1042 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 15 



TO COMMENCE IN BEE-KEEPING. 



"Is this Mr. Doolittle, the bee-keeper?" 



"My name is Doolittle, and I keep a few 

 colonies of bees. What is your name?" 



"Mj' name is Beebe, and I wish to com- 

 mence keeping bees in the spring-. A neigh- 

 bor told me t-> come over and see you, and 

 3'ou would tell me something that might 

 help me in starting. I had thought of buy- 

 ing fift}' colonies. Do you think that num- 

 ber would be as many as I should buy?" 



" I should say that said number would be 

 from five to ten times as many as an}' be- 

 ginner should buy, unless he has consider- 

 able knowledge of the business before thus 

 starting into it." 



"Why do you say thus?" 



"Because the beginner should guard 

 against going recklessly into bee-keeping 

 by putting his last dollar into a business of 

 which he knows nothing. It is this getting 

 crazy over a business which looks to be a 

 good thiug, but with which we are not ac- 

 quainted, and investing all we have in it, 

 expecting to make a fortune, which ruins so 

 many. To be successful in any thing, a 

 man must 'grow up' in it by years of toil 

 and study till he becomes master of the busi- 

 ness, when, in nineteen cases out of twenty, 

 he will succeed." 



"Is that the way you commenced?" 



" If you will pardon a little personal 

 reminiscence I will tell you briefly of my 

 commencement. In the winter of 1868 I be- 

 came interested in bees by reading the first 

 edition of ' King's Bee-keeper's Text-book,' 

 which chanced to fall into my hands. Next 

 I subscribed for one of the bee papers, read 

 Quinby's and Langstroth's books, and in 

 March bought two colonies of bees and the 

 hives which I thought I should need for 

 two years, paying the sum of S30 00 for the 

 whole lot. The year 1869 being the very 

 poorest one I have ever known, I had but 

 one swarm from the two colonies I bought, 

 and had to feed S5.00 worth of sugar to pro- 

 vision the bees through the next winter. In 

 1870 I received enough from the bees to buy 

 all the fixtures I wished for 1871, and a 

 little more. So I kept on making the bees 

 pay their way, as I had resolved, during 

 the winter of 1869, that, after paying the $35, 

 I would lay out no more money on them than 

 they brought in, believing that, if I could 

 not make the three colonies pay, which I 

 then had, I could not three hundred." 



"Did you stick to that?" 



"Certainly; and in the fall of 1872 I found 

 that I had an average of 80 pounds of comb 

 honey from each colony I had in the spring, 

 which was sold so as to give me S559 free oif 



all expense incurred by the bees, except 

 what time I found it necessary to devote to 

 them." 



"Whew! can bees be made to pay as well 

 as that?" 



"Probably not at the present time, as 

 honey brought at that time from 25 to 30 

 cents a pound, while now that same honey 

 would not bring more than 14 to 16 cents. 

 You will note that I said 'probablj' not,' 

 and I thus said because of the depreciation 

 of honey in price. But while the prices of 

 to-day are against us, yet we have made 

 such an advance in the science of bee-keep- 

 ing, and a much better variety of bees, that 

 it is possible to obtain much more honey 

 from the same number of colonies at this 

 time than it was in the early seventies." 



"Excuse my breaking in on you. Go on 

 with your story." 



"The next year I purchased an extractor 

 and set apart a single colony to be worked 

 for extracted honey. When the basswood 

 bloom opened I hired a man to take my 

 place in the hayfield, paying him Si. 75 per 

 day. The man worked sixteen days, and 

 I extracted during those sixteen days, hon- 

 ey enough from that colony which sold for 

 some 70 to 80 cents more than what I had to 

 pay the man in wages." 



"Wh-e-w! again." 



"I told you this only to show that one 

 colony of bees properly worked was equiva- 

 lent to myself or yourself in the hayfield; 

 yet many a beginner who has purchased 

 fifty colonies of bees, as you proposed, has 

 left them to go into the hay and harvest 

 fields, or at their other business, only to go 

 out of the bee business a year or two later, 

 telling us and those about them that bee- 

 keeping does not pay. By starting at the foot 

 of the ladder, as it were, working your way 

 up, you will learn these things as you would 

 not were you to start at the top, when in all 

 probability you would work your way down, 

 if you did not fall down. I believe it takes 

 more skill to become a bee-keeper that is 

 worthy of the name than it does to do the 

 ordinary work on a farm." 



"Then must the bee-keeper be tied to his 

 bees every day, and all the day long?" 



"No. You must learn to tell just when 

 the bees need your attention and when they 

 do not, by a thorough understanding of 

 their workings, coupled with the same thor- 

 ough understanding of your location as it 

 applies to the bees. Then, when the bees 

 do not require any special attention they 

 can be left, and the apiarist do other work, 

 or play if he likes; but the bees must not be 

 neglected for a single day, when that day 

 will put them in condition to bring dollars 

 in the future, if you and I are to be success- 

 ful bee-keepers." 



"Excuse my breaking in on you this sec- 

 ond time. Tell me more about how you got 

 along with the bees." 



"My diary shows that, in 1874, my hon- 

 ey was sold so as to bring me $970, free 

 of all expense from the bees, not counting 

 my time, and now I began to think of giv- 



