Mny, ISIfi. 



Amorican Hee Journal I 



bee:keeping in chile 



By M. C. Richter 



IN the fall of the year 1844, 25 colonies 

 of bees left Milan, Italy, on a long 

 journey around Cape Horn to the 

 Port of Valparaiso, Chile. Their owner, 

 Patricio Larrain Gandarillas, who had 

 previously made an unsuccessful at- 

 tempt to introduce bees into Chile, was 

 this time rewarded for his efforts. Two 

 colonies out of the 25 survived the 



Fig. I.— The Common Beehive of Chile- 

 Its Dimensions are 13x13x6 Inches 



trip. Although both of these were ex- 

 tremely weak, each cast a fine swarm 

 the following spring, much to the as- 

 tonishment of the natives who could 

 not understand why so many bees 

 should hang on the limb of a tree in 

 such a peculiar manner. 



Forty years later, the descendants of 

 these two Italian colonies reached from 

 the 25th to the 44th parallel of Chilian 

 territory; a distance of 1315 miles, or 

 nearly twice the length of the State of 

 California. It speaks well, indeed, for 

 Chile as a bee country and for the Ital- 

 ian race of bees. 



About 95 percent of the apiaries ex- 

 tending over this immense stretch of 

 land consist of small frameless hives 

 (Fig. I.) that produce per colony an 

 aaverge of about 14 pounds of honey 

 and 3 pounds of wax annually. 



The "inquilinos" or farm laborers 

 handle these apiaries, which are merely 

 adjuncts to the large farms of the coun- 

 try. Some of these yards are very 

 large, and run into the hundreds of col- 

 onies. They have, however, entire val- 

 leys and canyons to themselves. A 

 typical apiary (Fig. II.) may contain in 

 the spring 300 colonies, and by fall, 

 through prime and afterswarms, as 

 many as 700 colonies. The winter loss, 

 however, is nearly 50 percent. 



The methods of beekeeping are most 

 crude. In the spring swarms are hived 

 in the small boxes described above, 

 and in a short while three or four 

 empty ones are added. Before winter 

 sets in all but one or two of these are 

 removed, their contents cut out and 



thrown into a kind of solar wax-ex- 

 tractor. It not infrequently happens that 

 the queen and many bees are included 

 in this operation. The box or two 

 remaining, supposed to contain the 

 colony, are prepared for winter by 

 plastering the cracks with mud. The 

 honey taken from these so-called wax- 

 extractors is, with a good portion of 

 its impurities, run into barrels. Fre- 

 quently these containers are poorly 

 made and leaky, much to the disgust of 

 the railroad and steamship officials and 

 honey buyers. 



The honey is sold in Europe ; under 

 normal conditions 60 percent going to 

 Germany; 15 percent to England; 15 

 percent to France; and the balance, 10 

 percent, to Belgium and the Argentine 

 Republic. 



Notwithstanding these very crude 

 methods of beekeeping, Chile's average 

 exports from 1905 to 1910 were about 

 4.000,000 pounds of honey and 750,000 

 pounds of wax annually. The bee- 

 keeper sells his honey ordinarily at 

 from 4 to 4>^ cents a pound and wax at 

 or near 25 cents a pound. The bee- 

 keeping industry enriches the country 

 annually by some $375,000. 



Such statistics appear quite remark- 

 able for the box-hive artist, but when 

 it is explained that there are no brood- 

 diseases, and but a mild form of paraly- 

 sis, they are more easily understood. 

 The value of the wax produced is 

 nearly that of the production of honey. 

 This again can partially be accounted 

 for by the fact that no combs have 

 been destroyed by the waxmoth. The 

 above statistics show that the ratio of 



try. But no sooner was the bill before 

 the Chilian Congress, than several sam- 

 ples of moth-eaten comb were received 

 at the Entomologist's office from bee- 

 keepers in one of the southern pro- 

 vinces. Upon investigation it was 

 found that some colonies of bees had 

 recently been introduced from Ger- 

 many, and with them came also the 

 waxmoth. 



There have been in the past, and are 

 also today, several excellent beekeepers 

 in Chile. One of the earliest was Vin- 

 cente Chuecas who, in 1865, owned 640 

 colonies, one-third of which were in 

 hives not unlike the Harbison hive of 

 California. After several years of hard 

 labor, he gave up beekeeping in disgust, 

 because he could not realize even one 

 cent a pound for his honey, while 100 

 pounds of wax brought him but $4.50. 

 Do you blame this pioneer Chilian api- 

 cultor, el Senor Vincente Chuecas ? 



Twenty-three years later Alfredo 

 Duffy and R. A. Sanhueza produced 

 large crops of honey. The former used 

 the Dadant Quinby hive and the latter 

 the De Layens hive. In 1892 an Eng- 

 lish beekeeper, J. R. W. Hale, corn- 

 mended beekeeping in Chile and criti- 

 cised the Chilians because they kept 

 more than 1000 colonies of bees in a 

 single apiary. He, however, kept as 

 many as 500, and got an average of 73 

 pounds to the colony. 



Of the present day beekeepers there 

 are Bernardino Hernandez whose 1911- 

 12 crop averaged 27.5 pounds of honey 

 and 2.7 pounds of wax per colony from 

 1100 colonies in Chilian hives; Guil- 

 laume Javet, whose 1911-12 crop aver- 



FIG. 



-A CHILIAN APIARY AND ITS CARETAKER 



honey to wax is about 5:1, whereas in 

 our country, according to the United 

 States Census for 1910, it was over 60 :1. 

 Soon after the writer's arrival in 

 Chile in the summer of 1911-12, he re- 

 ceived the appointment of Governor 

 Entomologist at the Estacion Pato- 

 lojia Vegetal at Santiago, and in that 

 capacity assisted in framing a bill to 

 prohibit the introduction of bees, 

 queens, honey, wax, etc., into the coun- 



aged 36 pounds of honey and 2.5 pounds 

 of wa.x per colony from 1000 colonies 

 in Dadant hives; and Raymond Ma- 

 daune, whose 1911 12 crop averaged 44 

 pounds of honey and 1.6 pounds of wax 

 per colony from 300 colonies in Dadant 

 hives. 



In the field of apicultural literature 

 Chile is well to the front. About the 

 year 1890 she was the proud possessor 

 of a bee journal edited by Juan Dupont- 



