THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



he has been in better health, tlian 

 for some years, and we hope his 

 health will remain good, and he be 

 spared for many 5'ears, to give us 

 through the various bee journals 

 the matured thoughts of his ripened 

 mind. 



Modest and unassuming In his 

 manners, and confiding as a child 

 in the honesty of the world, he to- 

 da}', instead of having reaped a for- 

 tune as the result of his valuable 

 invention, is not worth a single dol- 

 lar. But for all this, he stands be- 

 fore the world as one of Nature's 

 noblemen, an honest man. He has 

 fairly and fully earned the proud 

 title that all beekeepers, who know 

 him, admit belongs to him, — the 

 prince of apiarists ; the Huber of 

 America, 



Foxboro, 3Iass., Dec. 19, 1883. 



. BEE-POWER 

 OR MAN-PO WER, WHICH? 



By Prof. J. Hasbeouck. 



There is an nnmistakable ten- 

 dency among those largeh' engaged 

 in the honey industry in this coun- 

 tr}', to divide into two schools r 

 the one, keeping comparatively 

 few bees, and relying upon various 

 forcing operations, involving a 

 great deal of labor, to secure a 

 large crop of honey ; the other, by 

 getting comparatively little from 

 each of many stocks, letting the 

 bees do the most of the labor, — try 

 to get a larger aggregate yield. The 

 one, in the language of Mr. Doo- 



litle, saj^s, "the greatest number of 

 colonies kept should not be our am- 

 bition, but the greatest yield from 

 a given number." The motto of 

 the other class is, "the greatest 

 amount of honey possible, at the 

 least expense ;" the one party is 

 alwaj's fighting the "increase," 

 viewing it only as so many hungry 

 mouths to be filled with what the}' 

 prefer to have in "the shape of 

 surplus." The other believes that 

 if a few bees are a good thing, 

 more are better, and that, if it will 

 pay to feed 50 stocks, it will pay to 

 spread over more ground and feed 

 100, provided the}' are put to good 

 use. 



The honey business has been so 

 advertised and "boomed," in var- 

 ious ways, that the supph' has 

 rather outrun the demand, and it 

 is becoming to ever}- honey pro- 

 ducer to study to take his hone}' 

 on just as small a margin as 

 possible so each one should con- 

 sider which of the above policies 

 seems the wiser for him to adopt 

 in his locality and circumstances. 

 Mr. Doolittle has evidently been 

 studying the subject, and he 

 plainly indicates his convictions, 

 in the article above quoted, when 

 he asks, "Which is considered 

 the better farmer, the man who 

 employs certain help to work 200 

 acres of land to secure a certain 

 A^eld therefrom, or the man who 

 uses the same help on 100 acres 

 and secures as large, if not a larger 

 amount, than does the other from 

 his 200 acres ?" 



Well, according to that supposi- 

 tion, the 100 acre farmer evidently 



