Show IlEEICEEPING FOR FARMERS The most painstaking farmer who is not provided with at least a small apiary is guilty of tolerating three serious leaks in the economics Leak 1The entire removal of all bees and similar insects from a neighborhood would Insure an entire failure of more than one farm crop Experience has shown this and experiment has proved it time after time Many garden and orchard or-chard products depend almost wholly upon the visits of pollencarrying Insects for their fertilization and some of the field crops are better for these visits It has more than once been noticed that after a wet season of fruit bloom when the bees are kept in doors by the rain there is less fruit and a greater proportion of imperfect imper-fect fruit The same is also noticeable in the clover field This fact has now been so well esablished and the absence of the bees is so noticeable that in several places where under the old Idea of bees injuring fruit state laws had practically banished them a popular clamor has secured se-cured the repeal of the laws and the return re-turn of the bees The fact once established that bees are essential to the proper fertilization of certain farm crops It at once becomes apparent that the farmer who does not himself keep them must depend upon chance or the enterprise of his neighbors for full crops of this kind < Hence by not providing his own flower fertilizers he is harboring a serious leak in the quality and quantity of both seed and fruit Leak 2 Probably no farm of fifty acres or more is wholly without honey producing flowers In some cases the supply would be too small for the bees to be selfsupporting In others a great deal less than 50 acres might produce several thousand pounds This at from 10 to 15 cents always obtainable for comb honey represents an Important cash value that may by the keping of sufficient bees be saved without one particle parti-cle of extra drainage to land or crop but that otherwise goes annually to loss As high as 90 pounds of honey have been made by one colony in ten days This at 12 cents is over SI per day per colony and from a generally wasted source Of courese such runs aVe common nor long continued Still it shows what possibilities pos-sibilities are stored up In these honey producers pro-ducers No grain crop is always so profitable profit-able Leak 3 and perhaps the largest of all Life on the farm Is accompanied by enough privations to warrant every possible pos-sible effort beig made for the fullest possible pos-sible enjoyment of Its advantages Young people In particular feel shut in and neglected both from a social and intellectual intellect-ual standpoint when given occasional glimpses of the sweets of city life without with-out discovering its bitterness They grow discontented with the country and the farm their discontent appearing perhaps In little outbursts of complaint against the plain fore at table The remedy Is to interest them absorbingly In something pertaining to farm life not in work but in something that is really interesting Nature herself is the very best of companions com-panions from an intellectual standpoint and she never made a more interesting study of insect life than beeology It is hardly reasonable to expect all to become Interested in this subject at once but many will Some may first have their interest awakened through the bees themselves them-selves other through a good text book on the subject Both should be provided for them as supplements to each other And in the meantime while the study is progressing then will be preparing for the table a very dainty addition to liven up the tedious bill of fare The greatest leak of all upon the farm is that through which the interest of the sons and daughters pour into other channels chan-nels And you who still refuse to provide pro-vide some of these pleasant S4ideplays like bee keeping may live to see your farm drained of its young blood a lo metic waste and yourself alone in your old age Wilder Grahame in Farmers Home |