In the past, it was widely thought that to succeed in beekeeping, the essential ingredient is luck.
Elisha Gallup was born August 22, 1820. The story-tellers have it that when he was not more than a baby his mother would look for him first by the bee hives when he ran away. Gallup got his first swarm when he was 12 years old. His father kept bees, but concluded that he never could have any luck with them. He told young Elisha he might try his hand, and counseled him to buy Somebody else’s lucky swarm.
The bees would not do well, the elder Gallup said, unless their purchaser also bought their luck. He coached Elisha carefully on the rules for the right start in beekeeping. He was not to pay money for them, but he must exchange something. Sheep were the best to trade for bees.
Elisha learned there were plenty of swarms to be had for three dollars but no one would sell his lucky swarm. Finally he persuaded a widow to trade her lucky swarm for seven dollars’ worth of hemlock timber. She agreed that her luck was to go with the swarm as part of the bargain.
Gallup later said the consequence to the widow was bad, as her bees would go into the woods after she sold her lucky swarm. But he had the best of luck. He kept the colony 12 years on the same comb. He always had two new swarms every season, sometimes three, and always a box of honey.
Soon young Gallup lost all faith in the superstition of his father and the widow, and sought to learn how to make all his swarms lucky Swarms. He decided that having the comb built right when a new Swarm was hived in a box was a great part of the secret. In later years, after he had traded charms for system and knowledge, he was able to say, “I make all lucky swarms now, and I do not consider a swarm in proper working order until it is made into a lucky swarm.”
You may call Gallup the new beginner's friend, and hit it right every time. Just such a blunt, outspoken putty-head is wanted to write for the Bee Journal.—Elisha Gallup in American Bee Journal, 1868.
Source:
Pellett, Kent Louis. (1941). Pioneers in Iowa horticulture, by Kent Pellett. Written for Iowa state horticultural society in commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of its founding. Des Moines, Ia.
Pete
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