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150 



TENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



him about the bees! I never heard 

 from him again. 



W. D. Wright (New York)— I did 

 not recommend the Italian bees for 

 the sake of Mr. McLachlin getting more 

 'honey, because I know occasionally 

 the black bees will put up a nice quan- 

 tity and a fine article, but it was on 

 the score of the bee-disease which is 

 approaching his territory. There is 

 too much difference, as all those know 

 who have had experience, betw-een 

 the Italians and blacks and hybrids, 

 as regards controlling the disease of 

 black brood. 



J. E. Crane (Vermont) — There are 

 one or two matters in Mr. Cavanag'h's 

 paper that it would do well for us all 

 to remember. One that struck me 

 especially favorable was that the bee- 

 keeper who would succeed in business 

 must seek out a location where honey 

 was to be found, not plant corn in the 

 I>esert of Sahara. That is an exceed- 

 ingly important point. Another, this, 

 per'haps, he didn't mention, that it 

 might have been well for him to have 

 mentioned, and that is that it requires 

 a great deal of courage and faith to 

 keep bees and make it a business suc- 

 cess, for we have just as many sea- 

 sons' of failure as of success. Last 

 year (1'909) was a season of failure 

 with us; we got enough to pay ex- 

 penses, and not very much more. Jf 

 we hadn't had something else except 

 honey, I don't know but w*at we 

 would have had to apply to the town 

 for assistance or live on our credit; 

 but I 'had faith in the future; having 

 kept bees for more than 40' years. I 

 had faith that the future had good 

 things in store for us, and when the 

 winter was past, and t<he bees built 

 up rapidly, I knew there was just on^ 

 danger that was likely to befall us, 

 and that was starvation before clover 

 came, consequently I anticipated we 

 would have to feed, and we were pre- 

 pared for that with barrels of sugar 

 and hundreds of jwunds of honey, and 

 when it went well into June, and still 

 the bees were starving, or ready to 

 -Starve, if we didn't feed, the clouds 

 hung over very dark and heavy. We 

 persisted until the clouds broke away, 

 as they did on the 13th of June, and 

 in ten days we were taking off sur- 

 plus honey, and after five weeks they 

 had stored us somewhere from 35 to 

 40 thousand pounds, or in that 



neighborhood; and two-thirds of it ' 

 comb honey. 



J. J. Hurley (Canada) — I think this 

 question is perhaps one of the most 

 important that could come before a 

 gathering of this kind — bee-keeping ' 

 as a business. The assistance we are 

 receiving from our various govern- 

 ments, state or provincial, is for the 

 purpose of developing bee-keeping as 

 a business, and I think we cannot use 

 a convention of this kind to better 

 advantage than to impress upon all 

 those who are outside the profession, 

 the advantages of bee-keeping as a 

 busines.s. I know farmers who are 

 'working 100 acres of land who are 

 making no more than a bare living, 

 and who, if they had 100 or 200 col- 

 onies of bees, would make a better 

 living than thev are now making. 

 There is a gentleman living a short 

 way from my town who is anxious to 

 sell his farm; he has 130 acres of one 

 of the finest pieces of land I think I 

 ever saw; a beautiful house, beautiful 

 barns, and two magnificent orchards; 

 he says he would sell for $10,000. I 

 told him that his land was worth 

 twice the amount; I valued his or- 

 chards at $6,000; his buildings were 

 worth at least $5,000. I said, "If you 

 sell your farm for $10 000 you are 

 giving ^ yooar land away." I said, "I 

 would willingly pay you $10,000 for 

 your farm; I could put 300 colonies of 

 bees upon it; I would 'cultivate your 

 orchard; I would make five or six 

 thousand dollars a year off of your 

 place and never put a plow to it, and 

 could do it practically without taking 

 my coat off." This man said he 

 couldn't get help; he said he was 

 working himself to death, and he was 

 practically a slave to that farm, and 

 his wife also in the house, and the re- 

 sult- was, instead of his owning the 

 farm, the farm owned him, and he 

 was getting nothing but* a bare living 

 off it, after striving and w^orking hard. 

 The fault was, the man didn't know 

 his business; he didn't know how to 

 work the farm; he had an enormous 

 amount of capital invested in that 

 farm, but he didn't know how to make 

 use of it, because he was confining it 

 to his own labor. That is a mistake. 

 The man who is going to make a 

 business go is the man who can use 

 the labor of others, and who car df- • 

 rect it intelligently. So if he and i 

 thousands of other men like him could ' 



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