OCR Text |
Show BEE KEEPING IS DECREASING United States Department of Agriculture Agricul-ture Attributes Cause to Brood Diseases of Insects. The census of ' 1910 shows a decrease de-crease of almost 800,000 colonies of bees on the farms of the United States There is also a considerable decrease In the number of farms reporting re-porting bees. Since bee keeping is one of the important and profitable minor branches of agriculture, this decrease among farmer bee keeper? is unfortunate Bee keeping is fast becoming the business of the specialist, and the number of men who devote their entire en-tire attention to the business is rapidly rap-idly increasing. However, there is no reason why the average farmer can not keep a few colonies of bees to supply honey for home consumption with perhaps some surplus for sale in good years. The United States department of agriculture attributes most of the reported re-ported decrease to the brood diseases of bees which are now found widely distributed in the United States. Where disease exists the bee keepers often lose colonies and attribute their loss to some other cause. It is quite possible to keep bees with profit with disease prevalent in the neighborhood provided the bee keeper knows how to treat the disease. |