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ADVANCED BEE-CULTURE. 



ness that is unusually profitable does not 

 long remain such. It soon becomes over- 

 crowded and loses its bonanza character. 

 A man should choose a business because 

 he and his surroundings are best adapted 

 to the pursuit. 



Many fall into the error of judging en- 

 tirely by results, regardless of causes. 

 As that excellent bee-keeper, R. L. Tay- 

 lor, has said, "The greatest actual results 

 do not prove the method of management 

 by which they were produced to be the 

 best. Time, and labor, and thought, and 

 care, and material, and capital, are all 

 money, so the greatest results numerical- 

 ly may be obtained at a loss, while the 

 least apparent results may yield a profit. ' ' 



In much this same manner do many 

 bee-keepers make the mistake of comput- 

 ing their income at so many pounds per 

 colony, and at so much per pound. The 

 greatest yield per colony might not be so 

 profitable as a less yield per colony from 

 more colonies, or even a lessened yield 

 from the same number of colonies. If a 

 great yield per colony is the result of a 

 great deal of work, it may be that the 

 work was done at a loss. Bee-keeping 

 should be viewed in a broader light. It 

 may sometimes be profitable to put a 

 great deal of work on each colony, but 

 each bee-keeper should ask himself, how, 

 all things considered, can I make the 

 most profit ? That is the question, and 

 all other propositions not relating direct- 

 ly thereto are mistakes. 



And this leads to the mention of 

 another mistake, the keeping of too few 

 bees. Instead of keeping only a few 

 swarms and striving to secure the largest 

 yields per colony, it is often more profit- 

 able to keep more bees — enough to gather 

 all the honey produced in a given area, 

 and then when said area is overstocked, 

 it is probably a mistake not to start out- 

 apiaries. There is much to be gained in 

 having as few things to do as possible, 

 and as much of them as can be managed. 

 The proportional cost of doing business 

 is greatly lessened by increasing the vol- 

 ume of business. 



Another mistake is that of choosing 

 hives, implements and methods that are 

 complicated and require much time for 

 their manipulation. A most common 

 error in this line is in trying to adapt 

 hives to bees, to such an extent as to al- 

 most entirely ignore the adaptability of 

 the hive to the bee-keeper. I remember 

 once hearing a bee-keeper arguing for a 

 hive that it was "'so handy for the bees." 

 "Why," said he, "if you were buildinga 

 house, would you have it so arranged 

 that your wife would be obliged to go up 

 and down stairs between the kitchen and 

 the pantry?" It must be remembered 

 that we build hives for our bees and 

 houses for our wives with altogether dif- 

 ferent ends in view. We don't keep 

 bees nor arrange their hives with a view 

 to saving them labor, but that we may 

 get the most honey with the least labor 

 to ourselves. ■ Drone-traps, queen- traps, 

 self-hivers, queen-excluders, smokers 

 and many other contrivances are probably 

 not considered "handy" by the bees, but 

 their use is an advantage to us. 



It is in a line with this method of rea- 

 soning that causes some bee-keepers to 

 make the mistake of condemning any 

 practice that is not "according to na- 

 ture. ' ' The whole system of modern bee 

 culture is a transgression of nature's laws, 

 so-called. In some things it is advisable 

 to allow nature to have her own way, in 

 others it is not, and we have the best suc- 

 cess when we have learned just where we 

 can advantageously, to a certain extent, 

 cross nature's methods with those of 

 man's intelligence. 



Mistakes have been made, and erron- 

 eous conclusions arrived at, by experi- 

 menting upon too small a scale. There 

 are some kinds of experiments which will 

 demonstrate truths just as well upon a 

 small as upon a large scale, while there 

 are others requiring experiments upon a 

 large scale and a repetition of experiments 

 before definite conclusions can be arrived 

 at. 



Many beginners make the mistake of 

 thinking they can improve some of the 



