July 15, 1911 



423 



D°S]D (B®[PD°(g©^®DD(i]®DT]©(l 



WHAT A WOMAN CAN GET OUT OF BEE- 

 KEEPING. 



An Address Prepared for the Convention and 



Field Day for Bee-keepers at the Massachusetts 



Agricultural College, Amherst, June 6, 7. 



BY ANNA BOTSFORD COMSTOCK. 



[Among the great treats that we enjoyed at the 

 field-day meet and convention that was held at 

 Amherst, Mass., June 5, was a paper by Mrs. Anna 

 Botsford Comstock, an entomologist from Cornell 

 University, on the subject "What a Woman Can 

 Get Out of Bee-keeping." She will be remembered 

 as the author of a most entrancing bee-book, "How 

 to Keep Bees," as well as of a number of papers on 

 bees; but the one she read before the Massachusetts 

 bee - keepers was one of the breeziest and most 

 charming that we have ever heard. While it was 

 long, the reading of it called forth rounds of ap- 

 plause. The most of us felt, when she concluded, 

 that she could have made it twice as long, for we 

 could have listened to every word of it. 



From a purely dollars-and-cents point of view, 

 the paper may not be as valuable as some others 

 that appear in these columns; but from the stand- 

 point of health, rest, diversion, and mind cure, it 

 excels every thing else that has been put into print. 

 We now have the privilege of placing it before a 

 larger "audience" — a privilege that was freely 

 granted by the author and by the college authori- 

 ties as well.— Ed.] 



There are so many things that a woman 

 can get out of bee-keeping that I wonder 

 more has not been said or written about it. 

 Professor Gates asked me to speak about 

 bee-keeping for women; and while I know 

 several very successful women bee-keepers 

 scattered over this country, from Virginia to 

 ISIaine, they are all keeping bees just like 

 the men. They keep their colonies strong, 

 and, taking it from first to last, they are 

 making money from their undertakings 

 just as the men do, and by the same meth- 

 ods. If I were to talk about these women 

 or others who are making a success in bee- 

 keeping it would be as monotonovis as Mark 

 Twain's boyhood diary in which for a 

 month the entry eacli day consisted of 

 "Clot up and washed, and went to bed." 



What has always interested me most in 

 bee-keeping is the psychic income derived 

 from it, rather than the income in dollars 

 and cents. I do not believe that any one 

 who thinks can associate with bees without 

 learning much from them. And who 

 should learn as much as the woman bee- 

 keeper, since the bee commune is managed 

 exclusively by members of her sex? Here 

 there is a chance to observe how and by 

 what means their success has been attained. 



I think the first lesson of all is that no 

 one individual can have every thing and 

 be every thing. Perhaps this is the most 

 useful civic as well as social lesson that we 

 women need. Here in our broad, high, and 

 wide America we have had opportunity for 

 development, and with it has come un- 

 bounded ambition. With this ambition 

 has come an unwillingness to choose one 

 line of development; we fritter strength and 

 energy by trying first one thing and then 

 another. We are so occupied with trying 



our wings and with the sensation of flight 

 that we forget that wings are for carrying us 

 and our load to a goal. But the bee, what- 

 ever its lot, does what it is meant to do with 

 a singleness of purpose which we may well 

 admire and follow. 



Many are the virtues cultivated in those 

 citizens who have the responsibility of a 

 bee commune. The first of these virtues is 

 patience and forbearance. Each bee in the 

 hive is, to say the least, busy. She is in- 

 tent on doing her particular job; she finds 

 her path obstructed by her many sisters all 

 intent on doing their particular jobs, but 

 does she get cross- about it? No. She just 

 climbs over or under or among the moving 

 throng; she pushes and gets pushed with 

 equal good nature, and finally she achieves 

 her i)urpose without irritation. Her nerves 

 are not on edge because she is hindered; she 

 does not cuff the children nor scold the 

 drones, nor have hysterics because she is 

 annoyed. 



Courage is another of the leading virtues 

 of the hive. We find there all kinds of 

 courage — the courage to fight a creature a 

 thousand times as large as the fighter, and 

 courage to die fighting. Then there is that 

 other courage, so much more difficult to at- 

 tain — the courage to attend to every duty, 

 and to work from early morn until dewy 

 eve until the frayed-out wings no longer 

 give support, and then the courage to die 

 and get out of the way. 



Next in the galaxy of virtues is that of 

 unselfishness. The bee considers the needs 

 of her community before her own needs. 

 She will work her wings off for the sake of 

 her sisters; she will die in battle for them; 

 she will starve herself by yielding up her 

 food to a hungry queen. The bee is not 

 self-centered nor introsjiective. She goes 

 steadily about her business unless interfered 

 with, and she is not wasting time thinking 

 about her own feelings. She does not feel 

 slighted when she issues from the cell a 

 damp and callow young bee, even if no one 

 pays the slightest attention to her. She 

 cheerfully finds her own place and her own 

 work, and she never gets jealous of the 

 queen. In fact, she is an animated mite of 

 unselfishness. I do not know how other 

 women bee-keepers feel; but when I find an 

 old bee with her wings frayed until they 

 can lift her no more, it always gives me a 

 new inspiration to work on and do the best 

 I can and not worry about old age or the 

 future. 



Another of the virtues characteristic of 

 the bee-hive is broad-mindedness. The bee 

 is willing to let others go their way without 

 interference. She seeks nectar, but she 

 does not insist that, if she can not have 

 basswood or clover, she will have none at 

 all. She probes the humblest flower with 

 the same enthusiastic attention that she be- 

 stows upon the most gorgeous; moreover, 

 she does not resent it if the flower was not 



