382 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apr. is 



If I mistake not, Mr. Hutchinson, of the 

 Review, has been a most strenuous advo- 

 cate of keeping' " more bees;" but so far as 

 I have read his editorials he does not ad- 

 vise that in doing- so a locality should be 

 overcrowded to the extent that the average 

 per colony should be cut down, but that the 

 additional bees should be scattered in 

 various outyards, each having no more col- 

 onies than the locality will support. On 

 the other hand, there is just a little danger 

 that seme of our friends may go too deeply 

 into bee-keeping, and it is perhaps wise to 

 call a halt ere some wade into water be- 

 yond their depth. Many a person can han- 

 dle a few chickens, and get good results; 

 but when he runs the number up into the 

 hundreds he meets with failure and disas- 

 ter. Some of our friends have done remark- 

 ably well with a few colonies; but when 

 they have attempted to double or treble the 

 number they entered into a business propo- 

 sition that proved to be rather too much for 

 them. 



Many years ago a neighbor of ours clear- 

 ed a thousand dollars from one acre of on- 

 ions. It made him wild. He bought ten 

 more acres of the same kind of onion land, 

 going into debt for it, and expected to clear 

 the following year $10,000. When he man- 

 aged the one acre he did all the work him- 

 self. When he worked the ten acres he 

 had to hire help. The help was inccmpe- 

 tent, or did not understand. Onions fell in 

 price; and at the final roundup that year 

 he had a great stojk of poor onions without 

 a buyer. They rotted. He became dis- 

 couraged, and lost lost all he had, and 

 more too. 



Now, while I indorse Mr. Hutchinson's 

 advice to "keep more bees," I have been 

 fearful that a good many, on account of a 

 lack of experience or lack of business abil- 

 ity, not understanding their own limitations 

 and those of their localities, would plunge 

 in too deeplj^ and meet with disaster. 

 There are, undoubtedly, some people who 

 can keep more bees by scattering them in 

 outyards, and if they have the requisite 

 training and business ability they would 

 make moie money. But where we find one 

 person who can manage iOO colonies or more 

 successfully, there will be dozens of others 

 who can not go much beyond the 200 or 300 

 mark. The same rule applies to any busi- 

 ness. But if I understand Mr. Hutchinson 

 he does not advise that every one should 

 keep more bees. He would be unwise if he 

 did. 



Now let us look at the other side of the 

 question — the side of expansion. Perhaps 

 here is a bee-keeper who has 300 colonies. 

 During the busy season he is comfortably 

 busy. But during six months in the year 

 his time is not very profitably employed — a 

 distinct loss; for it will take him onlj' a 

 short time, comparatively, to get his supers 

 ready for the next season, nail his hives, 

 repaint them, or do other preliminary work 

 that can easily be done indoors, and yet 

 his interest, or his rent and his living ex- 



penses are going right on. Suppose, for 

 example, that this bee-keeper has bOO colo- 

 nies, or 1000; that he has good business 

 ability; that he has plenty of bee- range. 

 Suppose he scatters this number in 15 dif- 

 ferent yards, none further than 15 miles 

 from his home, and a good part of them not 

 over four or five miles away. In the busy 

 season he will, of course, have to employ 

 help. If he has the right kind of executive 

 ability he will see that that help is profit- 

 ably employed. When the rush of work 

 is over he can look after the marketing of 

 the crop, put the bees into winter quarters, 

 perhaps doing the work himself with the 

 occasional help of one man and a team. In 

 cold weacher he can devote all of his time 

 profitably to preparing for the next season. 

 Now, while he is operating 1000 colonies it 

 costs him no more to live; the same horse 

 and wagon that will carry him to two or 

 three hundred will carry him t3 the other 

 seven or eight hundred. If he is running 

 for extracted honey, the same extractor, un- 

 capping knives, and smokers, can be used 

 at each yard. He is thus enabled to put 

 his invested capital where it will be earn- 

 ing money for him all the ti>ne in the busy 

 season instead of eating up interest part of 

 the time. We will suppose that some of his 

 swarms get away from him; we will also 

 suppose that some of the work is not done 

 as well as when he had only 300 colonies; 

 but he has increased his honey crop by 

 three times, poisibly, and has increased 

 his actual operating expenses only to the 

 extent of the help that he has to pay for, 

 extra hives, and sugar to feed. A couple of 

 men and a boy three months in the year — 

 the man at $2.00 and a boy at $1 00 per day 

 would make this expense $450. To this we 

 will aid $50 00 f .r extra team hire. The 

 cost of the extra 700 co.onies with hives and 

 supers divided by ten (assuming that they 

 would last ten years) wcu d be $250 more, 

 or $7iO. But we must add $250 more lor su- 

 gar for feeding, and $250 for sections, foun- 

 dation, and shipping cases, making $1250 

 as the total added expense for the 700 extra 

 colonies. Say he is produ:ing comb honty, 

 and that he can average 3>S lbs. per colony. 

 If this nets him lOcts. he would get from 300 

 colonies $1050. If he has 1000 colonies his 

 gross income will be $350o by adding only 

 $1150 to his general expenses. 



This is a suppjsable and a possible case. 

 The most that 1 would show is that the op- 

 erating and overhead expense will not be 

 proportionately increased if the number of 

 colonies be doubled or trebled — all on the 

 assumption, of course, that our bee keeping 

 friend has the necessary skill and business 

 ability. 



In deciding the question whether we our- 

 selves should keep more bees, we should go 

 very cautiously; not increase the number 

 all at once, but a little at a time, making 

 the bees pay their way. Generally speak- 

 ing, it would be the biggest piece of folly 

 for one to borrow the money and treble his 

 equipment of bees and hives in one season. 



