ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



209 



probably more than any other bee- 

 Iceeper in the- United States. I use it 

 altogether. I ran through 500 pounds 

 this year. I have used it for over 

 thirty years steadily. I have yet to 

 have the pleasure of dealing with foul 

 brood, consequently that question has 

 not entered into my calculations at 

 -all. 



The President — "The National Bee- 

 Keepers' Association," by N. E, 

 France, General Manager, of Platte - 

 ville, Wis., is the next and last sub- 

 ject upon the program. 



Mr. France — ^To begin with I would 

 say that the locomotive ahead is the 

 power of the train, and to quite an 

 ■extent the Association members are 

 willing that the Manager shall be the 

 "locomotive, they following behind. 



The President — Or staying at home. 



Mr. France — And for the benefit of 

 some who haive been here, I would 

 like to say we had the pleasure of a 

 surprise at noon hour today to see the 

 first manager, as the locomotive, Mr. 

 Secor, and have dinner with him, and 

 I will ask Mr. Secor to rise that you 

 may see him; he is one of our past 

 masters, and those of us who have 

 the Annual Reports know, from the 

 reports he gave, of the work he had 

 to do and some of it at a time when 

 •our Association and its funds were 

 rather light. The membership is grow- 

 ing very nicely, and I dare say that the 

 duties devolving upon the office have 

 grown proportionately with it. At 

 the time ,Mr. Secor was our Manager, 

 it was not expected then that he 

 would put into the Annual Report 

 anything but the business transac- 

 tions; later it was demanded that the 

 report of the Annual Meeting should - 

 "become part of the Annual Report. 

 That complicates matters and makes 

 expenses a good deal more, and it is 

 "by very close handling of our funds 

 that we are able to keep our finances 

 at a point under those conditions so 

 as to make no additional expense to 

 the membership. The Annual Report 

 expense is on the grow. I hope what 

 is within it is worth its cost. I also 

 revised the little pamphlet. Legal 

 Rights, tliat we first had. It seemed 

 to need more on the subject of legal 

 aid or instructions to our members. 

 Many of our naembers, especially city 

 members, had neighbors too near for 

 convenience to the bees, consequently 

 something upon the line of city ordi- 



nances had to be brought up. I am 

 now trying to revise and give the 

 members, free of charge, another re- 

 vised edition of the Bee-Keepers Le- 

 gal Rights. The subject of foul brood 

 legislation and copies of the different 

 laws now in force will be therein so 

 that the States not having a law can 

 see what the different States that 

 have a law have formulated, and can 

 from those formulate what they want. 

 During this last winter a large por- 

 tion of our States being in legislative 

 session, I was helpful in many places 

 in securing foul brood laws. So that 

 the National, in a way, has helped a 

 good many States on that line. I 

 hope that this revised edition will be 

 in plenty of time for these States 

 which failed to help them, so that the 

 more States we have now with laws, 

 the better. With our city bee-keep- 

 ers, or those living where neighbors 

 are near, in many of those cases the 

 bees are not directly at fault; very 

 often it happens that the bee-keeper 

 and his neighbor are not friends from 

 some other cause, and the bees are in- 

 directly brought into the deal. City 

 ordinance troubles result. We have 

 five on record at the present time 

 that we are counselling with on that 

 basis. Neighbors living near have a 

 right to their proi>erty undisturbed, 

 and four times since the last Annual 

 Report there have been reports of 

 teams of horses, or of cattle, having 

 been stung to death; damage claims 

 have come in, and we have had the 

 cases to look after. 



Then, as to the bees and fruit com- 

 plaints, I was really surprised after 

 all we have had on that some years 

 ago, that it- should, in this age of in- 

 telligence, become a part of our neces- 

 sity to follow that same thing up 

 seemingly harder than ever. Only two 

 weeks ago, in one of our States not 

 very far away, the Professor in Horti- 

 culture at the State University made 

 the statement, and still sticks to it, 

 that the bees in his neighborhood 

 were destroying his fruit, and he 

 wants $200 damages from a bee- 

 keeper. Again, one of our members 

 sold some bees, and at the time of 

 the sale also had a certificate from 

 the inspector that those bees were in- 

 spected that day, and were free of 

 disease. Later on, other bees were 

 brought into the same vicinity. These 

 bees were found to be diseased. A 





