2 ALEXANDER’S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 
without these elements to success there is only one alternative, and that 
is and always has been simply failure. 
Then there is another thing to take into consideration. It is pleasant 
to have a paying business that requires your time only about half of the 
year, and that the pleasant part, when you can be outdoors and enjoy 
all the pleasures of nature’s spring and summer. With me it is a real 
pleasure to breathe free air unsoiled by either bell or whistle calling me 
to labor. 
I will now take it for granted that you have spent one or two sea- 
sons in learning all that you could during that time from some competent 
person, and you still want to follow bee-keeping. I can not advise you to 
go slow, as some do. That “go slow” is a blight on any man. First be 
sure that you are right, then go ahead with willing hands and a good 
stock of perseverance ever ready to overcome the unexpected troubles as 
you meet them. Make up your mind from the first to take good bee 
literature; have good bees; use good tools and hives, and then produce 
good honey. Take pride in your business. If you have taken up queen- 
rearing, forming nuclei for sale, or increasing your colonies for sale, or 
producing comb or extracted honey, don’t forget to look well to quality. 
Then advertise and let the public know what you have, and you will in 
a short time not only surprise your friends but yourself with your suc- 
cess, You now have a clear track and a light grade compared with what 
some of us older men had fifty years ago. We then had a hard time of 
it—no bee journals, no Italian bees, no comb foundation, no honey-ex- 
tractors, no bee-smokers, and no market for the little honey we secured. 
How different now, with our large markets established, where our 
honey is annually sought for, either in small lots or by the carload, and 
with our new inventions and improved methods enabling us to produce 
five times the amount per colony we did then! To me bee-keeping now 
seems like quite a good business. Still, I never advise one to take it up, 
not even my own sons, for I have always taught that, when it comes to 
choosing a life business, each one should choose for himself. While it 
is true that man to a great extent makes his circumstances, still it is also 
true that circumstances to a great extent make the man. 
I am well acquainted with a man who was born on a farm, and 
worked hard on it for several years aftershe was married. He was tem- 
perate and of excellent habits, working early and late; but still his farm 
life was a perfect failure. After toiling in close circumstances for several 
years his wife’s friends got him a situation in New York city. Then the 
scale turned. He struck a place that God had fitted him for, and for the 
past thirteen years he has had a net income of over twenty thousand 
dollars a year. I speak of this case to show that many of us are trying 
to make a success of some business to which we are not at all adapted; 
also to show the importance of trying hard while young to start right. 
You should look upon your business as your bank; and whenever 
you can add a dollar to it, do so, and it will return in due time many 
fold. Take pride in having a good apiary, and remember there is far 
