PUBLISHED EVERY WEEK 



AT $1.00 PER ANNUM. 



35th Year. 



CHICAGO, ILL., OCT. 24, 1895. 



No. 43. 



Report of the Proceedings 



OP THK 



Twenty-Sizth Annual Convention 



OF THE 



North American Bee-Keepers' Association, 



HELD AT 



TORONTO, Ont., Sept. 4, 5 and 6, 1895. 



W. Z. HUTCHINSON, SEC. 



(Continued from page 662.) 



THIRD DAY — Fridat Morning Session. 



The first thing in the morning came the report of the com- 

 mittee on 



Xlie Delayed Report of 1894. 



The report of the committee was as follows : 



Your committee to which was referred the matter of the 

 refusal of Mr. Frank Benton to furnish a full Report of the 

 proceedings of the meeting of the Association in 1894, as per 

 TOte of the Association, although he had been paid for making 

 said report, find that he has no valid excuse for such refusal, 

 and recommend that he be requested to at once furnish the 

 balance of the report, or refund the amount that he has re- 

 ceived for such service ; and, in case of his refusal to do either, 

 «r both, that he be censured by the Association. 



A. B. Mason, ) 

 Ira Barber, V Com. 

 J. T. Calvert, ) 



Upon motion the report was accepted and adopted, after 

 the following discussion upon It had taken place : 



Frank Benton — The Report has been ready for months, 

 and it can be had at any time If It will be published as I fur- 

 nish It ; but I am not going to have it mutilated. 



Wm. F. Clarke — This Is something that Mr. Benton has 

 nothing to do with. He was employed as Secretary to get out 

 the Report. It Is his business to turn it over to thie man 

 selected by the Association to print it. When he has done this 

 he has cleared his skirts. Will he do this ? 



Frank Benton — I will If — 



Mr. Clarke — There must be no " Ifs " about it. Will you, 

 or will you not, turn over that Report ? 



Mr. Benton — I will. 

 "President Holtermann — That settles it. 



Next came a long essay by Mr. Allen Pringle, of Selby, 

 Ont., on 



Some mistakcB of Bee-Keepers and Bee- 

 Journals. 



Bee-keepers are mostly worthy and level-headed people, 

 but they are not infallible. Like other people, they do actual- 

 ly make mistakes. All men. and a few women, make mistakes, 

 and I have sometimes thought ihat the mistakes of humanity 

 were the biggest part of their doings; and that it was just 

 possible (by the looks of things, sometimes) that the world 

 itself was one big mistake. If, however. In the sum of things, 

 it should prove to be otherwise, the anomaly Is nevertheless 

 here that this world is fairly full of mistakes, misdeeds, and 



misdoings, with miserables, misanthropes, and monstrosities in 

 plenty. But if the world itself, In the abstract, is not quite 

 a mistake, in the concrete it has produced lots of men (a few 

 of them bee-keepers) who are out and out blunders, worse than 

 useless. They are pests In society and barnacles on the Body 

 Polllic. (Of course this is not applicable to bee-keepers to 

 any great extent. I am coming to them presently.) 



Through Ignorance, passion, or perversity, men violate 

 the laws of health and Incur sickness, pain and premature 

 death. They violate ethical law, and demoralize themselves; 

 social law, and degrade themselves; economic law, and im- 

 poverish themselves, and so It goes. If the wise man (includ- 

 ing the bee-keeper) is he who uses his organism and environ- 

 ment rightly, and the fool (Including the bee-keeper) Is one 

 who does the contrary, then there are a thousand fools in 

 this world for every wise man that's in it. I am not going 

 quite as far here as the cynical sage of Chelsea (Thos.Carlyle), 

 who has left his opinion on record that the world is mostly 

 made up of fools. 



But I am not particularly concerned here with the follies 

 of mankind in general, but I dm concerned with the follies and 

 mistakes of bee keepers in particular. The first mistake that 

 some bee-keepers make is made, strangely enough, before they 

 become hee-Ueepers. The first mistake, with them, is In be- 

 coming bee-keepers at all. And this is an unprofitable mis- 

 take. If the man Is square and the pursuit round, or the man 

 round and the business square, there will be a misfit, and con- 

 sequently a mistake. The world Is full of such mistakes. 

 Men persist in getting into the wrong places. They do this 

 because of Ignorance, or conceit, or ambition, or greed, or 

 something else higher or lower, as the case may be. In the 

 matter of bee-keeping, however, (I now refer to progressive, 

 expert bee-keeping) there are, I am inclined to think, fewer 

 misfits than In most other occupations. The reason of this is 

 not far to seek. A large majority of bee-keepers are bee- 

 keejjers first and foremost bei'ause they love the business 

 us n business, as well as the dollars it brings. And this at- 

 tachment is in itself an evidence of special aptitude. As a 

 rule, the business or vocation to which the boy or man natu- 

 rally gravitates is the one to which he Is naturally adapted. 

 In other lines the particular art, trade or profession is usually 

 selected by others for the boy. Instead of by the boy for him- 

 self. It is selected in most instances without any references 

 to, or knowledge of, his natural qualifications or disqualifica- 

 tions for the position. Hence the numerous misfits — the mani- 

 fold life-failures. But this is not generally true of bee-keep- 

 ing, as the business is spontaneously selected by the subjects 

 themselves. Some men, it is true, go into bee-keeping solely 

 to make money out of it, and such would love any business 

 which "panned out " handsomely, whether the business was 

 night-soiling, bee-keeping or gold-gambling I But even such 

 men are apt to make a success of the bee-business without 

 special adaption, because they bend all their energies to it — 

 not through a love for the bees or the business, but for the 

 money that's in it. Hence it is, that while in the lower walks 

 of bee-keeping there is blundering in plenty, in the higher 

 grades of expert bee-keeping the mistakes and failures are- 

 much less common than In most other occupations. 



Primary or preliminary mistakes aside, let us now turn to 

 a few of the supplementary mistakes, big and little, which, 

 bee-keepers, high and low, fall into. 



In the first plaie, when a man gets by mistake into the 

 wrong business (for him) of tending bees, it is another mistake 

 not to get right out of it again before his money and himself 

 have parted company. When the ambitious novice has seen. 



