. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 302 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAi September SOLDIER BEEKEEPERS SI >MEWHERE there are statistics i,, show that a large propoi tiori of the men engaged in the re- tail grocery business fail. Not being interested in the grocer) business except as an ultimate consumer, I have not taken the trouble to verif) this statement. However large the per cent of failures in the grocery business, it is fully as large in bee- keeping, with one important differ- ence. When a grocer fails he soon finds it out. but thousands of bee- keepers are miserable failures and never do
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 302 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAi September SOLDIER BEEKEEPERS SI >MEWHERE there are statistics i,, show that a large propoi tiori of the men engaged in the re- tail grocery business fail. Not being interested in the grocer) business except as an ultimate consumer, I have not taken the trouble to verif) this statement. However large the per cent of failures in the grocery business, it is fully as large in bee- keeping, with one important differ- ence. When a grocer fails he soon finds it out. but thousands of bee- keepers are miserable failures and never do make tile discovery. This is absolute proof, of course, that beekeeping is a branch of industry well worthy of effort, for if one can fail and still keep going it speaks well for the returns to be attained under the right management. Because of the uncertainty of suc- cess one should hesitate about urg- ing anyone to take up beekeeping. The uncertainty is not so much in the secretion of nectar, although, as everv beekeeper knows, this varies more than we might wish. Yet we have all perh ps seen innumerable instances where the good beekeeper gets a crop when other beekeepers all about him experience a failure. The difference is really in the amount of brains applied to the busi- ness. Strangely enough, this does not always mean the amount of brains possessed by these persons, for many people do not fully apply to beekeeping the brains which they have. You cannot, therefore, tell in advance who will make the good beekeeper. In spite of—or perhaps because of —a considerable amount of experi- ence in answering questions of be- ginners and of trying to guide them through the early days of beekeep- ing work, I never try to help a be- ginner without a feeling that per- haps it is the wrong thing to give encouragement to a new beekeeper, who will, according to the law of av- erages, stand about one chance in a hundred of doing anything reallj worth while in beekeeping. But it is n
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
