THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



117 



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QUESTIOXS AND AN S WEBS. 



BY THK EDITOR. 



1. How does beekeepiug, with you, 

 compare with other pursuits as a vo- 

 cation, upon which one may depend 

 for a living? 



2. What advice would you give to 

 the novice who wishes to engage in 

 beelvceping? 



3. "When purchasing his first bees 

 for a start, would you advise his pur- 

 chasing them in box hives and trans- 

 ferring them, in movable hives, or in 

 nuclei? 



4. What Ivind of hive do you prefer 

 and wliy? 



5. What style and shape of hive do 

 you prefer and why? 



ANSWERS BY J. HASBROUCK. 



1. In this region, I think, beekeep- 

 iug has never been tried as a "vocation 

 upon which one may depend for a liv- 

 ing," for the reason I suppose that 

 people think it would not compare fav- 

 orably with other pursuits. This is a 

 rich farming country, the heart of the 

 "Garden State," and the land is kept 

 closely occupied with crops of grain, 

 peaches, or truck. Fence corners and 

 railroad banks are kept carefully clean 

 and there is but little waste land auj'- 

 where. There is but little pasturing 

 done, so there is not much chance for 

 white clover, and the land is considered 

 too good to raise buckwheat. The 

 location is about as unpromising for 

 honey as could be found, and the only 

 way I could imagine that a living could 

 be made with bees, would be in the 



establishment of numerous apiaries, 

 within easy reach of each other by the 

 cai-s. 1000 colonies thus located I should 

 judge would give about the same re- 

 turns as the same amount of capital 

 invested in a grain fai'm, and about half 

 as much as from a fruit or truck farm, 

 requiring about the same outlay. The 

 old "box-hives" gave up the business 

 long ago, as being altogether unprofit- 

 able. I keep bees largely for diversion, 

 and if the labor and time I spend on 

 them were taken into the account, they 

 would not pay. 



I have six sources of honey ; fruit 

 blossoms, the last of April, from which 

 I generally get enougii to make the 

 bees breed lively; clover the last of 

 May, and till the last week in June, 

 but this is the only year in the last five, 

 when clover has not been a failure ; 

 basswood the last of June. I have 

 200 basswood trees within two miles 

 of me, but they are all on the same 

 level, skirting the streams. They all 

 bloom at once and but for four or five 

 days, and for the last five years, it has 

 either been "off year" with them, or a 

 severe drought or a heavy storm has 

 spoiled the bloom, so I have never got 

 any surplus from them. Four years 

 ago I received an average of fifty 

 pounds to the hive during July and 

 August from toad-flax, which covers 

 the meadows and grain fields after har- 

 vest, but circumstances have never 

 been favorable since. The only crops 

 upon which I have been accustomed to 

 rely, have been blackheartin August, 

 covering the basin of a drained mill 

 pond, and aster in September, but this 

 year these fail from il rough t and cold 

 weather. So although I have been 

 considering this a good year, I am 

 going to get only about my usual 

 crop — worth about an average of $3 

 per colony, spring count, and an in- 

 crease of one-half. At this rate, you 

 see, it would take a good many colo- 

 nies to make a bread-and-butter busi- 

 ness out of it for a large family, such as 

 every man ought to raise. By the way, 

 how is it, that most of the men who 

 are making a specialty of bees are 

 either lone bachelors, or else people 

 who have no children, or may be one? 

 "Increase" in beekeeping seems to be 

 an unpopular policy. 



2. If he imagines he has a taste for 

 the management of bees, get one hive 

 and try it. studying their habits in con- 

 nection with the reading of some stand- 

 ard bee books — such as Root's A B C, 

 and Alley's Handy Book and one or 



