GLEAN IK GS IN BEE CULTURE 



Februaby, 1920 



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Beekj 



eeping as a 



Grace Allen 



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^^^^^^^^ 



SOMEHOW I 

 can't think 

 G Leanings 

 without Dr. Mil- 

 ler in it. I don 't 

 want to. Yet 

 how much better 

 to miss him in 

 Gleanings, know- 

 ing he is gradu- 

 ally getting stronger there in Marengo, than 

 to think of him as lying ill, as we have had 

 to do for the last few weeks. Most heartily 

 and earnestly do all of us, sideliners and 

 mainliners alike, wish you a speedy return 

 to health and vigor. Dr. Miller. Personally 

 and professionally, you mean a great deal 

 to all of us, more, undoubtedly, than you 



realize. 



* * * 



Imagine how the sideliners at the annual 

 Tennessee Beekeepers ' Convention felt when 

 they heard J. J. Wilder of Waycross, Ga., 

 admit that now he has 10,000 colonies! One 

 of them felt exactly like that famous min- 

 now that went "swimming with a whale." 

 Ten thousand colonies is — well, it's a lot. 

 Division, nuclei, purchase, almost any way 

 that will make increase, is his method when 

 increase is what he wants. And it has been 

 pretty steadily what he has wanted. Simple 

 division of colonies has been perhaps the 

 favorite method. Then when Mr. Wilder be- 

 gins to feel restless and cramped, and as 

 tho he didn't have much of a bee business 

 anyway, and must spread out a bit more, he 

 takes his grip and goes off a hundred miles 

 or two. There he starts a new apiary, builds 

 up a lot of outyards for it, and leaves a good 

 man in charge, to receive an attractive share 

 of the crop. He always knows right where 

 to go, because he keeps ahead of this ex- 

 pansion business by always having locations 

 in mind, that he has already investigated; 

 so that his problem resolves itself into, not, 

 "Where can I put these bees?" but "Where 

 and how shall I get the bees to stock that 

 location?" So as soon as he gets the bees, 

 he puts them there, gets the honey and sells 

 it, and after a while, there you are — a 10,- 

 000-colony business. But a man has to use 

 his head to do it, and sometimes he lies 

 awake thinking about it all, Mr. Wilder 

 admitted. And we sideline beekeepers sigh- 

 ed and thought it likely. Mr. Dadant, who 

 had visited several of Mr. Wilder 's yards, 

 suggested that one reason for his success 

 was his wise choice of men and .his equally 

 wise arrangements with them, arrangements 

 that leave the men contented and interested. 

 I believe Mr. Wilder was downright shock- 

 ed to find that I was really and truly only a 

 sidelinerl He urged me to increase and 

 spread out. When I'm at a beekeeper's 

 convention, I am always right on the verge 

 of doing that very thing. Last year when 

 I left the National, I was all ready to grow 

 into a real whale of a beekeeper, with wild 

 fluttering little visions up my sleeve of Mr. 

 Allen leaving his own work and the two of 



Side Line 



3 



lU 



us going to- 

 gether to some 

 famed honey- 

 producing spot — 

 Ontario, Upper 

 Michigan, Cali- 

 fornia, or possi- 

 bly the Balkans! 

 But somehow 

 when I get home, 

 a score of other interests fairly spring at me, 

 books and friends and church and clubs, a 

 neglected but wistful typewriter, and the 

 dear home itself, until gradually the bee- 

 keeping becomes frankly a beloved sideline 

 again. Yet if a few more big conventions 

 and a few more 10,000-colony beekeepers 

 cross my path, no one can say what rear- 

 rangements might be made. Let me hereby 

 warn all other sideliners too, and all begin- 

 ners — if you don 't want to become enthusi- 

 astic about this bee-and-honey business, and 

 don 't want to be troubled with insistent 

 visions of how big a thing it might become, 

 don 't go to conventions. No, nor read many 

 journals. They are all almost uncomfortably 

 inspiring. 



Porter Ward, the successful retiring presi- 

 dent of the State Association, is always a 

 real inspiration to sideline beekeepers, be- 

 cause he has made such a splendid success 

 of it himself. A farmer first, he has done 

 so well with his beekeeping that none of us 

 will be surprised if some day we learn that 

 it has become his chief occupation. 



This year Tennessee was again favored 

 at the convention by the presence of C. P. 

 Dadant, and again the large brood-chamber 

 became the subject of discussion. Dr. Her- 

 bert Sanborn of Vanderbilt University led 

 an unexpected movement in favor of the 

 Danzenbaker hive. A show of hands proved 

 that very few in the audience had ever tried 

 the Danzenbaker, and these seemed not to 

 follow Dr. Sanborn 's leadership in defense 

 of them. It occurred to this sideliner, lis- 

 tening, that hives and frames, in their dif- 

 ferent styles and sizes, are much the same 

 as different kinds of people. They all have 

 some good points and some bad. One bee- 

 keeper, having accommodated himself to one 

 hive, shapes his systems and methods to it, 

 and learns to take full advantage of its good 

 points and disregard its faults. Another, 

 impressed chiefly by its faults, will have 

 none of it. Which is, indeed, quite consist- 

 ently human. Why expect unanimity on bee- 

 hives when it couldn't possibly be secured 

 on any other question? The men in any 

 room outside a denominational or party 

 gathering would differ utterly, almost hope- 

 lessly, on point after point in their politics 

 and their religion-^or, more properly, their 

 theology. (I cannot resist here recalling 

 how Lyman Abbott distinguishes between 

 these two so-different things. Eeligion, he 

 says, is "the life of God in the soul of 

 man ; ' ' while theology is only what men 

 think about it. Some day, some far-off 

 golden day, we shall drop our little theolo- 



