CONCLUSION.
WE often hear this question asked: "Are bees Profitable?" and the
replies given are various, contradictory and amusing, varying in
accordance with the honesty, experience, skill and success of the bee
keeper. Such as have attempted bee keeping with the old fashioned
square box hives, under the old system of management based on fire and
brimstone, will say there is no profit in bees, and that you must not
molest them at all; if you do, "they will run out, and you will loose
your luck."
There is another class, who have adopted all the extravagant fancies of
the patent bee hive venders, paying large sums of money for hives worse
than useless, with what are claimed to be patent fixtures--expecting
a sudden fortune as the result, and found the whole thing a fraud.
Perhaps they have been duped in this way a half-dozen times or more,
and always with the same result. This class will tell you emphatically,
that everything pertaining to bees is a humbug and a cheat--no money in
them, etc.
In presenting the statements made in this work, I am not blinded nor
influenced by any selfish motive, in condemning or recommending any one
system of bee management or hive. I only wish to present facts, and
do what little I can to make bee keeping safe and profitable to all
who engage in it. There is much written on the subject of bees--their
habits and management, construction of hives, etc., which is mere
guess-work. A great deal is written, too, for no other than selfish
or prejudiced motives. What is wanted is practical instruction on the
subject--such instruction and statements as are based on experience,
and will stand the test of application, when brought into active,
every-day use.
The real, practical experience of the bee keeper, who has devoted
many years to the work, and will tell what has come under his or her
personal observation, is worth much more than the finest spun theory
of the most learned and talented theorist; or in other words, mere
conjecture is a poor and uncertain guide in bee keeping. It is an old
but true saying that "Practice makes Perfect." In no business will this
saying apply more closely or with greater force than to bee keeping.
That bees are profitable when rightly managed, I think I have shown in
this little work; and that they can be of no profit, as often managed,
I think is equally made clear.
The natural habits of bees have not been sufficiently understood, by
the majority of bee keepers. This has rendered them an easy prey to
the many speculators in bee hives of peculiar shape and construction,
who are constantly urging their claims to possessing great knowledge
of bees, when perhaps they never saw a bee; and care not one straw
for the advancement of successful bee culture. I find, with the great
majority of hives now in use, there are many obstacles to successful
and profitable bee keeping. There is too little room for storing box
honey in them. Boxes are often difficult of access to the bees, so that
they manifest much reluctance about entering them, often clustering
on the outside of the hive through the honey season, when they should
be at work in the boxes. Then, too, the boxes are usually too large,
which renders the honey unsalable. Honey in large boxes often contains
cells of brood, and bee bread, or pollen, interspersed among the honey
cells, which are a great damage to it, rendering it very unsalable.
Glass boxes, each holding about four and one-half pounds, is the proper
size. A swarm of bees in a hive with thirty of these boxes, judiciously
arranged, will fill them nearly as quickly as they would half the
number, as the bees have ample room to work without crowding.
There are a vast number of bee keepers who now have bees which are of
no profit to them, but instead are only a perplexity and trouble. If
such would manage their bees on correct and scientific principles, in
accordance with their natural habits and instincts, with judicious care
and attention bestowed at the right time, and in the proper manner,
using a hive constructed in accordance with those principles, they
would be surprised at the results which would follow.
To succeed with bees, we should recollect that personal experience is
the best guide; and next to this is the instruction of those engaged in
the business, who prove by the results which follow their management,
that they make bee culture profitable. In commencing bee keeping, if
you purchase bees, use great care in doing so. Buy none but strong,
healthy stocks. If you purchase in box hives or patent hives, you will
be very likely, if not acquainted with bees, or unless purchasing of
some reliable person, to get diseased stocks; and again, a person who
keeps bees by the ordinary methods, is very likely to have diseased
stocks which he thinks are all right. So, great care is necessary in
buying your outfit to commence bee keeping. Diseased stocks are dear at
any price. You want the very best to start with, if you can possibly
get them. Be sure to get such stocks as have young queens, for if the
stock has a queen four years old or more, (and they are likely to be
that old in box or patent hives, under ordinary management,) such a
queen is liable to fail at any time, and loss of the stock follows.
In commencing to keep bees, if possible start with good, strong,
healthy stocks, in the right kind of a hive; then you will have no
difficulty in changing them. But if this cannot possibly be done,
be sure to start with strong, healthy stocks. If you must take
second-class hives, of this class the plain movable comb and box hives
are best. But be sure to let the patent hives entirely alone; they are
a curse to the bee-keeper. If you get your bees in second-class hives,
transfer them to Controllable Hives, or as fast as they swarm put them
in Controllable Hives. In this way you will soon have your bees in
shape to pay you a good profit.
When you begin keeping bees, study closely their natural habits and
requirements. Give them such care and attention as your judgement and
present knowledge teaches they require. Persevere, and ultimate success
is certain.
Every one who attains success with bees, will find that there is
something more to be done, than simply to stand with folded hands,
with the expectation that a fortune must inevitably follow. Know the
precise condition of your bees at all times--whether they are weak or
strong, whether they are without a queen, or whether the queen has
become so old as to have passed her usefulness. After a period of
years, queens become barren, and unless they are removed, and a young
queen substituted, the bees will rapidly decline in numbers, and all
disappear from the hive in a few weeks or months.
It cannot be too strongly urged upon the beginner, this great necessity
of securing strong, healthy stocks to begin with; and if possible, get
them in the Controllable Hives. All who do not fully understand the
management and nature of bees would save themselves much trouble and
perplexity, by procuring, to begin with, one or more healthy colonics
in the Controllable Hive. Your chances of success in the end, and your
profits of the first season, are greater from one swarm in this hive,
than from six in second-class hives. If you purchase bees in inferior
hives, you will need to exercise great care that they are not diseased.
There is not one box or patent hive in fifty (as ordinarily managed)
but that is deceased. They are either badly infested with the bee moth,
have old, mouldy black combs, an old and diseased queen, or are in some
way diseased. No matter how low the price paid for such stocks, they
will be found expensive. Be sure to get none but the best to commence
with; they are the cheapest in the end.
I might illustrate this with many cases that have come under my
observation. One or two I will mention: A gentlemen in Connecticut
ordered of me a swarm of Italian bees in the Controllable Hive, in the
spring of 1880, for which he paid me twenty dollars. He wrote me in
June that they were doing finely, and that he never saw bees work so
well--they were at work in all the boxes, some of them being nearly
filled with honey, and all the combs being filled with bees at work
storing; and from appearances he should get a large amount of surplus
box honey from them.
Another gentleman wrote me, almost the same time, asking my price for a
swarm of Italian bees, and when informed that it was twenty dollars, he
wrote me that as he could get the Italian bees nearer his home for ten
dollars, he would not order of me, but would invest his twenty dollars
and get two swarms instead of one. He has since written me that one of
the swarms for which he paid ten dollars he has lost outright, leaving
him only a mass of moth worms in old and mouldy black combs. The other
has proved to be queenless, and has caused him more trouble and
perplexity than it is worth, to say the least. There is now not over a
pint of bees in the hive, but he has put in a queen and hopes to save
them from total loss.
I know of another case where a gentleman bought six swarms of bees in
box hives. They were very heavy and he thought of course they were all
right. He knew nothing of the diseases of bees, and supposed if they
were heavy, and had honey enough, that was all that was necessary.
He bought them in the fall at a very low price, and was much elated
over his purchase. Five of the six swarms died during the winter, and
the remaining one came out in the spring so weak as to be no profit
whatever the next season; and the next winter that also died.
It is an established fact that to succeed well with bees they must be
kept in hives suited to their habits and requirements, and with the
view of rendering them profitable. Such is the Controllable Hive. And
they must be managed on principles in accordance with nature's laws,
and the instincts and habits of the honey bee. Such is the new system
recommended in this book--Bee Keeping Reduced to a Science; no "luck,"
no "guess-work," no "chance" about it.
Trusting that this little work may be the means of greatly increasing
the profits of bees, I bring it to a close.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Transcriber Note
Minor typos have been corrected. The upper corner of pages 85 and 86
(back-to-back pages) was torn off. The missing text was obtained from
another copy of the publication. The cover images were compiled from
images made available by the Internet Archive and placed in the Public
Domain.