216 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



■winter, nor anything around the 

 yard, in their fliKht to-day. My cellar 

 was perfectly dark, without any ven- 

 tilation, and ranfjfed, in temperature, 

 during the \vinter, from 32^ to 48°, 

 usually standing at about 45P. It was 

 quite dry. From March 1, I have, 

 several times, watered a part of them, 

 a thing that I never practiced before, 

 but it had the effect to keep them 

 more quiet, and many of them were 

 "just booming " to-day. 



Now as to the results : One colony 

 had starved to death. Four out of 

 six, that were on the bottom tier, one 

 foot from the cellar bottom, that had 

 not been uncovered since putting in, 

 and that had had no water, were 

 dead. Only in one hive were the 

 combs moldy, and all had sufficient 

 stores. Those colonies wliich had 

 been watered since March 1, were 

 strong and healthy, and began to rob 

 in less than an hour afterhaving been 

 set out. 



Soft maples, willows, cotton woods, 

 and elms are in bloom. The prairie 

 anemones have been out for some 

 days. The past winter has been one 

 of the coldest known since the early 

 settlement of the State. For about 

 nine weeks from the 20th of Decem- 

 ber, it hardly thawed on the south 

 side of the house, and the mercury 

 hugged the zero point most of the 

 time, occasionally dropping down to 

 call on numbers .35 and 40. And for 

 fully three months it was too cold for 

 even a healthy bee to venture far from 

 the warmth "of the cluster. Fnnt 

 trees, in many parts of the State, have 

 been injured ; though in this locality 

 we have not suffered in that respect. 

 Bees have also wintered usually well. 



Forest City, Iowa, April 16, 1883. 



first day of .January is a very poor 

 judgment. He cannot set true values. 

 Enclosed you will find a spicy digest 

 of the subject written by a lawyer of 

 Black Hawk County, Iowa. He had 

 my assistance in the matter. We 

 must, however, fight the battle over 

 and over, year after year. The ques- 

 tion is not, '■ Should bees be taxed in 

 Iowa?" but, " Are bees taxable un- 

 der our laws?" Please, hereafter, 

 when asked that question, answer, 

 " Not by the laws of Iowa, etc." The 

 Bee Journal, with that answer, 

 will become notorious property, and 

 will be preserved for the eye of the 

 new assessor. 

 La Porte City, Iowa, Feb. 5, 1883. 



ARE BEES TAXABLE V 



Editor : — Allow 



For the American Beo JoumaL 



Are Bees Taxable ? 



JESSE OREN. 



Mr. Editor :— On page 42 of the 

 Bee JouRNALfor 1883, you are asked, 

 " Are bees taxable V" Your answer, 

 as given, is in accordance with the 

 facts ; but your conclusion is wrong, 

 viz. : property of value is taxable 

 property in Iowa. The statute of a 

 State fixes and names the kinds of 

 property on which a revenue shall be 

 raised. In Iowa, bees are exempt by 

 statute, and about all your patrons 

 here are anxious that you shall so 

 answer. Of course I know that it is 

 not reasonable to expect you to know 

 the laws, etc., of all the States. I 

 have made this matter a special study 

 years ago, and the matter was de- 

 termined by the Attorney General 

 about 15 years ago, when a special 

 bill was got up by a member of the 

 Legislature, exempting bees, etc. He 

 said tliat bees were already exempt. 

 But year after year we put in asses- 

 sors and boards of supervisors who 

 are ignorant of the law, and who rea- 

 son that all property ought to bear its 

 share of the public burden— good rea- 

 soning—but not Iowa law. But who 

 knows any better than you do that 

 the average assessor's judgment as to 

 the value of a colony of Dees on the 



Mr. Editor :— Allow me to ask 

 yourself and readers why it was that 

 the board of supervisors of Black 

 Hawk County, on Friday, Jan. 10, 

 adopted Mr. Jenney's classification of 

 taxable property t'or the year 1879, 

 without first revising it so as to make 

 it legal? I trust that they acted con- 

 scientiously in the matter. But will 

 you please, or will somebody please, 

 explain how and where they got 

 their authority for placing bees upon 

 that list ? Perhaps our board did not 

 know that they were exempt from 

 taxation in Iowa? Perhaps they 

 have some authority unknown to out- 

 siders ? Will somebody please rise 

 and explain ? 



Now, Mr. Editor, " let us reason 

 together," and see if we can find a 

 little law which is, and ought to be 

 plain, to every reasonable being, at 

 feast after it has been pointed out to 

 them. I believe I can show by statute 

 that bees are as plainly exempt as if 

 thev had been written in gilt letters 

 at the head of the chapter of exempt 

 property. First, what are bees ? Are 

 they vegetables ? Are they minerals ? 

 Or, are they animals ? To which of 

 these kingdoms do they belong ? Of 

 course, you and everybody else will 

 say that they are animals, of the in- 

 sect order. Now, since they are ani- 

 mals, then, as animals, they are twice 

 exempt under the statute. Exempt 

 from taxation, first, by section 797 and 

 801 of Code of Iowa, 1873. Section 

 797, division 4, exempts from taxation 

 " animals not hereafter specified." 

 Section 801 enumerates the animals, 

 viz. : "Horses, cattle, mules, asses, 

 sheep, swine." Now, we see that it 

 does not mention bees, nor does it 

 intend for bees to be listed, or it 

 would have mentioned them. At a 

 glance we can see that to have men- 

 tioned all the animals exempt would 

 have been an endless task, and when 

 completed would have been a volume 

 of itself, and only merited our ridicule. 

 It might have read like this, viz. : 

 From the animal kingdom there shall 

 be exempt 20 species of the quad- 

 rumania, viz. : The buffalo, the elk, 

 the deer, the cat, the dog, the mouse, 

 etc. Of cetacea species, the oyster, 

 the clam, etc. Of birds, the wren, 

 tlie robin, the swallow, etc. Of rep- 

 tiles, the lizzard, the garter snake, the 

 bull snake, etc. Of insects— 30 spe- 

 cies — viz. : The hornet, the wasp, 

 the asp, the bee, the bumble bee, and 



so on, ad infinitum. But the cobra- 

 copella, the rattlesnake, the grizzly 

 bear, the parrot, the seal, the golden 

 fly of South America, owing to the 

 vast amount of money invested in 

 them for show purposes, shall be 

 listed and taxed at twice their ap- 

 praised value. Such might have been 

 the form of the section had the Leg- 

 islature attempted it. But they chose 

 a wiser plan, and oiriy enumerated 

 those animals wliich were to be taxed, 

 and exempted by section 797 all others 

 — bees with the rest. 



Again, according to Langstroth and 

 other standard authority, the average 

 life of a working bee, in summer sea- 

 son, is only six weeks, while it is 

 a mooted question whether any 

 worker ever lives to so great an age 

 as seven months. Now, a bee being 

 an animal, under section 821 (last 

 clause), under "classification of prop- 

 erty" for taxation, we find that " no 

 entry shall be made on said books of 

 any animal under the age of one year, 

 except swine." The queen-bee is the 

 only bee which lives to so great an 

 age as one year. Her market value is 

 75 cents, and thousands are annually 

 sold to A. I. Root, of Medina, O., at 

 that price. We find by this section 

 (821) that bees are again exempt. 

 " \vell," say some, " it is not the bee, 

 it is the value." To tliis we again 

 fall back on section 797, where we find 

 " farm produce harvested within one 

 year previous to the listing thereof," 

 is exempt from taxation ; and since 

 all that is valuable in a colony of bees, 

 except the 75 cent queen-bee, is har- 

 vested " within a year previous to the 

 listing thereof," and comes in exempt 

 along with thousands of bushels of 

 wheat which the farmer may have in 

 his granery or stack, the thousands, 

 yes millions of dollars worth of wear- 

 ing apparel, including valuable house- 

 hold furniture, thousands of dollars 

 invested in swine under six months 

 old, calves, colts, chickens, and the 

 like, even down to a $5,000 shawl, 

 such as Mrs. I^ is said to wear. 



and other articles of a wardrobe pro- 

 portionately expensive. From the 

 list of exempt property, it is plain to 

 be seen that it is not the intent of our 

 law to tax all valuable property, for 

 if it did, why exempt so many millions 

 of valuables? In conclusion I would 

 say that I have not talked with any 

 lawyer, who, after a little reference, 

 did not see the exempt condition of 

 bees under our law. I might refer to 

 Clark & Curtis, of Lemars, Ordway, 

 of Waterloo. Judge Gilchrist, of Vin- 

 ton, the two law firms in our own city, 

 viz. : Bishop Ji: Sharon and Chas. 

 Bishop, and many others whose names 

 I will not occupy time and space to 

 enumerate. 



Now, Mr. Editor, please excuse this 

 space-consuming article, as my object 

 in penning this is to aid in the sup- 

 port of the Constitution of the United 

 States and the laws of the State of 

 Iowa. S. A. O. 



[We are very glad to make the cor- 

 rection requested. Certainly, on this 

 showing, in Iowa, bees are not taxa- 

 . ble property.— Ed.] 



