WOl 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



113 



I want to rear others from.'' Mr. Doo- 

 little's word has weight, and especially 

 in a case of this kind. As a (lueen- 

 breeder, if he consulted merely liis own 

 interests, he might be expected to say: 

 ••By all mean«, replace your queens 

 every two years, if not every year; and 

 I'm ready to furnish the young queens 

 to replace them." Ikit Mr. Doolittle is 

 an honest man. 



It is undoubtedly cheaper to let the 

 bees themselves do the superseding than 

 to replace queens with otters, either 

 home-reared or purchased ; but the wise 

 bee-keeper will still keep the whole mat- 

 ter under his control by suppressing all 

 poor stock and encouraging the good. 

 From time to time he will seek to im- 

 prove by introducing fresh stock from 

 the best queen-breeders ; but he will not 

 stop at that. He will keop tab on the 

 performance of every olony, and be 

 able to tell you just what the progeny of 

 each of the queens did during the pre- 

 ceding year, or years, of tiieir lives; and 

 knowing this, he will kno.v from which 

 queen he is to rear. This matter of 

 keeping a careful record of the perform- 

 ance of each colony is at the foundation of 

 building up an apiary that is to bring in 

 the best returns. How many bee-keepers 

 do you suppose keep any such record ? 

 If you have never given the matter 

 any attention, perhaps it may be well to 

 recall some facts that you have probably 

 noticed without carefully considering 

 their l)earing. You may have noticed 

 that, as a rule, the colonies most given to 

 swarming have not been among the best 

 for storing surplus, and that those which 

 have made the best super records have 

 not wasted much time in swarming. If 

 you have paid no attention to this, but 

 have left the bees to run things their 

 own way, the bees most given to swarm- 

 ing are the ones that have given you in- 

 crease almost entirely, while your best 

 colonies have given no increase. Dou't 

 you see that such a course, continued 

 indetinitely, will inevitably result in 

 run-out Imm'S? By keeping nuitters 



under your own control, you can make 

 the current run the other way. 



If you buy queens that are always the 

 best, you will make sure to keep up your 

 stock; but if you replace with a pur- 

 chased queen every queen of a certain 

 age, it will cost you much more than to 

 allow the bees to do their own super- 

 seding. If queen-breeders and honey- 

 producers will all work together for a 

 constant improvement of stock, it is dif- 

 ficult to estimate what the result may be. 



Marengo, 111., April 2(5, 1901. 



"Let us go carefully over the ground and 

 see if the German bee has not some traits 

 that the honorable bee-keeper is bound to 

 respect."' 



ANNUAL ADDRESS, 

 Delivered January 9, 1901, at Geneva, 

 N.Y., before the Convention of the 

 New York State Association of Bee- 

 keepers' Societies, by President W. F. 

 Marks. 



FELLOW Members. Bee-keepers and 

 Friends: Following the usual cus- 

 tom I will, with your permission, 

 biielly run over the events of the past 

 year, as they apply to our industry and 

 to this Association. The first thing that 

 required our attention was to secure a 

 liberal appropriation to enable the Com- 

 missioner of Agricultur<' to suppress dis- 

 eased brood. Although no one repre- 

 senting this A-!SOciation went to Albany, 

 the whole infiuence of the several societies 

 was used to aid those bee-keepers who 

 did go. The second thing that required 

 our attention was the amendment to our 

 spraying law. As originally introduced, 

 thisamendment had some bad features: 

 but. as finally amended, believing that 

 the proposed experiments would uphold 

 and stiengthen the law, it was allowed 

 to pass. The results of these experi- 

 ments of spraying in bloom have not yet 

 been published ; but from what I can 

 learn, they do not favor spraying at that 

 time. Prof. Beach will address you this 

 afternoon and give you the results of 

 these experiments. It 'is rumored that 

 an attempt will be made again this win- 

 ter to repeal the spraying law. I do not 

 know how true this may be, but it stands 

 you all in hand to be on the alert. ''Fore- 

 warned is forearmed."' I would ask 

 each of you to see your senators and 



