1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



743 



the work after greatly increasing his plant. 

 When a man increases to the extent of hun- 

 dreds of colonies, as auvised by Editor Hutch- 

 inson, it becomes not so much a question of 

 bee-keeping (handling bees), but one of 

 handling men. There is many a competent 

 bee-keeper who can care for a certain num- 

 b^'r of colonies and do the work properly, 

 but he can't employ profitably hired help in 

 the apiary; and if he tries to do too much 

 alone he may end up by taking the wooden- 

 overcoat route to another country. 



I could and would increase my apiaries if 

 I could secure and hold competent help, but 

 it is a hard thing to do. I ihink one of the 

 Cogshalls, after many years of experience, 

 has said that this is the great problem. 

 Take the officers of The A. I. Root Co., for 

 example. They are not occupying- their 

 positions because they are skillful bet-keep- 

 ers, but because they can handle men. That 

 is the test of a man's ability to increase his 

 business greatly. Such ability will come 

 only by practice, and I have launched far 

 eaough in that direction to know that it en- 

 tails trouble and vexation of spirit. The 

 man who has just what bees he can handle 

 properly himself is liable to be as happy as 

 the next one. 



I am not writing this to block the game, 

 but only to call attention to the fact that in- 

 crease of colonies means increase of work, 

 and, beyond a certain point, requires outside 

 help. 



Bridgeport, Wis., Jan. 17. 



[Mr. Lathrop has struck at the real solu- 

 tion, and the only solution, of the successful 

 management of many bees or many apia- 

 ries. When one goes beyond 300 or 400 col- 

 onies or three or four yards, he must then 

 employ a competent man. If he can't find 

 one he must select raw material and train 

 one. Possibly his choice of man is unfortu- 

 nate. Perhaps he himself is a poor trainer. 

 In either case he suffers. Where one can't 

 get good help he had better by all means 

 keep the number of his bees down to a 

 point where he can take care of them with- 

 out slighting his work. It should be under- 

 stood that competent bee help is hard to get. 

 The best men find it more profitable to work 

 for themselves. 



The same principles apply in the manage- 

 ment of any business. If an employer can 

 not get along with his men, is a poor judge 

 of human nature in his selection of men, is 

 arbitrary in his management, he is liable to 

 run his business into financial difficulties. 

 The old adage, " Don't bite off more than 

 you can chew," is a very homely way of 

 saying the same thing. 



in this connection I might state that an 

 acquaintance of ours made a grand success 

 off from a single acre of onions. He cleared 

 over $1000. This so elated him that he pur- 

 chased or leased ten more acres, employed 

 help, and endeavored to secure a proportion- 

 ately large crop from the ten acres. While 

 he himself was a good workman he couldn't 

 manage his men, and the whole venture 



proved to be a most ignominious failure. 

 Instead of making ten or fifteen thousand 

 dollars, as he had planned, he was several 

 thousand dollars "in the hole," but a sad- 

 der and a wiser man, and in just the right 

 frame of mind to appreciate the saying of 

 Josh Billings, that " Experiens teeches a 

 good skule, but the tuishun comes pretty hi. " 

 -Ed.] 



WIRE-CLOTH separators; A MODIFICATION. 



A few years ago, convinced that the bees 

 hated to work in so close quarters as those 

 given by sections nearly shut up by plain 

 wooden separators, I purchased two kinds of 

 wire cloth— one with four and the other 

 with three meshes to the inch. I got them 

 cut to suit 4|X4J sections, and tacked them 

 in place of wood separators. At the end of 

 the season the four mesh pieces were badly 

 lined with propolis, just to make one believe 

 that the bees wanted an even face like wood 

 separators. Some had no propoHs, but, still 

 worse, were fastened to the honey. 



Such experience brought me back to the 

 plain separator, which I have since discard- 

 ed for our present frame. 



Now, when, March 1, page 278, I read the 

 words appropriated to Mr. Betsinger, my 

 old wire-cloth device came anew to my mind, 

 but with an idea of an improvement in the 



way of the following as seen in the cut. As 

 you will see, the wood of our present fence 

 is simply replaced by strong wire, which 

 forms a regular fence. F. Benoit. 



Notre Dame des Neiges, Canada. 



[A fence could be made, substituting wire 

 of about No. 8 gauge for the wooden slats; 

 but I feel pretty certain that the honey 

 built on either side of it would be badly rib- 

 bed. I do not understand that you have 

 tried this wire separator built in the form of 

 a fence.— Ed.] 



A PLAN FOR REQUEENING AN APIARY. 



I have 35 stands of cross hybrid bees 

 which I wish to requeen from queens of my 

 own raising to improve both stock and tem- 

 per. I wish to do this in a manner that will 

 interfere with the honey crop as little as 

 possible, and I have thought of trying the 



