46 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



February 



beemen and some demonstrations of 

 pet hobbies. 



The limits of space for this article 

 have been reached and the half has 

 not been told. There is no room left 

 for the various incidents by the 

 wayside, the visits to fig orchards 

 and raisin-packing houses, by mem- 

 bers of the staff who slipped away 

 with Mr. Hawley; of the way they 

 tricked the writer into sampling 

 fresh ripe olives, of a dandy trip to 

 the orange groves with Mr. Darnell. 

 of the main- tilings of interest to the 

 tenderfoot from the east to Califor- 

 nia in winter, or of the dinner par- 

 ties, visits, nor the delightful mid- 

 night talkfests by groups of beekeep- 

 ers who should have been in bed. We 

 hope to find room for some of these 

 things in connection with other arti- 

 cles about California beekeeping, but 

 many must remain untold. 



California gave the lie to the oft- 

 repeated excuse by university au- 

 thorities in many States, when ap- 

 proached by beekeepers asking that 

 educational work be undertaken in 

 beekeeping. They say "There is no 

 demand for work in that line." 

 There has been no opportunity to 

 demonstrate a demand. The Cali- 

 fornia University is to be congratu- 

 lated upon being the first to offer a 

 comprehensive series of short courses 

 to commercial honey producers. The 

 California beekeepers are to be con- 

 gratulated upon the magnificent way 

 in which they have taken advantage 

 of the opportunity, thus demonstrat- 

 ing that, for a practical course, there 

 is a real demand. The total attend- 

 ance of the three meetings was be- 

 tween three and four hundred per- 

 sons and would have been larger, but 

 many had expected to attend at Riv- 

 erside, which meeting was cut off. 

 Under normal conditions the total 

 would have probably been above five 

 hundred at the four places. 



With so much enthusiasm shown 



for these courses, we may reasonably 

 expect that other States will offer 

 similar ones, and since these are suc- 

 cessful, wo hope that Doctor Phillips 

 and his staff will be encouraged to 

 make similar co-operation a perma- 

 nent policy of the Division of Api- 

 culture. 



Force or Education 



By Frank C. Pellett 



A STUDY of the inspection laws 

 of the various States brings to 

 light some remarkable condi- 

 tions. At the close of the world war. 

 when the attention of the American 

 people has been called to evils of old 

 world administration, it may not be 

 amiss to examine the tendency of our 

 own country to drift toward auto- 

 cratic methods of government. In 



Group of beekeepers at the San Diago short course. 



passing laws relating to bee diseases, 

 we have been so frightened by the 

 presence of disease that we have put 

 more power into the hands of the in- 

 spector, as far as our business and 

 property are concerned, than it was 

 ever designed that any one individual 

 should hold, under our American in- 

 stitutions. It is a serious question 

 whether we have not gone entirely 

 too far and whether it is not now 

 time to call a halt. 



We are living under a constitu- 

 tion which gives to every man the 

 right to be heard and provides that 

 no individual shall be deprived of 

 his property without due process of 

 law. Nevertheless, many States have 

 passed laws which place the property 

 of the beekeeper entirely in the 

 hands of the bee inspector. These 

 laws make the inspector the sole 

 judge as to whether or not disease 

 is present and give him authority, if 

 in his judgment it is necessary, to de- 

 stroy the property of the beekeeper 

 without restraint. Under such a law. 

 healthy colonies of bees may be de- 

 stroyed with no protection for the- 

 beekeeper. A little study of the situ- 

 ation will make it apparent that the 

 beekeepers have become so aroused 

 over the presence of disease that 

 they have caused the enactment of 

 laws which might easily become a 

 more serious danger than the dis- 

 ease which they are designed to con- 

 trol. Many of these laws go so far 

 as to give the inspector authority to 

 establish a quarantine against the 

 sale of honey from infected areas. 

 The danger of spread of disease 

 through the sale of honey in the or- 

 dinary channels is so small as to be 

 negligible, yet is is easily possible 

 for a misguided inspector to ruin the 

 beekeepers in a large territory In 

 no other department of American 

 activity do we make it possible tor 

 one man to judge the merits of a 

 case, assess the penalty and finally 

 execute the sentence. 



The time has long passed when 

 quarantine methods were advisable 



