SOME GOOD HINTS FROM G. M. DOOLITTLE.

There is scarcely a week passes but that I get lists of questions which I know wouldn't have been asked had the writers a good book on bees, and had they read that book understandingly. From these papers and books the mind is to be stored with useful knowledge which can be put into practical use as soon as the season opens. 

When I first commenced bee-keeping, I procured the "Bee-keeper's Text-book" and "Quinby's Mysteries of Bee-keeping," and subscribed for the American Bee Journal and the Bee-keepers' Journal, the two latter being all the papers devoted to bees there were at that time. By the reading of these I was greatly benefited; and from the writings of E. Gallup, L. L. Langstroth, M. Quinby, A. I. Root, Adam Grimm, and many others, I learned my ABC in bee culture. 

I never spent an hour in my life, even up to the present time, in work pertaining to bee culture without its being a real pleasure to me and this was brought about by those winter evenings when I first began to read up on the subject. Many a night have I lain awake from one to three hours, planning how to accomplish some result I desired to achieve in regard to the practical part of apiculture, which, with the help of what I had read, caused me to accomplish what I had sought after. 

I have found that, if I would succeed, as far as possible I should read mainly those articles which came from the pens of practical bee keepers, for such were the ones who made a success of their calling, and told how they did it. If you wish to learn mechanics, the mercantile pursuit, or farming, to whom do you go — the man who allows weeds and briers to grow up all over his farm and in his business, or to the man who makes a success of his every undertaking, year by year? To the latter, of course: and so we should do in bee-keeping matters. 

I know that many of our most practical bee-men do not write for publication, and for this reason we can bring in visiting, during the winter months, as another help along this line of our qualification. Then we have our bee-conventions, which are held for this special purpose; and while the cost may be considerable, if we improve the time as we should we can learn more than enough to make that cost good, besides the benefit which we derive socially.

G. M. Doolittle. Borodino, N. Y., Oct. 18. 1892
in: GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE.

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