BEEKEEPING AS A PURSUIT.[1]
By Arthur Todd.
This subject may be regarded from two standpoints—that of the man who, with income assured from other sources, pursues beekeeping for its pleasure; and that of the man who, wishing to increase his slender income, or actually make an income, turns to beekeeping with a view to profit on the capital and labor to be invested. But, as to the latter are denied none of the pleasures enjoyed by the former, it is from the latter standpoint alone that I shall review the subject.
Beekeeping is, strictly speaking, a branch of agriculture, and many a farmer is to-day getting a greater return from his investment in bees than that received from any of his other stock; but right here I say that beekeeping as a pursuit has to-day become a “specialty.” The man who enters upon this pursuit (leaving the question of capital aside) must be one endowed with physical and mental ability; a man with open eyes and ears, one ready for emergencies, prompt to do what is necessary at once, and one who is not easily discouraged.
The physical ability is required because beekeeping demands real hard work—yes, back-aching work—not suitable to the sick ladies and gentlemen so often ill-advised to go into beekeeping. The mental ability is required to keep the beekeeper abreast of the times and its rapidly changing conditions. Beekeeping is now a science, a study, and the conditions which govern one season, or colony of bees, will be completely changed for the next. Every stage in the life of a colony of bees requires to be understood. There must be no “guessing,” and this will bring us to the cultivation of the habit of observation, and a disposition to hear all that one can upon the special subject.
Emergencies will occur needing heroic treatment, but the beekeeper with mind and hand trained by experience and thoughtful consideration of his “specialty,” will rise superior to any occasion, and when discouragement comes, as it inevitably will, in the words of the immortal Longfellow, “He will look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again, but wisely improve the future for it is his.”
Pleasure and profit go hand in hand, as a rule, in this specialty, although the former is not unalloyed by a liberal application of the “business end” of the little busy bee, and the latter by a recurrence of poor honey seasons. In nature are found both the beautiful and the sublime; in the hive both are constantly under the beekeeper’s eye, teaching him to look with amazement from “nature up to nature’s God.” As he views his hive and sees the city grow, and population increase, the waxen walls, and stores well filled, the free-born citizen hurrying to and fro, each with his special task, outside of the thoughts of profit will come to the most unimpressionable, thoughts of wonder and admiration for the works of that great Architect of the universe who said, “Let there be life and there was life.”
The profits of beekeeping are what? To many a one they hold out the hopes of “the glorious privilege of being independent;” and to obtain these profits the specialist, gifted with the requisite mental and physical qualities, must be “the right man in the right place.” He must have hives of the movable-frame order. Moses Quinby wrote thus, in 1858: “There is not the least doubt, in my mind, that whoever realizes the greatest profit from his bees will have to retain the movable combs in some form;” and who of us will gainsay this to-day? Out of the many styles of movable-comb hives now in existence, the beekeeper will select one best fitted for the business in which he means to engage, be it the production of comb or extracted honey, queen-rearing, bee-selling, or a combination of all.
The specialist who intends to rear bees for sale will do well to employ that hive which will take the size and style of frame most in use in the district in which he resides. Interchangeability of parts is a grand secret of success, and the beekeeper who can sell a colony of bees, or buy a colony well knowing that each and every frame is usable in his own or his neighbors’ hives, has made a step in the right direction. The main points in a good hive are, “Simplicity of construction, combining plenty of bee-space with perfect ease of manipulation.”
The race of bees will next engage the specialist’s attention. Study and experience, and also the actual line of business engaged in, will best decide this point. The black, the Italian, the Syrian, the Cyprian, and the Carniolan, alike have their votaries. At present, for all purposes of sale and honey-gathering, the Ligurian or Italian-Alp bee is the principal one in demand; but the very best race of bees will afford but little profit unless the queens are carefully looked after. As fast as signs of senility appear, these should be removed and their places supplied by younger and more vigorous queens. The apiarist for profit should not only rear queens, but know how, when and where to replace them. He should also know the requisites of a good queen, and how to judge of her progeny.