The story of Mr. Nicholls but expresses in part what any disabled man may accomplish with vocational training and devotion to beekeeping or some other occupation that will insure useful and respected citizenship.
Your disability need not interfere with your engaging in this work, but it may take grit and determination to pull you through the early stages. You may be sure when in the ranks of the good beekeepers you will be associated with admirable people who will gladly aid you in any way possible in making good.
The Bee Family
This interesting family called in bee culture a colony, lives in a house known as a hive many of which aggregate form a bee city—an apiary. The family consists of three types of bees, the queen, Fig. 7-a, the mother of the family and naturally the only one of her nature in the colony. She is a fully developed female bee whose sole duty is that of laying eggs and increasing her family—the population of the colony—which reaches large numbers. The worker, Fig. 7-b, is an undeveloped female, and this type represents the largest number of the colony’s population, which may run from several thousand to eighty-five or one hundred thousand in one hive or family. As the name indicates the workers gather all the honey and food, care for the young bees and perform other duties in the hive. The drone, Fig. 7-c, is the male bee. He, as his name indicates, contributes nothing to the upkeep of the family, a family in which truly “everybody works but father.” The queen is able to control the strength of the colony. The workers by construction of a queen cell about an egg and by giving different food may develop a queen from what would otherwise have been developed into a worker.
Extent of Beekeeping in the United States
There are in the United States about 800,000 persons who own bees, although not all of them can be classed as regular beekeepers. Perhaps the average bee owner has about 10 colonies. Since there are many owning bees by the hundreds of colonies, it is obvious that the majority have only two or three colonies. This side line of a few hives on the farm does not really pay, but is just a little luxury. The type of beekeeping presented to you here is for a vocation, and is the practical kind employed by the best beekeepers of the country—by men who make a good living by keeping bees.
The retail price of honey has gradually advanced to 40 cents or more per pound, and beeswax to 42 cents wholesale, notwithstanding the fact that there was produced in 1918 about 250,000,000 pounds of honey. This probably does not cover the entire honey crop of the United States, since a large amount is marketed locally. In fact this product is so greatly in demand that a large percentage is sold at the home of the apiarist. Apiarists can, if attentive to the attractiveness of their product and considerate of their customers, hold them and make of each an advertisement for additional business. The honey crop of the United States is estimated annually at $20,000,000, and yet there has never been a time when any country on the globe could produce enough to make this delicious food a common article of diet.
Not all parts of the United States are equally good for beekeeping, and it is advisable for one who contemplates making it his life work carefully to consider the selection of a location. As a rule, it is not advisable to go too far from the country with which you are familiar. Bees may be kept with profit almost anywhere where agriculture is practiced, the returns depending largely on the care given to the bees.
The most widely known region for beekeeping is that of the northeastern quarter of the country, where white and alsike clovers yield nectar. Although these plants reach their highest yield in the northern tier of States, they are also productive farther south. In the northern region bees get considerable quantities of nectar from basswood, tulip poplar, buckwheat, sweet clover, and locust, and in some localities from other plants of decided honey value. The buckwheat region of southern New York and northern Pennsylvania is included in the clover region.
The second region in importance is that in which the bees get their nectar from alfalfa. This plant, which is now grown in all parts of the country, does not yield much nectar except in the irrigated portions of the West and is therefore practically valueless for the beekeeper east of the Missouri River. The honey from this source is white in the higher altitudes of Colorado and Utah, and amber in Arizona, New Mexico, and California.