Jan. 5, 190S. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



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(Eonrentton 

 Proceebings 



THE ST. LOUIS CONVENTION. 



J 



Report of the 35th Annual Convention, of the 



National Bee-Keepers' Association Held at 



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



[Continned from page S88.J 



The President called upon Mr. N. E. France, the 

 general manager of the Association, to address the con- 

 vention on a subject not named. 



RECOnnENDATlONS OF THE GENERAL MANAGER. 



Mr. France — You see I have been idle all the time since 

 I have been here. In just this kind of idleness, almost 

 night and day for a year, I have been working for you. 

 Our secretary, Mr. Brodbeck, wrote me he wanted a pro- 

 gram that would be a credit to us and make this conven- 

 tion the best that had ever been — and I believe it is so 

 far — and I said, I am with you in anything to make the 

 National a success. Assign me any topic you please, 

 and if I am prepared I will accept it, and if I am not I 

 will try to be prepared. That is the secret of success 

 in anything. But it has been one continuous strain, day 

 and night, to get material in shape to make this meeting 

 a success. I wanted to put an illustration before this 

 assembled body that has never before been produced, 

 which would educate them, in the form of this map that 

 I had advertised. To illustrate the point in view, if you 

 would take samples of honey branded "white clover" 

 from the various bee-keepers you would find there is a 

 great variance, and that somewhat affects our market. 

 We do not all judge alike. We are not satisfied unless 

 we all have one and the same price. 



There are so very many duties that devolve upon this 

 office that I hardly have time at home to know whether 

 my family are there when I get home or not. This year 

 my father, now past eighty, is not able to superintend 

 the work at home, and the two little boys you saw here 

 with one older, have had the whole care of the house, 

 and between 400 and 500 colonies of bees and twenty 

 acres inside the city, which we pay $60 taxes on. Men 

 have asked me, "How many colonies of bees have you 

 got?" Honestly, I don't know. We had somewhere 

 about that number in the spring. I have been home oc- 

 casionally a day. When I get back there is from one 

 to three baskets full of National Association corre- 

 spondence, and I am right there at the typewriter until 

 I go away again. So I am sorry to say I come before you 

 to represent the National Association without prepara- 

 tion. 



There is one thing I have felt from the beginning 

 and that is, this Association has got upon a living basis; 

 like the National Government at the close of the Civil 

 War, it has now opened its doors to an endless growth. 

 When you think of the endless bee-keepers in the United 

 States, and the comparatively few we have in our ranks, 

 what a chance there is for development! Can we inter- 

 est those who are not members to become a part of us? 

 Our fees are not standing in the way, for they are nearly 

 all coming in now on the half-rate. 



The insurance part of the Association has given me 

 a good deal of anxious, careful study. Hours that I 

 should have had for rest have been, many of them, spent 

 with attorneys who have been kind enough to give me 

 their advice gratuitouslj'. Largely coming from our city 

 bee-keepers who get into ouarrels with our neighbors not 

 because of the bees but through their different affairs, 

 and finally the bees are brought in connection with it, and 

 as a result they get into a quarrel and then step, as it 

 were, back and say, "I belong to the National Associa- 

 tion, I have got into trouble, you help me out." I am 

 sorry those conditions have come about in our Associa- 

 tion. I hoped the day had dawned when we would dis- 



continue that and allow this Association to develop in 

 these new phases of fighting adulterated honey, and creat- 

 ing a greater uniformity of market among bee-keepers 

 over all the world. There are world-wide things we 

 ought to be doing instead of these smaller and not so im- 

 portant matters. 



In the extreme West where last year they had such 

 a bountiful honey-flow this year has been a failure in 

 South California, and much has been the correspondence 

 there to save our National from litigation; the bees were 

 in a starving condition. As a matter of fact if there is 

 anything sweet exposed the bees will work upon it, and 

 the swarms of letters that have been poured upon me 

 in behalf of the bees working upon fruit; and the cries 

 that the bees were injurious to it, have been very great, 

 and it seemed for a time the bees were going to be re- 

 moved from various cities in California. One test case 

 of that finally came up, and we have carried it through to 

 a success, have gained our point, although it has cost the 

 Association about $200 for the attorney's bills; yet it has 

 quieted that sectioti of the country. 



For those of us who live near neighbors, and our 

 bees, in the spring perchance should spot the neighbor's 

 clothing, how nicely a little donation of honey, friendly 

 given, or paying for the relaundering of the clothing, 

 would settle all that grievance. If our bees go to our 

 neighbor's trough or place where the water is obtained, 

 and they are an annoyance there, sweeten that away with 

 a little kindly donation of honey. If our bees annoy 

 our neighbors in a garden or upon the near highways, you 

 know they can be sweetened in the same way. Oh, I 

 have gone to various places and have compromised it 

 without any litigation, by just bringing the two parties to- 

 gether and having a little honey and new biscuits. Keep 

 together, compromise, keep out of court. Be brothers 

 hereafter. 



You have many topics this morning that you would 

 like to have discussed, and to me one of the most vital 

 things to the bee-keeping industry is to keep our colonies 

 free from disease. The subject is to be fully discussed to- 

 morrow, and I hope you will be here. This National 

 Association is in a shape, if you will join hands in union 

 with me, that it can help you get the desired legislation. 

 This Association can help to check largely this cry about 

 the adulteration of honey, either extracted or manufac- 

 tured, as it was claimed, in comb, but I can't do it alone; 

 and as the editors of your bee-papers the past summer 

 have asked you to swarm in your letters at designated 

 points, I too have been in the same harness and have 

 done the same. I have written those parties and I have 

 asked others to do so, and I believe it has had some of 

 the desired effect. 



I issued a little pamphlet on bees and horticulture 

 for the benefit of those who were receiving injury by 

 people spraying fruit-trees, while in bloom. This became 

 alarming in some parts of our country, and many apiaries 

 suffered severely. The little pamphlet has had its desired 

 effect, and I saw, after those were exhausted and many 

 more called for, wherein I had made a mistake. We 

 should have had it stereotyped so that we could issue 

 more without having it all reset. We need more copies. 

 Later on our city bee-keepers got into trouble and we 

 needed some instruction on what the courts say pertain- 

 ing to their cases. That also I gathered together as best 

 I could, hurriedly, into a little pamphlet, and it has saved 

 our organization from what looked to be expensive suits. 

 It was this little, red leaflet. I hope the city bee-keepers 

 will commit page 35 to memory pertaining to bees and 

 their neighbors. To the new bee-keepers or new mem- 

 bers, if there is any part of this literature they have 

 not received, and will make it known, I will see they 



get it. . . r 



You have stood by the Association m her days of 

 need, and in a financial way it looks now as if it were on 

 a basis of permanency. We haven't any great amount in 

 our treasury. We had about $1,115, I think, at the close 

 of the last year; and, anxious to get this report out early, 

 at the time I closed up that part of the statement here 

 a few days ago it was almost the same amount within a 

 very few dollars — it will be a little shortage on ac- 

 count of this $200 suit which we will have to meet in 

 California, and there are some other things that may 

 reduce that a little, but the additional membership 

 coming in will very nearly off-set that. I don't believe 

 this Association wants a big amount of money lying idle. 



