THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



357 



own opinion. Mine is that the hifrh 

 temperatuie caused the bees to be- 

 come restless, thus wearing their life 

 out, so tliat bv .Jan. •">, they began to 

 die of old aije. As an old bee always 

 leaves the hive to die. if the tempera- 

 ture will admit, so my bees left their 

 hives, cine by one. tillall went out on 

 the cellar bottom. The half of my 

 bees left on the summer stands have 

 come through all riglit. with many of 

 them strong, while I lost but S out of 

 38. two of which starved (bees in this 

 vicinity used an undue amount of 

 honey last winter), while the colony 

 from" the Texan Cyprian queen had 

 the diarrho'u and died about the mid- 

 dle of March. 



There are two points about the cel- 

 lar wintering which I wish to notice ; 

 1. Every time the mercury sank be- 

 low 10° "above zero, the vapor coming 

 from the upper ventilation pipe would 

 be condensed so as to appear for days 

 at a time as does the smoke coming 

 from a chimney having a wood tire 

 below, thus showing that the ventila- 

 tion was good, and also showing what 

 a quantity of moisture the bees are 

 continually throwing off. This also 

 kept the cellar somewhat dryer than 

 usual, though the walls were some- 

 what damp. 2. The temperature was 

 so warm that the moth-larvce, which 

 took possession of the combs from 

 which the bees tirst died, came to 

 maturity, spun their cocoons, and 

 passed to the miller state. 



I ask, is there any conditions in 

 nature, unaided by man, which will 

 confine bees for several months at a 

 time in so high a temperature that 

 moths will mature ? If not, is it well 

 for man to try to do so ? 



Borodino, ISJ^. Y., May 10, 1884. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Which is the True Policy? 



E. J. KENDALL. 



Mr. Pond's article on " Priority of 

 Location," on page 1-19, was evidently 

 written to combat and censure Mr. 

 Heddon for his article on controlling 

 an apicultural field, on page 86. 



Mr. Pond says (in effect) that Mr. 

 Heddon is selfish in advocating such 

 a doctrine ; that priority of location 

 gives a man no "moral right "to a 

 locality ; that bee-keepers are more 

 indebted to amateurs in bee-culture 

 (fancy breeders) than to the profes- 

 sionals ; and, in fact, that the proper 

 and humane policy is to encourage 

 every body who can, to keep bees. I 

 think Mr. Pond is wrong in every one 

 of his positions, if by bee-keeping is 

 understood the making of money 

 from the pursuit, as opposed to keep- 

 ing bees for pleasure and fancy. 



Mr. Pond seems to place some stress 

 on the difference of policy between 

 the bee keepers of England and those 

 of America. He says that in England 

 every one is encouraged to keep bees, 

 while here the policy seems to be the 

 opposite. The circumstances of the 

 two cases are very different to start 

 with ; but even if they were not, what 

 is the result of this extensive encour- 

 agement in England ? 



I will state here that I am an En- 

 glishman by birth, and the son of an 

 English farmer. I was brought up in 

 theCountry, and know what English 

 country-life is, althcuigh later on I 

 lived in London. The English agri- 

 cultural laborer, who is most encour- 

 aged in the way .Mr. Pond speaks of, 

 is generally very poor, and a person 

 to whom every little is a real help. 

 He is a person who has from time im- 

 memorial, kept bees in skeps, and 

 then brirastoned them to get the 

 honey, which is strained honey at 

 that. Surely, it needs no argument 

 to induce such a man to handle bees 

 without killing them, and to teach 

 him how to produce a better quality 

 of honey. What little he can pro- 

 duce in no way injures the market, as 

 it is easily used up, either entirely by 

 his own family, or in his immediate 

 locality. 



The "honey supply of England, too, 

 is such that the cottager can put on 

 his surplus arrangement, and it will, 

 as a rule, hold all the surplus honey 

 the bees can gather during the season", 

 and needs little or no attention, so 

 that he can continue his daily avoca- 

 tion without the care of his bees 

 trenching upon it. Then the mere 

 possession of bees will tend to keep 

 this class from the " public house " 

 (saloon). But the cottager's bee- 

 keeping in no way interferes with the 

 professional, or this liberality would, 

 perhaps, not be so conspicuous. 



The mass of kee-keepers in Eng- 

 land may be said to be pleasure bee- 

 keepers, in contradistinction to pro- 

 fessional men or specialists. Here 

 the tendency seems to be different — to 

 make bee-keeping a business like any 

 other, and men devote themselves to 

 it exclusively, more than for mere 

 pleasure. If "this be the case, it must 

 be viewed from a different stand- 

 point entirely ; and in my opinion that 

 stand-point is the one taken by Mr. 

 Heddon. 



Still Mr. H. offers no opposition to 

 the idea of a man keeping a few colo- 

 nies for pleasure or slight profit, who 

 can attend to them witliont trenching 

 on his business proper ; and I do not 

 understand him to object to such, but 

 to the man who is either going to 

 make it a business (as to priority of 

 location), or to the man who gets a 

 lot of bees and goes on the jjrinciple 

 that "bees work for nothing and 

 board themselves." 



Now, in the latter case, the care- 

 less bee-keeper is capable of, and very 

 apt to injure his specialistic neighbor 

 very materially, by breeding any 

 strain of bees, getting foul brood in 

 his apiary, and in many other ways 

 which Mr. Pond understands as well 

 as I. Such bee-keeping is undoubt- 

 edly wrong— wrong to the bees, and 

 wrong to his neighbor. There is no 

 charity, humanity or kindness in en- 

 couraging such bee- keeping. 



Xow as to priority of claim. This 

 can only be discussed as a question of 

 morals. The legality of the matter 

 cannot be touched upon ; for, of 

 course, anv body who likes to keep 

 l)ees can do so, and keep them any 

 how short of actual nuisance, and the 

 law will not stop him. In nearly every 



business there is more or less of what 

 is terme<l (as a legal fiction) " good- 

 will." This '■ good-will " is usually 

 accorded the man who in any busi- 

 ness gets the trade by priority of busi- 

 ness ; and it is very often sold for a 

 considerable sum. 



All over the West, and especially in 

 Texas, where the grazing fields have 

 been "free grass" heretofore, the 

 shepherd lU' cattle raiser who first run 

 his stock over a certain district, was 

 universally accorded the right of 

 priority by other " free grass " men. 



Now as to liees. Suppose the case 

 Mr. Pond puts that A. owns, say 10 

 acres of land, while B. owns 10,000 

 acres all around A. B. got his land 

 first, and went into farming, stock 

 raising, etc. .V., on the other hand, 

 begins to keep bees, and makes a liv- 

 ing out of the business. B., seeing 

 this, says to himself, " A. is making a 

 living by grazing my fields. I'll stop 

 this.' He then purchases or breeds 

 large apiaries to graze his own honey- 

 Held. Legally he can do so ; but at 

 the same time he destroys A.'s living. 

 Is he doing right V Is he doing unto 

 A. as he would like A. to do unto 

 him ? Who is the " selfish " man, A. 

 orB. ? Bear in mind that A. never 

 began to keep bees till he saw B. was 

 not doing so, and in so beginning he 

 made no liostile act against B. ; and it 

 is only when 15. sees that A. is making 

 money that he thinks of keeping bees. 



Why, of course, B. in acting as de- 

 scribed toward A., does A. a great 

 moral wrong. If B. only keeps fewer 

 colonies of bees, he injures A. to just 

 that extent. Has he any moral right 

 to do so '? If B. wants really to do 

 the right thing by A., he should go to 

 him and offer to buy his bees, giving 

 a recompense, so that in driving him 

 out he tries to remedy the evil a little. 



Take the case Mr. Heddon puts. 

 Suppose Jones has a location, and is 

 running 1.50 or 200 colonies, and is 

 making; a living. Brown sees it, and 

 brings into the same neighborhood 70 

 or 80 colonies. It is true it is a very 

 injudicious act of Brown, but suppose 

 he does ; what is the result V VVhy, 

 he lowers the Jones average and 

 takes so much money out of Jones' 

 pocket. What is Jones to do V Si- 

 lently and quietly submit to it, be 

 content to be injured himself, and yet 

 see Brown injuring himself (in not 

 doing as well as lie might) also V VVhy, 

 the common-sense, the humane, the 

 true and the right policy is for Jones 

 to take just the course Mr. Heddon 

 points out. (tO to Brown, show him 

 how he is injuring himself and his 

 neighbor, ami how it will benefit both 

 for each to occupy separate fields ; 

 and so settle it in a common-sense, 

 rational way. 



If Brown "says, "I have as much right 

 here as you, and shall stay," then -Jones 

 is forced to act in self-defense, and he 

 owes it as a duty to his family to do 

 so. The self-de"fense is, to increase 

 his own apiary till he lowers the aver- 

 age of Brown's to such an extent that 

 Brown quits the bee-business and 

 goes back to his old one, or moves 

 away. Why. in such a case, in charg- 

 ing Jones with being "selfish," Mr. 

 Pond is very wrong. 



