PROFITS IN BEKS 
the hundreds he meets with failure. Some 
have done remarkably well with a few colo¬ 
nies ; but when they have attempted to 
double or treble the number they entered 
into a business proposition that proved to 
be too much for them. 
Many years ago a neighbor cleared a 
thousand dollars from one acre of onions. 
It made him wild. He bought ten more 
acres of the same kind of onion land, going 
into debt for it, and expected to clear the 
following year $10,000. When he managed 
the one acre he did all the work himself; 
but when he worked the ten acres he bad to 
hire help. The help was incompetent, or 
did not understand. Onions fell in price; 
and at the final round-up that year he had 
a great stock of poor onions without a 
buyer. They rotted. He became discour¬ 
aged, and lost all he had. * 
A few persons, on account of a lack of 
experience or perhaps business ability, not 
understanding their own* limitations and 
those of their localities, will plunge into 
beekeeping too deeply and meet with dis¬ 
aster. 
Many a beekeeper has done well with 
four or five hundred colonies when he fails 
with twice that number. When he or mem¬ 
bers of his family can do all the work 
everything goes well; but when he has to 
hire help, much of it incompetent, his 
troubles begin, and his profits are cut in 
two. Said one large producer, “When I 
had 3,000 colonies, and my boys and I did 
all the work, we made money; but when I 
increased my number to 7,000, and hired 
help, I actually did not make as much 
money as when I had 3,000.” 
There are some men who are unable to 
get along with their help. There are oth¬ 
ers who, when they have good help, have no 
ability to plan the work for others. 
If it were not for bee disease and rob¬ 
bing, the question of hired help would not 
be so serious. A poor man in a beeyard 
may make his employer a world of trouble 
and expense unless his boss can be with 
him constantly, and that is not always 
possible. 
One may double or treble the number of 
his colonies if he can plan his work ahead 
and then go along with the help, taking one 
yard after another. After a time one of the 
683 
men may be competent enough to go to the 
yards and manage the other help; but usu¬ 
ally a good man can make more money by 
running and owning the bees himself than 
by working for some one else. It is diffi¬ 
cult, therefore, to hold such a man. 
If one expects to expand his bee busi¬ 
ness, tho he does not have members of his 
family to help him, he will probably have 
to work on a profit-sharing basis — a mod¬ 
erate salary and a percentage of the crop. 
This creates in the man a sense of responsi¬ 
bility and ownership that makes him a bet¬ 
ter man than if he merely had to put in so 
many hours, and at the same time holds 
him. If the owner can go with the help to 
all the yards, it is not necessary for him to 
hire on the profit-sharing basis. 
Assuming that the help question can be 
solved let us look at the side of expansion 
of the business. Let us assume a case. 
Here is a beekeeper who has 300 colonies. 
During the busy season he is comfoi'tably 
busy. But during six months in the year 
his time is not very profitably employed— 
a distinct loss; for it will take him only a 
short time, comparatively, to get his supers 
ready for the next season, nail his hives, 
repaint them, or do other preliminary work 
that can easily be done indoors and yet his 
interest or his rent and his living expenses 
are going right on. Suppose, for example, 
that this beekeeper has 600 colonies, or 
1,000; that he has good business ability; 
that he has plenty of bee-range. Suppose 
lie scatters this number in 15 different 
yards, none further than 15 miles from his 
home, and a good part of them not over 
four or five miles away. In the busy sea¬ 
son he will, of course, have to employ help. 
If he has the right kind of executive ability 
he will see that that help is profitably em¬ 
ployed. When the rush of work is over he 
will look after the marketing of the crop, 
put the bees into winter quarters, perhaps 
doing the work himself with the occasional 
help of one man, and a machine. In cold 
weather he can devote all of his time profit¬ 
ably in preparing for the next season. 
While he is operating 1,000 colonies it 
costs him no more to live; the same auto¬ 
mobile that will carry him to two or three 
hundred will carry him to the other seven 
or eight hundred. If he is running for 
