William Z. Hutchinson
Published: 2015-09-27
Total Pages: 234
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Excerpt from Advanced Bee-Culture, Its Methods and Management In reply to the query, "What will best mix with bee-keeping?" I have always replied: "Some more bees." When the conditions arc favorable, I am decidedly in favor of bee-keeping: as a specialty - of dropping: all other hampering: pursuits, and turning: the whole capital, time and energies into bee-keeping. If beekeeping-cannot be made profitable as a specialty, then it is unprofitable as a subsidary pursuit. If bee-keeping must be propped up with some other pursuit, then we better throw away bee-keeping, and keep the prop. General farming is very poorly adapted for combining with beekeeping, yet the attempt is probably made oftener than with any other pursuit. There are critical times in bee-keeping that will brook no delay, when three or four days or a week's neglect may mean the loss of a crop; and these times come right in the height of the season, when the farmer is the busiest. Leaving the team and reaper standing idle in the back field while the farmer goes to the house to hive bees, is neither pleasant nor profitable. Drawing in a field of hay, while the bees lie idle because the honey has not been extracted to give them store-room, is another illustration of the conditions with which the farmer-bee-keeper has to contend. The serious part of it is that the honey thus lost may be worth nearly or quite as much as the hay that is saved. Some special lines of rural pursuits, like winter-dairying or the raising of grapes, or winter-apples, unite with bee-keeping to much better advantage than general farming; but when bee-keeping is capable of absorbing all of the capital, time and energy that a man can put into it, why divide these resources with some other pursuit? It has been said that bee-keeping is a precarious pursuit, that it cannot be depended upon, alone, to furnish a livelihood; and, for this reason, it should be joined with some business of a more stable character. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.