Jan. 19, 1905. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



41 



=^ 



(Eoiux^ntion 

 Proccebino;5 



J 



THE ST. LO UIS CO NVENTION. 



Report of the 35th Annual Convention, of the 



National Bee-Keepers' Association Held at 



St. Louis, Mo., Sept. 27-30, 1904. 



(Continaed from page 26.J 



The President called upon Prof. Frank Benton to 

 read a paper, which is as follows: 



WORK IN APICULTURE AT THE UNITED STATES 

 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



At the meeting of the North American Bee-Keepers' 

 Association, held at Washington, D. C, December 27-29, 

 1892, Dr. C. V. Riley, then Entomologist of the Depart- 

 ment, presented quite a review of what the Department 

 of Agriculture had done, and what he conceived it could 

 do for apiculture. Since it fell to me to prepare all of the 

 data for this article I shall feel at perfect liberty to draw 

 upon it freely in a brief review of what the Department 

 has already done in apiculture. In most instances, how- 

 ever, I shall quote literally from the communication pre- 

 sented under the name of Dr. Riley. 



Dr. Riley started out by an allusion to the wisdom 

 of establishing as a part of the government machinery, a 

 Department of Agriculture charged with doing all it can 

 to foster and encourage agriculture in all its branches. 

 He believed that the advisability of this would not be 

 questioned by any one who had made himself familiar 

 with the work of the Department since its organization, 

 lirst as a mere chair in the Department of the Interior, 

 then a separate Commission, and later a department co- 

 ordinate with the others, with representation in the 

 Cabinet of the President. He believed, and I think with 

 good reason, that, notwithstanding some things in the 

 administration of this great Department might be better 

 if changed, yet on the whole there exist fewer abuses and 

 abnormal conditions in the Department of Agriculture 

 than in any other of the Departments of the government. 

 The great body of workers connected with the Depart- 

 ment are earnestly interested in the branches which they 

 represent, and devote practically all of their energies to 

 the furtherance of the work in hand. It has been my lot 

 to be associated in various capacities with these workers 

 during the past thirteen years, and I have come to appre- 

 ciate most thoroughly the beneficial character of their 

 work, and their singular devotion to it. I can also easily 

 understand how Dr. Riley remarked in his article that 

 "some of the most beneficent and far-reaching work of 

 the Department was done during its earlier history, when 

 its means were limited, and when the field was fresh, and 

 the opportunities relatively greater." He then proceeds 

 to state that: "It has been the desire of almost everyone 

 who has been at the head of the Department to pursue a 

 broad and liberal policy to the end that all the branches 

 of rural economy might receive their due share of atten- 

 tion. He states, then, the fact that must be apparent at 

 once to all, namely, that, "The head of the Department 

 is, however, helpless without Congressional aid and sym- 

 pathy, and it has too often happened that investigations 

 which promised valuable results have been abandoned 

 because of the failure of Congress to make the needed ;ip- 

 propriations." Then, after an allusion to the direct v.Tlue 

 of the products of bees, and the far greater value which 

 results to the country through the fertilization of tir 

 seed and fruit producing plants. Dr. Riley says: 



"Fifteen years ago, when I first accepted a position 

 in the Department, there was provision only for an ento- 

 mologist without assistants or means for any experi- 

 mental or field work. During the next four or five yc;irs 

 I succeeded in impressing the Commissioner of Agricul- 

 ture and Congress with a sense of the importance of the 

 work to be done in efforts to counteract the ravages of 

 injurious insects, and the appropriations for both oft'ice 



assistants and field-work increased. But the self-evident 

 advantage of endeavors to protect the farmer from some 

 part of the immense losses occasioned by insects, had to 

 fight its way into recognition. It was not until 18S5 that 

 the more important work done in counteracting the rav- 

 ages of injurious species had sufficiently advanced to 

 justify my giving some attention to apiculture, and the 

 fact that nothing more resulted from the work begun 

 may, to some extent, be laid to the lack of effort on the 

 part of the bee-keepers themselves, i. e., to their failure 

 to take united action, such as would bring home to the 

 head of the Department, and to those in charge of the 

 general appropriations, the needs and just demands of the 

 industry. 



"However, that considerable has been done by the 

 Department, and through its agency, for bee-keepers — 

 much more, probably, than most of you are aware of — 

 the published reports of the Department show. These 

 reports, hundreds of thousands of which have been dis- 

 tributed very generally over the land, have surely had 

 their influence in the promulgation of intelligent and 

 humane culture of bees. Beginning about the time of the 

 first edition of Langstroth's celebrated work, or nearly 

 a decade before any bee-periodical had been printed in 

 the English language, the Department reports have from 

 year to year given some notice of progress in bee-culture, 

 statistics of honey and wax production, and on several 

 occasions excellent little treatises on bees and bee man- 

 agement. Notable among these is the article on the na- 

 ture and habits of the honey-bee, in the report of 1857. I 

 cannot give the name of the author, as only the initials 

 of the Chief Clerk of the Patent Office are attached to it. 

 In 1860, Mr. William Buckisch, of Texas, gave, in an ex- 

 tended article, a review of bee-culture as practiced by 

 Dzierzon and his school. The essay by my old friend, 

 Mrs. Ellen S. Tupper, of Iowa, published in the report of 

 1865, and covering her theory of bee-keeping, was widely 

 read and frequently quoted, creating much interest in im- 

 proved methods. 



"The introduction of Italian bees into this country is 

 certainly one of the advances in bee-culture which ranks 

 second only to the invention of the frame hive, the honey 

 extractor, and the comb foundation machine. But how 

 many even now know that the Department of Agriculture 

 had anything to do with the matter? Leading text-books 

 on apiculture are silent on this head. The fact is, how- 

 ever, that the first successful importation of Italian bees 

 from their native land to America was made by the De- 

 partment, and it was almost wholly from this importa- 

 tion that such skillful apiarists as Langstroth, Cary, and 

 Quinby bred and disseminated the race during the early 

 '60's." 



It must be remembered of Dr. Riley that he was a 

 man of brilliant conception, and also kept in close touch 

 with popular sentiment and growth in all matters pertain- 

 ing to agriculture, and that naturally wherever his own 

 field of economic entomology was concerned, he was in 

 the front as to its needs and possibilities. He was not a 

 skilled bee-keeper, nor, in fact, could he ever have been 

 classed as a bee-keeper, but, nevertheless, he had, many 

 years before his connection with the Department, manip- 

 ulated bees to some extent, and had made some study of 

 methods in apiculture, as well as of the habits of the bees 

 themselves, so that it is not surprising that he was dis- 

 posed to view favorably, in 1885, the establishing of an 

 apicultural experiment station in connection with the en- 

 tomological work of the Department. In this he was 

 earnestly supplemented by Mr. N. W. McLain, who was, 

 I believe, an old time acquaintance and an enthusiastic 

 bee-keeper, and who became the first appointee. There 

 was, at the time, no special appropriation for apiculture, 

 nor indeed anything of the kind during the whole of Dr. 

 Riley's administration of the office of entomologist. I 

 mention this to show that all the more credit is due to 

 Dr. Riley in connection with the work then undertaken, 

 and which, though interrupted through lack of funds, he 

 resumed later. The funds to initiate this work, and to 

 continue it for a period, as well as to resume it after 

 the interruption just mentioned, were drawn from the 

 general appropriation for the Division of Entomology, 

 and were diverted by the entomologist himself from the 

 general insect-work to this special purpose in the belief 

 that he was fulfilling both the letter and the spirit of the 

 law which authorized the expenditure of certain sums for 

 the promotion of economic entomology. 



Just here I must digress somewhat, lest those familiar 



