Successful apiculture demands close and accurate observation, and hard,
continuous thought and study, and this, too, in the wondrous realm of
nature. In all this, the apiarist receives manifold and substantial
advantages. In the cultivation of the habit of observation, a person
becomes constantly more able, useful and susceptible to pleasure,
results which also follow as surely on the habit of thought and
study. It is hardly conceivable that the wide-awake apiarist, who is
so frequently busy with his wonder-working comrades of the hive, can
ever be lonely, or feel time hanging heavily on his hands. The mind
is occupied, and there is no chance for _ennui_. The whole tendency,
too, of such thought and study, where nature is the subject, is to
refine the taste, elevate the desires, and ennoble manhood. Once get
our youth, with their susceptible natures, engaged in such wholesome
study, and we shall have less reason to fear the vicious tendencies
of the street, or the luring vices and damning influences of the
saloon. Thus apiculture spreads an intellectual feast, that even the
old philosophers would have coveted; furnishes the rarest food for the
observing faculties, and, best of all, by keeping its votaries face
to face with the matchless creations of the _All Father_, must draw
them toward Him "who went about doing good," and in "whom there was no
guile."
YIELDS DELICIOUS FOOD.
A last inducement to apiculture, certainly not unworthy of mention, is
the offerings it brings to our tables. Health, yea, our very lives,
demand that we should eat sweets. It is a truth that our sugars, and
especially our commercial syrups, are so adulterated as to be often
poisonous. The apiary, in lieu of these, gives us one of the most
delicious and wholesome of sweets, which has received merited praise,
as food fit for the gods, from the most ancient time till the present
day. To ever have within reach the beautiful, immaculate comb, or the
equally grateful nectar, right from the extractor, is certainly a
blessing of no mean order. We may thus supply our families and friends
with a most necessary and desirable food element, and this with no
cloud of fear from vile, poisonous adulterations.
WHAT SUCCESSFUL BEE-KEEPING REQUIRES.
MENTAL EFFORT.
No one should commence this business who is not willing to read, think
and study. To be sure, the ignorant and unthinking may stumble on
success for a time, but sooner or later, failure will set her seal upon
their efforts. Those of our apiarists who have studied the hardest,
observed the closest, and thought the deepest, have even passed the
late terrible winters with but slight loss.
Of course the novice will ask. How and what shall I study?
EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.
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