This section is from the book "Bees For Pleasure And Profit", by Samson G. Gordon. Also available from Amazon: Bees for pleasure and profit; a guide to the manipulation of bees, the production of honey, and the general management of the apiary..
Fortunately this pursuit which yields so generous a compensation, both in the opportunities it gives to enjoy light and interesting work in the open air, and in the returns which come from those labors, is devoid of complication, free from routine tasks, and adapted for men, women, and youth alike.
Some of the most interesting results which beekeepers have achieved are those of women on farms, college girls or mature matrons, men of poor health who were advised to keep out of doors, clergymen wanting an avocation which would afford pleasing relaxation from the hours in the study, boys and young men who were working their way through school, and even physicians and professional men whose engrossing work permit of only very brief hours for spending with the bees.
As an exact instance of the pleasure and profit that can be derived from beekeeping as a side line or a vacation-time pursuit, we have in mind a man and his wife, living in Detroit. They are successful stage people, busy during the entire theatrical season in the city. But in May of each year they get away to their cabin and apiary in northern Michigan where they revel in the pleasures of outdoors all summer long -and secure a good honey crop, too. The pure joy and good time and satisfaction these professional city people enjoy with their bees and in their crops of honey can not be overstated. They are just happy and enthusiastic in it all.
We could cite almost numberless cases of elderly people and old men succeeding with bees and carrying on the work of the apiary to the close of life. They find health and joy and interest in it almost without measure.
Bee culture is ordinarily a light work, or, can always be made so by proper selection of equipment. There is no continuous heavy lifting (except in very large apiaries), no baskets of feed to be constantly carrying to and fro, no digging nor cultivating. It is, too, a most fascinating work, with new points of interest coming up constantly. There are comparatively few things which MUST be done to insure success with honeybees, and these, in almost every instance, are of such a nature that they will neither tire nor prove distasteful to anyone. Furthermore, they are not duties which must be disposed of at fixed hours, it being possible for the beekeeper to leave his bees unattended, sometimes for many days at a time. It is not expected, however, that the prospective beekeeper will want to lose any opportunity to cooperate with his bees or miss, through inattention or neglect, the chance to observe the skilled and scientific way in which they work in producing a crop from which he alone may benefit.
Beehives are sometimes kept on a house roof.
Health and honey are invariably the products of beekeepers who enter into the work with enthusiasm and stick to it. Man or woman can not but gain strength in mind and body from close communion with nature in the bright sunshine of out-of-doors. Practically all of the attention, which bees require in gathering and storing up generous crops of honey, must be given in the spring and summer months-the time which God has given his people for refreshing their bodies and enjoying health-giving out-of-door life. Too much can not be said of the good which beekeeping will bring as a tonic for tired-out, nerve-racked, careworn and anaemic persons. From its practice better nerves and a more contented mind in a healthier body will invariably result; and also in the way of compensation there will be a yield of honey, large or small-depending upon the extent to which the apiary has been equipped and the time which has been devoted to the care of the bees.
 
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