146 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Jan., 



and the pleasant acquaintanceships formed and 

 fostered at these meetings, cannot but beget the 

 feeling so well embodied in the pithy Scotch 

 motto — " We're brithers a'!" May this feeling 

 be paramount to every other all through our 

 proceedings. May all pur discussions be carried 

 on under its influence. Then, though we may 

 have our differences of opinion — and it would be 

 a dull, uninteresting time if we had not — these 

 will not interfere with our good fellowship, nor 

 lessen our enjoyment. 



The course of bee-keeping, like that of true 

 love, never did run smooth, and we meet after 

 passing through a disastrous winter and a profit- 

 less summer. If "misery loves company," as I 

 suppose it does, that gratification must be com- 

 plete on the present occasion. The cause or 

 causes of last winter's terrible mortality among 

 bees will no doubt form one prominent subject 

 of discussion at this meeting. We have all our 

 theories, and it is well that we should compare 

 them. For myself, partly perhaps from habits 

 of theological thought, and partly, it may be, 

 from a dr.sh of superstition in my nature, I have 

 adopted the old time verdict of coroners' juries, 

 always resorted to in mysterious cases, "Died 

 by visitation of God." The correspondents of 

 our bee journals have suggested all manner of 

 explanations to account for the fatality of last 

 winter, but I frankly confess none that I have 

 met with fully satisfy my own mind. It is one 

 of the peculiarities, and to me one of the charms 

 of our present life, that we find a draping of 

 mystery, as it were, about everything with 

 which we have to do. What a world of shadows 

 it is ! How light and shade are mingled — here 

 the clearness of noon, there the dimness of twi- 

 light, and yonder, again, thick, black night. 

 The fact that the temple of nature has its mys- 

 teries, proves it to be the dwelling of God. 



,We can more easily account lor the unprofit- 

 able summer than for the fatal winter. Unfa- 

 vorable weather, drought, want of honey in the 

 flowers, fewness of honey-gatherers, and the 

 like, sufficiently explain this. We must expect 

 fluctuations in the honey harvest, even as there 

 are fluctuations in every other harvest and in 

 trade. We must judge this pursuit like every 

 other — by its average of seasons, and not by any 

 one exceptional season. Bee-keeping has been 

 denounced as a delusion and a snare, in certain 

 quarters, because of the discouraging character 

 of the past summer and winter. In the same 

 style, a very dismal story might now and theu 

 be got up in regard to farming in general. 

 Though it is the basis of all human prosperity, 

 it has its drawbacks, difficulties and failures. 

 Farmers, too, are for the most part adepts at 

 the grumbling business. The poet Cowper did 

 not wrong them very much in his picture of 

 tything time. The rector wants his dues, for 

 parsons must live as well as other people, but 

 his rural parishioners are loth to pay, and seek 

 to move his pity : 

 9 

 " One talks of heat and one of frost, 



And one of rain and hail, 

 And one of pigs that he has lost 

 By maggots at the tail." 



Since our meeting at Cleveland, the interests 

 of agriculture on this continent have sustained 

 a great loss in the death of Samuel Wagner, 

 whose name will go down to posterity insep- 

 arably linked with that of the American Bee 

 Journal, so long and ably edited by him. 

 Though a stranger to him personally, I am, 

 nevertheless, qualified, from a lengthened ac- 

 quaintance with his writings, to speak of him 

 as an apiarian and an editor in terms of highest 

 eulogy. Others who knew him better can, and 

 no doubt will, give expression to their estimate 

 of his worth and of his eminent services to api- 

 culture ; and this society will do itself, as well 

 as him, honor by adopting, recording and pub- 

 lishing a resolution of regret at his removal and 

 praise of his abilities, virtue, and life work. The 

 beekeepers of this country will also feel, doubt- 

 less, that, as the most graceful act of respect 

 and the most enduring monument to his mem- 

 ory, it behooves them to lend a hearty and gen- 

 erous patronage to the periodical established by 

 him with so much earnest and self-sacrificing 

 devotion to apiarian interests. 



Every member of this society should strive 

 to get up a beekeepers' club at home. These 

 clubs should send representatives, to State, 

 Provincial or Territorial organizations, and this 

 continental body should, in due time, become 

 representative and be composed of a certain 

 number of delegates from each State, Province 

 or Territory in North America, thus constitu- 

 ting a sort of high court of apiculture, to which 

 the knottiest questions and hardest problems 

 are submitted, and whence there shall emanate 

 decisions and rulings of highest apiarian au- 

 thority. Even now, to a certain extent, this 

 society may properly regard itself as both de- 

 liberative and legislative, and there are some 

 points on which it would be eminently benefi- 

 cial to the bee-keeping public for it to record its 

 convictions. We could unanimously pass a 

 resolution to the effect that gum and box hives 

 are behind the times — "played out," as the 

 boys say, and if it were not for the glitter of the 

 "almighty dollar," we could agree to say that 

 given the movable frame, the bevelled edge and 

 the air-space, nothing else is of much account 

 in a hive, except as a gratification of taste and a 

 play of fancy. Any hive containing frames of 

 convenient size and safe to handle and subject 

 to the operation of the melip u It, is good enough 

 for successful bee-keeping. The bees worked 

 as successfully in the carcass of Samson's de- 

 funct lion, as they now do in the most artistic 

 and highly decorated bee-palace of modern 

 times, and their honey was just as sweet as that 

 stored in the dantiest and prettiest of our fancy 

 boxes. The bees are not particular. It is the 

 convenience and gain of the beekeeper we have 

 to consult. Hives don't differ much in their 

 average profitableness, other things being equal, 

 and it is an injury to bee-keeping as a business, 

 to convey the idea that there is any magic in a 

 hive, or to indulge the hope that by and by we 

 shall get one so wonderful in all its appoint- 

 ments that it will need no looking after, except 

 to sell the honey. It has become one of the 

 reproaches of apiculture that "a hive to sell" 



