ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



213 



think I have had more complaints this 

 year than for several years. I will not 

 give the names, but I wish hereafter, 

 when you order queens from any deal- 

 er, you would order by postal order or 

 money order, and if you do not get 

 yoiir queens put it up to the Postal 

 authorities. I would like to see that 

 done. We publishers cannot always 

 tell who is honest, and some of the 

 queen-breeders who have advertised 

 this year have been honest in other 

 years, but it seems this year they have 

 not been, and I don't know what we 

 publishers can do, except not to adver- 

 tise for them any more, and that I 

 think we will do; but we do not like 

 to think our subscribers have to pay 

 the expense of finding that out. I 

 think every queen-breeder ought to 

 return the money if he cannot send 

 the queens. He has no business hold- 

 ing on to the money. He puts the 

 publishers in a very bad position. We 

 have to explain as to what has oc- 

 curred; and one or two of them I have 

 written to, and they absolutely refuse 

 to answer my letters as to why they 

 do not send the queens. It is time 

 some of the queen-breeders stopped 

 advertising unless they do as they ad- 

 vertise, and fill the orders with queens. 



Mr. Brown — There is one point 

 about the number of bee-keepers in 

 attendance. I sent out over 400 postal 

 cards just a few days before the con- 

 vention, and most of the men I sent 

 cards to were within a radius of 200 

 miles of this place, and there were 

 very few of those cards that I sent out 

 that did not go to bee-keepers that 

 I have met personally at the Fairs here 

 in the past, or at the conventions, and 

 know that they are men that are to 

 some extent interested in bee-keeping; 

 and if the Fair rates and Fair are 

 the attractions, why aren't they 

 here? I know there are a great 

 many of the members of our Associa- 

 tion that have been here at our own 

 meeting, and have been at the Fair 

 the rest of the time; there are a num- 

 ber of men who are interested in the 

 Fair locally, interested in the exhibits, 

 and who cannot attend these meet- 

 ings. I think the best time to pick for 

 the bee-keepers to meet is a time 

 when there won't be anything else to 

 do but attend the meeting, and the 

 city will pay more attention to it. If 

 «ven the number of bee-keepers that 

 have been at this convention went in 



a body around town, where there was 

 nothing else to attract attention, they 

 would be noticed, and it would be 

 enough so that it would- make some 

 difference in that town; the people 

 would say, 1 didn't know there were 

 so many bee-keepers. But there are 

 so many other people in town that a 

 great many have said to me, "You 

 haven't got any bee-keepers here, have 

 you?" They say, "I have seen two or 

 three badges;" and that is all they 

 know. Another point is, we cannot 

 make the places where we take our 

 meals a common point of meeting to 

 any extent, and we cannot make oAr 

 places of lodging in any way close 

 where we would be together; and 

 there are a great many times when 

 conversations at the dinner table, or 

 conversation^ in the evening after the 

 cc)nvention, will bring a point to some 

 individual that is worth a whole lot to 

 him, and it certainly does more in pro- 

 moting thV-good fellowship of the or- 

 ga^i^zation than anything else that can 

 be done. One thing that is needed is 

 more good fellowship in the Bee- 

 Keepers' Association. It always seems 

 to me that the point of a fifty cent 

 rate for membership in the National 

 ought to be cut off. If a man is in- 

 terested enough in the National Bee- 

 Keepers' Association, and if a few 

 men over the country would get it. in- 

 to their heads to boost the National, 

 and get every man that they could 

 that was interested in bees, to come 

 inside as a member of the National, 

 and make those dues \enough so that 

 they would amount to something, the 

 National would have money enough 

 back of it to do something. The cen- 

 sus of 1900 shows 128,000 farms in the 

 State of Iowa, that have bees on them; 

 out of that number there are hardly 

 100 men in the State of Iowa belong- 

 ing to the National, and there were a 

 good many less beforeNje started the 

 local organization here. A thing I 

 would be in favor of would be to get 

 higher dues in the Association and 

 make members of the men who have 

 some interest in it. If you pay enough 

 for a thing you have got interest 

 enough in it to talk up what you have 

 paid' for. If you don't pay anything, 

 you say, ."Well, I don't care: I have 

 only paid a little bit in there: it 

 doesn't amount to anything;" and that 

 is as far as it goes. 



The President — About a year ago I 





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