THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



299 



the question, if the tlowers don't " give 

 down," " what are you going to do about 

 it?" It seems, on the face of it, like a 

 foolish topic, but I am going to propose, 

 for discussion in the December Review, 

 " Remedies for Poor Seasons." 



Of course there are conditions under 

 which the failure of the honey crop is easily 

 explained. When a large swamp is drained 

 and its acres of bloom supplanted by fields 

 of grass, there is no occasion for wonder be- 

 cause there is no longer a fall honey harvest 

 in that vicinity. When all the basswoods m 

 a locality are transformed into broom han- 

 dles, buggy boxes or barrel heads, the fail- 

 ure of the basswood harvest is easily ex- 

 plained. When a wooded country is being 

 strii>ped of its forests, there are often acres 

 and acres of land that lie unplowed several 

 years, " while the roots are rotting." These 

 newjy cleared fields are plowed as seldom as 

 possible. They are kept in grass, and often 

 used for pasture. In these new fields and 

 "clearings" white clover has a chance. 

 When there are no longer any forests to 

 be cleared away, and the cleared land is 

 largely devoted to wheat, corn, oats, potatoes 

 or red clover, it is not to be wondered that 

 honey crops become slim. " Rambler " has 

 repeatedly called attention to the fact that 

 in many places in N. Y. beekeeping as a 

 business is no longer profitable. On the 

 other hand, Ernest Root mentions that the 

 extensive raising of buckwheat in some 

 parts of this same State (N. Y.) has again 

 made beekeeping profitable where it had be- 

 come an uncertain business. I think we 

 make a mistake in ignoring the changeabil- 

 ity of many localities as regards their honey 

 producing flora. I am sometimes led to 

 wonder if the failure in my own locality 

 might not be attributed, in part, at least, to 

 the" scarcity of uncultivated fields and the 

 cutting away of so much of the basswood. 

 What puzzles me in this direction is that I 

 had good crops for ten years and then poor 

 ones for four years. It seems as though the 

 change ought to have been more gradual. 

 I would give quite a Utile to know whether I 

 am to have any more good seasons. If I am 

 not, I should give up trying to raise honey 

 and devote the whole apiary to (lueen rear- 

 ing ; in fact, that is what I am seriously 

 contemplating. About how many years 

 must a man wait, and hope, and have faith 

 that there will be a change, before he changes 

 his plans, methods or business ? This may 



be a difficult query to answer, but it is a 

 living, burning (luestion of the day with 

 hundreds of beekeepers. I have mentioned 

 what / am thinking of doing, raising queens, 

 but it is not every beekeeper who is cut out 

 for a queen breeder, while, of late, the mar- 

 ket has been so well supplied with queens 

 that a beginner would experience some dif- 

 ficulty in selling. Then there is the busi- 

 ness of selling bees, either by the pound, 

 nucleus or full colony. A honey season 

 affording but little surplus will often admit 

 of an increase in stock. A little feeding 

 may be necessary to bring all colonies up to 

 the proper condition for wintering. I have 

 never known a spring when bees could not 

 be sold at a fair price— sometimes at high 

 prices. 



I have always plead for specialty, and my 

 faith in its advantages is as strong as ever, 

 but I cannot shut my eyes to facts, and one 

 of these facts is that honey production is not 

 adapted to specialty where it is liable to fail 

 four years in succession. Something else 

 must be made a specialty and honey produc- 

 tion changed into a by-play or else dropped 

 altogether. The difficulty with this change 

 is just here : many men have kept bees for 

 years ; they are adapted to the business and 

 have learned it thoroughly to the neglect of 

 other pursuits ; they have an apiary, together 

 with tools, buildings, etc., and to change is 

 loss, at the outset at least. Bat if a man is 

 ivell satisfied that his apiary no longer yields 

 a profit because of the lack of pasturage- 

 lack of flowers— he must either go to the 

 flowers, or bring them to him, or else throw 

 up the business. There are localities where 

 failure seldom comes. In the article on 

 alfalfa, in the Cosmopolitan, as mentioned 

 last month, I was much interested in the 

 fact that the bloom lasts the whole season. 

 Think of this in connection with the car 

 loads of alfalfa honey that have been shipped 

 from Colorado. One great trouble with many 

 localities is that there are only one or two 

 sources from which honey may be gathered 

 in quantity,and these are of short duration. 

 But little more than a month is as long 

 as the white clover harvest can be ex- 

 pected to last, while a cold rain, or cold 

 without a rain, or a parching drouth, cheats 

 us of any surplus from this source. Bass- 

 wood seldom yields honey longer than ten 

 days and is very easily "upset" by the 

 weather. In other words, we usually have 

 enough "honey weather " during the year, 



