366 



Novembe;, 1913. 



American Hee Jonrnal 



cans carefully and "fire away" any- 

 thing which looks the least rusty in- 

 side. 



With the Editor iu Suuiiy South- 

 ern France 



When this letter is published in the 

 Bee Journal we will have reached 

 home. Yet it is written in the south- 

 western corner of France, some tiOOO 

 miles from home. 



Some of our friends will perhaps 

 wonder why we do not give successive 

 and detailed accounts of all our 

 travels. We propose to do it, for 

 many of our readers have asked us 

 for a full story of our trip. But it will 

 be done only after we have reached 

 home. We must be content now with 

 a mere glimpse of some of the things 

 we see. 



This part of France is not far from 

 Bordeaux, the country of vineyards 

 and of the noted claret wines, the home 

 of the warm-hearted and hot-blooded 

 Gascons; close to the native heath of 

 Cyrano De Bergerac, the famous hero 

 made immortal by the pen of Rostand, 

 in his half comical and half tragical 

 play of the same name. 



The country is rich, the valleys beau- 

 tifu'. The house from which this let- 

 ter is written is an old castle, perhaps 

 .500 or 600 years old. It is not a feudal 

 castle with towers and battlements. 

 Those evidences of the dark ages have 

 been torn down many years ago, and 

 the building is just a plain quadrangle 

 with an innercourt, a big porte-cochere 

 stone column at the garden entrance, 

 and a pretty avenue 1(500 feet long, with 

 trees on each side, leading in a gentle 

 slope to the big automobile highwav 

 which crosses the plain below. This 

 is the home of Mr. Couterel, the gen- 

 tleman whose home apiary was pic- 

 tured in the American Bee Journal of 

 May. 1913. If you refer to the number 

 in question, you will see by the orderly 

 arrangement of everything that this 

 gentleman is careful and neat. The 

 house, though very old, with worm- 

 eaten doors and rusty hinges is com- 

 fortable and hospitable on the inside, 

 and everything has been done to make 

 our stay pleasant. After 40 or more 

 stops in various hotels, in noisy cities, 

 along roaring streets, it is an indescrib- 

 able pleasure to find one's self in abso- 

 lute quiet, and to be able to sleep with 

 only an occasional rooster crow in the 

 distance to wake you. 



It is hardly worth while to speak of 

 the apiary which has been already 

 shown. Mr. Couterel is very practical, 

 uses our system- of extracting supers, 

 has his apiary well enclosed and well 

 sheltered, and keeps his hives about 18 

 inches from the ground on platforms 

 which rest across timbers laid flat. His 

 bees are all of the common sort, but I 

 believe that I have succeeded in in- 

 ducing him to try the Italians, which 

 have more value to me today than ever. 

 This is a good country for bees, for 

 these fertile hills are close to the 

 heather lands ; so close in fact that we 

 could ride there in a half hour; and so 

 tb.at Mr. Couterel's bees 'gather much 



A View of the PusoC'j 



IN Gasconv. Where Mr. and Mrs. 

 OF September— THE Barnyard. 



Dadant Visited the Last 



\gSSP -■ ■If w 



In the Land of the Heather and the Cork-oak. -Another View of Pusoco. 



honey from this great honey plant in 

 the latter part of the summer. As most 

 of my readers have never seen heather 

 lands, they will be as much interested 

 in them as I was, if I can only de- 

 scribe them in a sufficiently interesting 

 fashion. 



I had often heard of the " landes " of 

 Gascony, but thought them low, sandy 

 plains. They are rolling hills instead, 

 and extend for scores of miles from 

 here to the Gulf of Gascony. 



The growth upon the " landes " is 

 confined to numerous ferns, scrubby 

 pines and cork oaks, with a very thick 

 undergrowth of heather. Just now 

 the heather is in its fullest bloom, and 

 there are perhaps 20 different varieties, 

 from the palest pink to almost red and 

 deep yellow colors. It is a mass of 

 flowers upon which the bees work from 

 June 15 until frost. Frost in this re- 

 gion is very late, usually not until No- 

 vember. So we may readily call this 

 the Eldorado of bee-keeping. There 

 is only one dark side to the picture, 

 the heather honey is dark in color, a 

 deep amber, strong in flavor, and al- 



most impossible to extract with the 

 honey extractor. Here I ascertained 

 positively that which I already sus- 

 pected, that when speaking of nectar 

 containing 75 percent of water, we 

 should confine ourselves to the nectar 

 of our moist prairies. I am told that 

 much of the nectar harvested from 

 heather, in this dry, sandy soil, is too 

 thick at the end of the first day to be 

 thrown out readily. 



Mr. Couterel and his partner, Mr. 

 Lanssucg. have an out-apiary right in 

 the center of the heather land, and 

 thither we repaired in a two-wheel 

 cart, my wife sitting on the front seat 

 by the side of our host, and myself in 

 the back, while Mr. Lanssucg rode a 

 bicycle. Bicycles are about as plenti- 

 ful here as ox-carts, and the o.x-cart is 

 the principal vehicle. It is quite in- 

 teresting to an American to see 2000 

 feet of pine lumber on a two-wheel 

 cart, and drawn by a yoke of oxen, or 

 even of cows, who balance the load 

 and pull it with ease. 



But let us reach the heather, through 

 a beautiful straight road such as you 



