532 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



Aug. 23 1900 



tors. The only '' practical " man of the three I consider to 

 be Mr. Secor. It is surely better economy to buy separators 

 once than full sheets every year. I don't think Mr. Dadant 

 will deny that the late Mr. Allen Pringle was a " practical 

 American bee-keeper," and he included the use of full 

 sheets in his list of the mistakes we make ; tho opposed to 

 him in this particular was that other " practical American 

 bee-keeper," the late Mr. B. Taylor, who favored the use of 

 full sheets. So you see, Mr. Dadant, that practicalness has 

 nothing- whatever to do with it, for we see the most practi- 

 cal men differing greatlj' in opinion concerning many mat- 

 ters connected with the conduct of our pursuit. 



Mr. Dadant advances, as evidence of value, the "enor- 

 mous sale " of foundation. Yes, it may be relatively enor. 

 mous, but I doubt if it is really so enormous as compared 

 with the enormous number of apiaries in Canada and the 

 United States. This number is being largely augmented 

 every year, and the new hands, the novices, no doubt use a 

 vast deal more than they really need to, even as they take 

 care to supply themseh^es with every fad and useless article 

 so enticingly brought to their notice via the supply deal- 

 ers' illustrated catalogs ; but I very much doubt if the old, 

 settled, practical bee-keepers use it to anything like the ex- 

 tent which they formerly did, and that they sell consider- 

 ably more wax than they buy. 



In speaking of the enormous sale of foundation, Mr. 

 Dadant assures us that " the American bee-keepers do not 

 foolishly throw their money away." A man need not 

 necessarily be foolish, and yet be induced to invest im- 

 mense sums which bring him in no proportionate return ; 

 and tho not foolish in rnost things, some men like a long 

 time to benefit by experience. The same class of men who 

 buy to-day unnecessarily large quantities of foundation — 

 because most of the bee-books gammon them that "they 

 can not use it too freely " (right enough, perhaps, for those 

 who keep a dozen or so colonies for recreation) — have, in the 

 past, spent millions of dollars on the once greatly extolled 

 "Golden Beauties," patent double brood-chamber hives, 

 and on endless appliances and contrivances now obsolete, 

 without which, they were at one time under the impression, 

 they could not profitably carry on their pursuit. The wheel 

 is always agoing round ; that which isa-top to-day is at the 

 bottom to-morrow. 



Several years ago the American Bee Journal was 

 chock-full of advertisements belauding the virtues of 

 the aforementioned "Golden Beauties." Their sale must 

 have been " enormous." Are they wanted to-day ? Undoubt- 

 edly not, seeing they are no longer advertised; so that 

 " enormous sales " are by no means always a criterion of 

 an article's actual and permanent worth. 



According to Mr. Dadant's dictum, American bee-keep- 

 ers never waste their money on things they can do without, 

 i. e,, they " never foolishly throw their money away," these 

 Golden Beauties must be all that was claimed for them, and 

 the demand for them ought to be as brisk to-day as ever ; 

 but as it is not, Mr. Dadant must excuse me for opining 

 that American bee-keepers can no more claim freedom from 

 the charge of occasionally foolishly throwing away their 

 money than can any other class of people ; we are all liable 

 to be misled, no matter what our nationality or calling. 



However, the wheel has turned, and these " Golden 

 Beauties " are now at the bottom, along with the quilts, 

 which every one is now discarding as a big nuisance and 

 utterly useless, and yet of which it would have been rank 

 heresy to say, several years ago, that we could have done 

 without them. The "enormous sale" which enameled 

 cloth had, when quilts were in vogue, did not prove their 

 ■necessity for all time, any more than will the present enor- 



mous sale of foundation go to prove it as indispensable a 

 necessity as many imagine. 



Yes, the wheel turns slowly, indicating gradually 

 formed changes of opinions, and awakening us to the neces- 

 sity of accepting new contrivances and discarding some old 

 ones ; and while it was bringing up the drawn super foun- 

 dation on the one side who will say it is not carrying down 

 into desuetude, or consigning to limbo, the use, or at least, 

 the too lavish use, of ordinary brood foundation on the 

 other — carrying up to us the conviction that, with low 

 prices for our product, foundation is by no means so indis- 

 pensable as we have hitherto somewhat apathetically 

 allowed ourselves to believe it to be, and that it is a waste- 

 ful luxury in which we have been indulging more in the 

 past than we can any longer afford to do ? 



I have been harping a good deal on the phrase " practi- 

 cal American bee-keepers." Ere this is in print some 

 months will have elapst since Mr. Dadant was commis- 

 sioned by you, Mr. Editor, to contest my statement that the 

 worth to the honey-producer of foundation is somewhat 

 overestimated, and the majority of your readers will by that 

 time probably have lost recollection of the discussion's 

 details. I will, therefore, recall one remark of Mr. Dadant, 

 viz.: that " the average American is about as practical a 

 man as can be found on the face of the earth." This was 

 supplementary to his claim for the economic value of foun- 

 dation on the score that " the American bee-keeper " who 

 purchases enormous quantities of it " does not foolishly 

 throw his money away." Altho the expression does not 

 verbally claim for the American a greater measure of prac- 

 ticalness than for the members of any other nationality, it 

 nevertheless implies that, for practicalness, the citizen of 

 every other country may take a back seat. Now, as a cos- 

 mopolitan, whose life has been spent in many climes, and 

 among many peoples, including England, German}', 

 France, Australia, India and the Cape, I have had ample 

 opportunity of convincing myself of the correctness of 

 Paddy's assertion, that " One man's ^s good as another, if 

 not, indeed, much better." 



I should be very loath to say anything that might be 

 calculated to give the very leastest offense to Americans, 

 or, for the matter of that, to any other man, for I like to 

 get along pleasantly with every one ; moreover, many of 

 my nearest and dearest relations are citizens of the Great 

 Union, whose institutions and people I greatly admire ; but 

 I can not help telling Mr. Dadant that I have frequently 

 heard in connection with our pursuit, such remarks as the 

 following, viz.: 



"Those Yankees, with all their claim for cuteness and 

 smartness, do take an amazingly long time to realize the 

 value or the uselessness of a thing or to know when they are 

 on the right or on the wrong track. They are slow in 

 adopting a really good thing, and equally so in discarding 

 a useless one, and seem to get taken in about as easily and 

 as often as the denizens of most other lands." 



" Yes," says another, " to read the American Bee Jour- 

 nal one would think that the bee-escapes were quite a new 

 invention. There seems still to be a great difference of 

 opinion as to their merits, or as to whether they have any 

 at all ; yet Simmins says they were used and discarded in 

 England, under the name of ' super clearer,' 20 years or 

 more ago. There are positivelj' some leaders in the indus- 

 try, too, men who used to answer the Question-Box queries, 

 who have not yet been able to convince themselves that 

 separators are necessary for the production of first-class 

 comb honey." "And here's Ernest Root," says a third, 

 reading from Gleanings in Bee-Culture, "who made a 

 great fuss aud hubbub over his fancied new notion of end- 

 staples in the top-bar, and yet I see here are two Johnnies 



