302 



American Hee Joarnal i 



September, 1916. 



No.4. —A Trip Through Texas 



BV THE EDITOR. 



WE now had to leave our headquar- 

 ters at San Antonio and did so 

 with regret, for the beautiful city, 

 with its warm, dry breezes, its semi- 

 tropical vegetation, its winding little 

 river, its Spanish-American architec- 

 ture, its far-famed Alamo, rendered 

 venerable by the tragic death of its 

 garrison of 150 Americans in 1836, its 

 numerous but peaceable, bronzed, semi- 

 Me.xican population, made a very pleas- 

 ant impression upon us. 



Among the beekeepers whom we met 

 at San Antonio, during our stay, in 

 addition to those already mentioned, 

 were Messrs. H. Grossenbacher and 

 Emil Ripps. The former is county in- 

 spector of Bexar county, and from him 

 I received the first intimation of the 

 value of this county in honey produc- 

 tion, Mr. Grossenbacher asserts that 

 there are some 700 beekeepers in the 

 county. 



According to the statistics of the 

 Texas Experimental Agricultural Sta- 

 tion, there are in Texas about 16 colo- 

 nies in movable-frame hives to one in 

 box-hive. But in Bexar county the 

 proportion is 92 to 1. 



Mr. Ripps is the apiarist whose hos- 

 pitable wife offered to the National 

 Association, at its San Antonio meet- 

 ing of 1906, an immense bouquet from 

 her flower garden, although the date 

 was Nov. 15, and northern flower gar- 

 dens were bare. This bouquet was pre- 

 sented to Dr. Bohrer. the oldest mem- 

 ber in attendance. The Ripps are still 

 at San Antonio, and still hospitable. 



Our next stopping place was New 

 Braunfels, for a call on our friend 

 Louis Scholl, well-known to the read- 

 ers pf the Bee Journal, by his articles 

 on " Southern Beedom," beginning over 

 ten years ago. He was secretary of the 

 Texas State Association when the Na- 

 tional met at San Antonio, a position 

 which he held for a number of years. 



We had again to thank Mr. and Mrs. 

 LeStourgeon for the trip to the Scholl 

 home, in their automobile. It had all 

 been arranged beforehand and the 



Group of Five Hives Arranged After Scholl's Method 



Louis H. Scholl 



Scholls were expecting us. These young 

 people had just been married, in 1906, 

 when I met them first, and they look as 

 young as they did then, though they 

 now have a daughter 6 years old. 



Louis Scholl has as fine a collection 

 of specimens of honey-plants as I have 



LOUIS H. SCHOLL ADDRESSING BEXAR COUNTY FIELD MEET 



ever seen. A herbarium is difficult to 

 preserve in good shape. We know this 

 by experience, for we secured the 

 Newman collection from Mr. Your 

 some years ago, and we would be 

 ashamed to exhibit it today. The Texas 

 honey flora is so extensive that a col- 

 lection of most of its specimens is in- 

 teresting and instructive. 



Scholl has at present between 1000 

 and 1200 colonies of bees. He has had 

 a greater number of apiaries, but lost 

 seven of them in the flood of the Brazos 

 Valley in 191-3. All his colonies are in 

 shallow stories, the brood-chamber be- 

 ing of exactly the same size as the 

 supers. Two or more stories are used 

 for breeding and as many more as nec- 

 essary for surplus. The crop is mainly 

 buik comb-honey : as a rule only enough 

 extracted honey being secured to fill the 

 spaces between the joints of the combs 

 when they are cut and fitted into the 

 receptacles. This custom seems to be 

 uniform all through southern Texas. 

 Scholl's method of beekeeping is very 

 simple, since all the stories are alike. 

 He claims better results than with full- 

 sized brood-chambers. 



The distance bees usually travel for 

 honey is estimated by him at less than 

 IK miles, and with apiaries two miles 

 aijart he often notices a great difference 

 in ihe yield, both as to quantitv and 

 quality, indicating that the bees do not 

 work on the same pasture. 



He has a few rare bee-books, two of 

 which I had never seen, though I knew 

 of them: "The True Amazons or the 

 Monarchy of Bees," by Joseph Warder, 

 London, 1726, and a translation of 

 Huber's work of 1841. 



We visited with Mr. Scholl an apiary 

 which depends solely upon cotton blos- 

 soms for its crop, being too far from 

 the chaparral for other grades. The 

 hives are arranged 'Scholl fashion" in 

 groups of five, so the workers and 

 queens are less likely to make mistakes 

 and enter the wrong hive. I believe 

 our friend is correct in saying that 

 long, uniform rows of hives, that are 

 exactly alike, have a tendency to 

 weaken the weak colonies and 

 strengthen the strong ones, as the 

 young bee, at its first flights, is apt to 

 hesitate as to the exact location of its 

 hive, in a long row, and the hum of a 

 strong colony attracts it. This is good 

 reasoning. The worst losses are those 

 of young queens returning from their 

 wedding flight. The colony is at that 

 time usually without young brood from 

 which to rear another, if the queen is 

 lost. So it is doomed unless the loss 



