Is Bee-Keeping a Failure?
Now that the winter is drawing to a close, and the chilling blasts are becoming more fitful and spasmodic under the tardy but certain approach of spring, we begin to contemplate with an inward feeling of gratification the genial sunshine and gentle showers with which Nature will awaken to life; the far-stretching fields clothed in emerald green, the lawns and lanes with their grassy carpets, the air laden with the sweet perfume of the blossoms in garden and orchard, the trees in forest and grove animated with the feathered songsters whose little lives seem an incarnation of happy melody—all these will combine to help us forget the dreary hours of the past, and with keener zest enjoy the future. But how many will miss the cheerful hum of the myriads of toiling bees, whose flitting wings were wont to bear them from flower to flower, where they gathered nectar fit for a banquet of the gods.
We can scarcely wonder that many have become discouraged and almost doubt whether bee-keeping pays, when they think of the meager honey yields of two successive summers, and view the untenanted hives and soiled combs which are left as the sequel to their cherished hopes for the future. However, none should be too hasty in passing judgment. With the hives and combs already provided, more than one-half the original investment is saved, and with a propitious season for the present, our losses will be made good with a credit in our favor on the balance sheet. We cannot expect bee-keeping to be profitable every season, any more than any other special branch of industry which is dependent upon natural causes, but we can with forethought, industry and systematic perseverance, make it as reliable as any other, and now that many will be compelled to begin anew (or comparatively so), we suggest that they begin aright. It will not be a guaranty of success that they use the best hive, nor that they have an abundance of bees; a familiarity with all the recognized authorities and a mind crammed with theories, will often fail; the industrious brown bee will seek in vain, the gold-banded Italian bee will tire in its flight, and even Apis dorsata will view its stores with dismay, if there be no nectar-laden bloom from which to gather.
Now is the time to invest for the future. Every dollar judiciously paid out for seeds of honey plants will bear compound interest—will be “bread cast upon the waters.” The traditional two or three weeks of honey-flow can, with a trifling expenditure, be made to last more than as many months; a succession of bloom can be secured, so that should northerly winds or wet weather prevail for a time, it would not carry dismay to our hopes and starvation to our bees. If, as we hope and confidently believe, the present should prove an unparalleled honey season, it will ameliorate the only tenable objection to melilot or sweet clover, which is that it blooms but little or none the first season; and we can well wait till another season for our “sweet” reward from it. There are many other plants which we believe would repay cultivation in honey alone, but not one that will bear comparison with this Esau of the vegetable kingdom. Never was a better time to start in right than now, and never can we truthfully say bee-keeping is more hazardous than other industries, or less remunerative, until we have made some provision against natural failures and seasonable disasters. Every bee-keeper should, in justice to himself, test this matter of planting on a sufficiently extensive scale to satisfy himself. We feel confident of the verdict.