CHAPTER XX.CONCLUSION.
W
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 lose 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 or influenced by any selfish motive, in condemningor 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 instructions 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 knowledgeof 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 unsaleable. Honey in large boxes often contain cells of brood, and bee bread, or pollen, interspersed among the honey cells, which are a great damage to it, rendering it very unsaleable. Boxes each holding from one to two pounds, is the proper size. A swarm of bees in a hive with thirty-eight of these two pound boxes, or seventy-six one pound, 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 and 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 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 moveable 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 judgment and present knowledge teach 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 colonies in the Controllable Hives. Your chances of success in the end, and your profits of the first season, are greater from one swarm in the hive, than from six in second-class hives. If you purchase bees in inferiorhives, 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 diseased. 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 stock, 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 gentleman 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, about 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 had 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 of no profit whatever the next season; and the next winter that also died. It is better to start with strong healthy stock, even if price seems high,poor, weak stocks are dear at any price.
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.
MRS. LIZZIE E. COTTON.