THE AMERICAN APICULTUBIST. 



131 



luent against those who will hang 

 their heads in shame. Aye, and 

 the time shall yet come when the 

 beekeepers of America, realizing 

 the truth of some of the statements 

 that have been made, will rise en 

 masse and demand that we have 

 state and national associations 

 which shall stand high above jour- 

 nals and bee literature as the 

 supreme judges upon all matters 

 pertaining to practical bee culture 

 and the interests of beekeepers, 

 and when the need of such a reform 

 is thoroughly realized the w'ork 

 will be done. 



It seems to be a fact that a large 

 portion of what has been written 

 for our journals was intended to 

 help the supply dealer, and those 

 dealers having a journal at their 

 command or pledged in their in- 

 terests are the most fortunate, 

 hence the most successful. "Who 

 makes the most money out of the 

 " dollar-queen " boom ? The pro- 

 ducer, who gets from forty cents 

 to seventy-five cents for the queen, 

 or the dealer who purchases them 

 at that price and sells them for 

 one dollar? If all the trutji re- 

 garding the dollar-queen business 

 were known, the statement lately 

 made by one of our editors that 

 it had been such a benefit to the 

 beekeepers would be severely crit- 

 icised. Our knowledge of the 

 queen business warrants us in stat- 

 ing that flrst-class and carefully 

 reared queens cannot be sold for 

 one dollar each, with profit to any 

 one, except the dealer, who pur- 

 chases the queen to sell again ; 

 and the cheap or dolhu-ciueen 



traffic, instead of being a blessing, 

 has proven a great damage to api- 

 culture. If more of our attention 

 w^ere given to rearing better queens 

 in preference to cheap ones, we 

 should have a better class of bees. 



A large portion of all that is 

 done to advance apiculture in this 

 countr}^ is or has been done in the 

 interest of those who have goods 

 for sale, and such an article as 

 that written by Mr. Doolittle, 

 which appears in this number, 

 touches the large supply dealer in 

 a tender spot, and we were not at 

 all surprised to find the editor of 

 one of our journals taking issue 

 with Mr. Doolittle. 



What we want is a system or 

 method for teaching apiculture to 

 the masses, which shall benefit all 

 classes of beekeepers, and this 

 never will be until our associations 

 are thoroughly organized. We 

 hope and trust that in the near 

 future, bee culture will be taught 

 as a branch of agriculture, and 

 then each farmer who has a care 

 for bees can produce the sweets 

 used on his own table in preference 

 to depending on the adulterated 

 sugars and syrups with which the 

 market is filled, besides reducing 

 his grocery bill fifty dollars or more 

 per year, and benefiting every crop 

 that depends upon insect life for 

 its proper fertilization. 



Again, we have come to the con- 

 clusion that in the majority of in- 

 stances, beekeeping should be 

 carried on in connection with some 

 other vocation or industry and not 

 depended upon as a si)ecialty. 

 There are locations where one can 



