Sept. 15. 1911 



553 



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At Borodino, New York 



KEEP MORE BEES. 



"I have twenty colonies of bees, and a 

 farm of nearly 100 acres; but I have read 

 that, if the best results are to be secured, one 

 should keep more bees. What is your opin- 

 ion of this ? ' ' 



"It is a question uppermost in the mind 

 of many a bee-keeper, leading him to ask 

 how many colonies he can handle with 

 profit. However, there is little doubt that 

 many bee-keepers increase their colonies 

 more than their ability to care for them 

 warrants, for they labor under the impres- 

 sion that it is hives of bees rather than bees 

 in a hive that will bring the most profit. 

 I do not say this of the experienced bee- 

 keeper, of our most practical apiarists, nor of 

 the specialists who count their colonies by 

 the hundreds and thousands, but, rather, of 

 the vast majority of those who have been 

 persuaded through reading, or because of 

 the success of a neighbor in an unusually 

 good year, to undertake bee-keeping on a 

 larger scale. 



"You say you are a farmer. As I look 

 about me I often think that there is scarce- 

 ly a farmer who is large enough for his 

 farm. The majority have so much land 

 that they are land poor. If every farmer 

 would put the labor, energy, and manure 

 on fifty acres that he now puts on 100, he 

 would produce as much with a great reduc- 

 tion in interest and taxes. If I am correct- 

 ly informed, there are few farmers in parts 

 of England and Holland with more than 

 forty or fifty acres of land; and yet from 

 these, which with us would be considered 

 too small to dabble with, the very best of 

 farm products are produced, to an amount 

 greater than many of our occupiers of from 

 100 to 200 acres can put upon the market. 

 So it is not so much from numbers as it is 

 in making each number turn out the high- 

 est possible percentage of i)rofit." 



"But if ten colonies would give me a 

 profit of SlOO, should not 100 colonies give 

 me $1000?" 



"lam afraid that, wdth such a line of 

 reasoning, you. like too many bee-keepers, 

 would be trying to overreach in the increase 

 of colonies, instead of working to obtain 

 the maximum results from the minimum 

 number. Why not say if ten colonies will 

 give me SlOO, should not 1000 colonies give 

 me $10,000, or 5000 give me ?50,000? It is 

 not so much the number of colonies as it is 

 making each colony do its utmost in stor- 

 ing surplus. Any colony that does not store 

 a high percentage, after careful attention, 

 should be broken up, or a change of queen 

 made. The item of improving the stock is 

 one well worth paying particular attention 

 to; for with better stock and a smaller num- 

 ber of colonies the same results can be ob- 

 tained as those secured by the small farmers 

 of the old country. Just" fancy yourself, an 

 overworked farmer, keeping 1000 colonies of 



bees, selecting the colony, or three or four 

 from that number, which scored the highest 

 number of i)erfection points, and from these 

 building up a race of bees which shall be a 

 joy to the world. It surely does not pay to 

 furnish hives, fixtures, and possibly labor, 

 at the present high prices, to run an apiary 

 of 100 colonies when 50 can be made to se- 

 cure the same profit, saying nothing about 

 any imi)rovement of stock. The ' not how 

 much, but how well' principle will apply as 

 well to bee-keeping as to any other line of 

 business. And this ' how well ' is what the 

 world is looking after in all of the pursuits 

 which elevate a community or a nation." 



"But could I not purchase a queen from 

 some improved strain of bees? and then, 

 by allowing natural swarming, would they 

 not duplicate themselves to my advantage, 

 without this continual fussing over an im- 

 provement of stock? " 



".Tust try that with your best .Jersey cows. 

 Turn them out in a lO.OOO-acre i)asture with 

 hundreds of scrub males of all descriptions, 

 and see how the duplicating will come out. 

 The queen may be from the most prolific 

 strain in the world, and the hive you are 

 using perfect, and yet, without considerable 

 attention on the part of the bee-keeper, the 

 best results will not follow. Do you expect 

 to produce such results from that herd of 

 •Jerseys without constant attention? You 

 know that you can not leave home for 24 

 hours unless you hire some one to care for 

 those cows. And yet you think of keeping 

 hundreds of colonies of bees without seeing 

 them for weeks if not months at a time. It 

 must be the harmonious working of both 

 bees and bee-keeper all along the line that 

 will bring about the best results, the same 

 as it is with the dairyman and his cows." 



' ' But you know every one is saying, ' Keep 

 more bees if you would be successful,' do 

 you not?" 



"I know we read and hear a great deal 

 about keeping more bees. If this referred 

 to more bees in a hive at the right time for 

 the honey harvest, together with a greatly 

 improved race, it would all right; but if it 

 means more colonies of bees, with a go-as- 

 you-please idea along with it, then I consid- 

 er it contrary to obtaining the best possible 

 results from a minimum investment of capi- 

 tal. Bee-keepers, above all others, have no 

 time to sit around on drygoods-boxes at the 

 country store. If a few moments of leisure 

 time manifest themselves, there are many 

 perjjlexing questions which come up during 

 the busy season that can now be studied 

 and solved by sitting down with a good 

 book on bee-keeping, or by looking through 

 one's files of bee-papers. 



"Xo business will run itself; and if you 

 yourself do not get behind it and move it 

 along it will not successfully go. The more 

 effort you put into any business the greater 

 will be the success." 



