BEE KEEPING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 83 
shown by a letter of a father to his son. dated, " Sutton [Massa- 
chusetts] June the 2d, 1788." a Besides speaking of sending to his son 
some homespun clothes the father adds. " as for news we have no 
grate to rite to you our bees have swormed yesterday and they flew of 
today." 
NeAv England is reputed to have suffered severely from attacks of 
bee moths in the early part of the nineteenth century. There appears 
to have been a period of general devastation by this enemy from 
about 1800 to 1850. It handicapped the industry considerably, and, 
according to some, completely wiped it out in certain localities. Writ- 
ing from Greenfield in 1853, L. L. Langstroth says: 6 "The present 
condition of practical bee keeping in this country [meaning the whole 
of New England and New York] is known to be deplorably low. 
From the great mass of agriculturalists * * * it receives not 
the slightest attention." There is room for considerable doubt, how- 
ever, whether the moth was the primary cause of this devastation, as 
is explained below under the headings, " Enemies " and " Disease." 
At the middle of the nineteenth century Langstroth, who had been 
experimenting for several years, brought out his invention, the 
movable- frame hive. As is explained under the head of " Hives," 
this revolutionized the industry; at that time modern bee keeping 
began. 
Considering the very early date of the first introduction of bees 
to what is now Massachusetts, and that from this locality as a center 
much of the present-day bee keeping c spread westward with the 
home seekers, it is not a little surprising to discover so few extensive 
bee keepers in Massachusetts, while there are many in New York 
and Vermont. Compensating, however, for the lack of extensive 
bee keepers, there is a vast number of small apiaries; their number 
in proportion to the territory is probably greater than in any other 
State in the Union. There are at least 2,100 d who derive some profit 
from their bees. Were these 2,100 to keep twenty-five colonies each 
"A photograph of this letter is in the possession of the writer. 
' ; Langstroth, L. L. 1853. Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee, a 
Bee-Keeper's Manual. Northampton. First edition. 
c The details of the present stains of bee keeping in this paper are based 
upon the returns from a series of questions sent to every known bee keeper 
in Massachusetts. The method of securing the statistics was described in the 
author's paper read before the Association of Economic Entomologists, Balti- 
more, Md., December 21), 1908. This paper is published in the Journal of 
Economic Entomology, Vol. II, No. 2, pp. 117-120, April, 1909. 
'' Uy actual count, the recorded bee keepers for .Massachusetts number 2,127. 
This exceeds (he nuinher recorded in the 1900 census by 328, which, consider- 
ing thai the author's work was accomplished through mail while the federal 
'•eiisus is the result of a house-to-house canvass, suggests a deficiency in the 
figures of the federal census reports. Of the 2,127, 1,050 reported. 
