

 comb hives, Mr. Hamet, becoming angry, 

 was so impolite that, for several years, 

 nobody cared to write, for his paper, 

 anything in favor of the movable-comb. 



Fortunately, some agricultural papers 

 were ready to accept our writings, and, 

 besides, one or two other bee-papers 

 were started, but they did not last. 

 Then Mr. Ed. Bertrand began, in Switz- 

 erland, the publication of the Revue in- 

 ternationale iVApicuUure,v/hich has scat- 

 tered the knowledge of the new hives 

 and methods not only in Switzerland, 

 but in France and Belgium, and even in 

 Russia, where the French language is 

 spoken by the high classes. 



Mr. Hamet began, at last, slowly and 

 reluctantly, to accept the new hives, and 

 now his successor seems to put them on 

 the same level with the old ones. Yet 

 he considers the old straw-hive as good 

 as any frame hive for the greatest num- 

 ber of bee-keepers. 



Now, in spite of all the opposition, the 

 movable-frame goes forward in France. 

 Unfortunately, although all the hives 

 have movable ceilings, like the Ameri- 

 can, there are too many different sizes 

 and shapes of frames in use ; and their 

 number has been on the increase. 



About two years ago an influential 

 French boe-kooper, in order to get a vote 



