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THF BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



the tent. They would fly out and visit the 

 feeder, load up, and then return all right. 

 His tent is 40 x 20 feet in size. He admitted 

 what I can readily believe is true, viz., that 

 there are quite a number of little kinks 

 about the business that can be learned only 

 by actual practice. 



To one who is making a practice of feed- 

 ing back, the acquisition of this little item 

 of information might be worth all that it 

 cost to go to St. Joseph. I seldom attend a 

 convention without running against some 

 such chunk of wisdom ; but to leave home 

 with the idea that every hour will be fraught 

 with startling revelations, and that words of 

 wisdom will drop out whenever lips are 

 opened, is to court disappointment. The 

 most of our bee journals, if not all of them, 

 are edited by bright men. Nearly all of 

 them are practical bee-keepers and know a 

 good thing the moment it is brought to their 

 notice. All of them are on the alert for 

 these good things with which to enhance the 

 value of their journals, and some of them 

 don't wait for these good things to "turn 

 up," but go out and "rustle" around the 

 country and turn them up. The moment 

 that a discovery is made it is caught up by 

 the journals and spread broadcast over the 

 country. Under these conditions it is well- 

 nigh impossible that anything so awfully, 

 awfully new should be brought out at a con- 

 vention. Sometimes we get hold of a veri- 

 table gold mine in the shape of a practical 

 man that won't write but who can be made 

 to stand up and talk ; then we sometimes get 

 hold of something worth going a long dis- 

 tance to hear. Then, again, the leading bee 

 journals always have representatives present 

 and little of value is said that does not ap- 

 pear on their pages. We may as well admit 

 that the inducements to attend conventions 

 are not what they were once ; but, let us be 

 thankful, there is one feature the papers can 

 never usurp, even if they have given us pic- 

 tures of most of the prominent bee-keepers, 

 and that is the social part of the convention. 

 It is the main thing left for convention 

 goers, and there is nothing small nor mean 

 about it either. We are a band of brothers, 

 but sometimes some of us get to feeling a 

 little edgewise towards some of the brethren. 

 We think there is good reason for it, and 

 perhaps there is, but when we meet the of- 

 fender face to face, take him by the hand, 

 sit by his side, and see an honest soul shin- 

 ing out of his eyes, we find our enmity melt- 



ing away. It would not surprise me if sev- 

 eral people went away from St. Joseph with 

 a better opinion of somebody else than they 

 had when they came. Then, again, it is an 

 advantage to have a personal acquaintance 

 with those who write for the journals, even 

 if that acquaintance is only a short one. For 

 instance, during quite a lengthy discussion 

 last summer in the American Bee Journal, 

 and I fell to wondering several times wheth- 

 er one of the dispudants was a man of real 

 good sense, or the reverse. Later I had the 

 pleasure (?) of his company for one half 

 hour, and in that short space of time he had 

 " given himself away ;" I had been enabled 

 to decide in regard to the value that ought to 

 be placed upon his observations and conclu- 

 sions. An acquaintance with the writer in- 

 creases the value, to us, of his writings. 



One good stroke of work accomplished at 

 this meeting was the revision of the consti- 

 tution. All of that matter relating to affil- 

 iation, delegates, honey companies, etc., was 

 thrown out ; in fact, there are no by-laws 

 left, nothing but a short and simple consti- 

 tution. The salary of the secretary was 

 placed at $25.00 ; now when a man accepts 

 the office he knows what to expect for his 

 services and there will be no chance for any 

 wrangling over the matter. Speaking of the 

 Secretary reminds me of another suggestion 

 that I would like to make, and that is that 

 there is nothing gained in spending a large 

 sum of money in printing notices of the 

 meeting and paying postage on them in 

 sending them oat to agricultural papers. A 

 man who is not sufficiently interested in bee- 

 keeping to be a reader of some one of the 

 bee journals will not come any great distance 

 to the meeting because he saw a notice of it 

 in some agricultural paper. Notices in the 

 agricultural papers of the region in which 

 the meeting is to be held might possibly in- 

 duce the attendance of a few farmer bee- 

 keepers, but, aside from this, notices in the 

 bee journals are all-sufficient Having made 

 this criticism it is only fair to praise Secre- 

 tary Benton for his success in persuading 

 non-attendents to send in their dollars. By 

 sending out circulars to all old members, 

 thereby calling their attention to the advan- 

 tages of keeping up their membership even 

 if they could not attend each year, twenty 

 members who did not attend were induced 

 to send in their annual fees. Such an ac- 

 complishment is without precedence. It 

 seems wise to each year point out the mis- 



