The beekeeping industry needs more of two classes of adherents: (1) the beekeeper who is interested in advancing the scientific phases of bee culture, and (2) the professional honey-producer. There are today more professionals than there are scientific beekeepers but the majority of the professionals are men above, middle-age and there are few young men taking up the work. 

Beekeeping is too strenuous a business to depend on amateurs for its existence for, what with the brood diseases and lean years, the amateur is an unstable factor that does not make for permanence in the industry. It is easier to make professional beekeepers than it is to make scientific beekeepers for two reasons: the training is less exacting and the raw material is more plentiful. 

The advance of the industry depends chiefly on the work of scientific beekeepers, but its permanence and growth depend on commercial beekeepers. The amateur has little effect on beekeeping except on those who sell the beekeeper's requisites.

The work in a commercial apiary is simple, not complex. It is only the confused beginner who manipulates excessively and does
complex things. If four years is enough for medical training, surely in one year a bright boy ought to be able to learn beekeeping as practiced in commercial apiaries and be able to take care of several hundred· colonies.

Beekeeping can readily be painted in too bright colors, even by telling nothing but the truth, but no presentation is honest which does not tell the whole truth. 

E. F. PHILLIPS, Bureau of Entomology, Washington, D. C. (1916)

[sorry about the reference to "a bright boy" but that's the way they thought 100 years ago. PLB]

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