GLEANINGS IN BEE C U L T U R K 



May, l!i22 



c 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



ILJ 



Grace Allen 



THERE would 

 not be the 

 hard feeling 

 against us poor 

 sideline beekeep- 

 ers in the breasts 

 — and pocket- 

 hooks? — of the 

 professional hon- 

 ey-producers, if 



we were all of the type of Miss Josephine 

 Morse of the Cloveriey Apiary, Lancaster, 

 Massachusetts. 



Nearly all reading beekeepers know of 

 Miss Morse, who is now the enthusiastic 

 secretary-treasurer of the Worcester County 

 (Massachusetts) Beekeepers' Association. 

 But perhaps they do not all realize what a 

 fine example she is of persistence in the face 

 of discouragements, and how convincingly, 

 therefore, she has proven herself a real bee- 

 keeper. "I must have been born to be a 

 beekeeper," she admits, "because nothing 

 can seem to discourage me permanently." 



In another way she seems particularly 

 beekeeper-y. And that is in her apprecia- 

 tions. As a whole, are not beefolk lovers of 

 the beauties of God's good earth? Speaking 

 of the town of Lancaster where she has al- 

 ways lived, Miss Morse calls it a "beautiful 

 old New England town." Don't you love 

 people who love their own home 

 places, recognizing and appreciat- 

 ing their beauties? One thing 

 that helps me to visualize the 

 charm of her beloved Lancaster 

 is her statement that she has 

 lived there all her life, on a farm. 

 So if I see it correctly, it is one 

 of those lovely towns that run on 

 out into the country and defy 

 anybody to say where the town 

 ends and the country begins. 



It was twelve years ago that 

 Miss Morse made her start with 

 bees. She did it most intelligent- 

 ly and logically, as becomes a 

 daughter of Massachusetts. She 

 took a two-weeks' course — an ex- 

 cellent two weeks' course, she 

 calls it — under Prof. Burton 

 Gates at the Massachusetts Agri- 

 cultural College at Amherst. Then she took 

 over the ownershi]) and care of two colonies 

 of bees that had belonged to a brother. Then 

 the disasters began. There were several cases 

 of severe stinging. Then came foul brood: 

 American foul brood; European foul brood. 

 But, as she says, nothing discouraged her 

 permanently. And now she has 20 colonies 

 of her own, is secretary-treasurer of the 

 county association and is the recognized ad- 

 visor for many beginners in near-by neigh- 

 borhoods. She also cares for the bees of 

 several orchardists, as hers is rather a good 

 fruit-growing section. Her own father has 

 gone into rather extensive fruit-growing, es- 

 pecially apples and pears, and is very glad 

 to liavc his daugliter's bees as pollenizers. 



3 



LJ 



Miss Morse has 

 never made any 

 ]) h e n m e n a 1 

 crops. One 

 d e s n ' t, you 

 know, in Massa- 

 c li u s e 1 1 s, any 

 m ore than in 

 Tennessee. One 

 loves it. Apple 

 bloom comes of course when the weather is 

 unsettled — not much clover — but a goodly 

 quantity of blueberry, and later, goldenrod. 

 Miss Morse extracts her honey, putting it up 

 in 16-ounce jars and selling direct to the 

 consumer. She wisely charges according to 

 the prices for similar honey in similar con- 

 tainers in the high-grade grocery stores. 



When she started, money didn't enter into 

 her plans at all. There was just the delight 

 of it, and the honey — and a little welcome 

 pin money, too. But her business has so 

 developed that now she feels her interest to 

 be quite decidedly commercial; and still she 

 loves the work. 



In addition to lier regular yard work, Miss 

 Morse has had various interesting experi- 

 ences in getting bees out of trees and' build- 

 ings. She has many calls for help from be- 

 ginners; she always helps as she would be 

 helped — and as she is helped, she adds. She 

 has also developed a new interest 

 among beekeepers of her section 

 in the matter of exhibiting honey 

 and bees at the agricultural fairs, 

 so that while little attention had 

 been paid to this in former years, 

 larger efforts are being put forth 

 now and greater things still hoped 

 for the immediate future. Which 

 is what may always be expected 

 from the leaven of enthusiasm. 



Spring in the country! For, 

 after the manner that I boasted 

 of last month, we are country 

 folk at last, burning on cool eve- 

 jiings our own oak wood in the 

 brick fireplace, and walking on 

 moonlit evenings along country 

 roads, sweet now with the scents 

 of spring. And here are the hills, 

 low and gentle, too close perhaps 

 to give us a really impressive "view" such 

 as some of our friends enjoy, yet close and 

 chummy; and we love them. We love, too, 

 the dawn through our neighbor's woods lot 

 and the bright wide book of the sunsets 

 spread open along the low ridge to the west. 

 During the first weeks here, there was the 

 glory of autumn over the earth; in the win- 

 ter the flush of red where the buck bushes 

 grow and sunsets through bare trees; now, 

 in the spring, there is the miracle of un- 

 believable greenness and blossom coming 

 back to trees and grass and fertile field and 

 every upward-reaching slope — wild violets 

 at our feet, mountain phlox by roadsides, 

 small gay earth-loving "May weeds" over 

 the fields, a blush on the hills where the 



Aliss Josephine Morse 

 with her bees. 



