March, 1910. 



Amc^rican Hee Journal 



5.— Onk uf thf. Best Aimariks— Avekage 4 Supers. 



6.— Another of the Best Aimaries. 



on, tlie pictures of a dozen of the writ- 

 er's apiaries will show. These are in 

 as many different kinds of locations. 

 There are now another dozen besides 

 these, as the pictures show the apiaries 

 of several years ago. They will num- 

 ber 26 the coming summer. Besides 

 this, the apiaries look entirely different 

 now from those in the pictures shown. 

 There are no more weeds, and grass, 

 and untrimmed trees. The hives have 

 been overhauled and re-arranged. The 

 bees, even, have been receiving an over- 

 hauling, in that the queens are being 

 looked after and replaced wherever 

 this is best, so that the stock itself is 

 better than before. All this is done for 

 one reason : To make more bulk- 

 comb-honey production in my exten- 

 sive apiaries the best, most economical, 

 cheapest, and most profitable. 



While some of the apiaries are located 

 within a few miles of New Braunfels, 

 Tex. — our operating center — others are 

 scattered around many miles, so that 

 some of them are 2(t miles and more 

 from home. Then there is a separate 

 "string of apiaries " nearly 200 miles 

 from here, in the rich valleys of the 

 Brazos River, on the great cotton plan- 

 tations, where cotton bulk-comb honey 

 is produced exclusively. All of these 

 are managed by one fellow (the writer), 

 producing every year car-loads of bulk- 

 comb honey. Could I do this with sec- 

 tion? No, I could not, for I have, at 

 one time, produced such on a small 

 scale. 



Here is a short description of the 

 apiaries shown : 



Fig. 1 shows my original home api- 

 ary at Hunter, Tex., where I grew up, 

 and started bee-keeping nearly 20 years 



ago. The shade-trees are evergreen 

 cedars or junipers, planted my myself. 

 When still at home, the yard was kept 

 as clean as a floor, but grass grew up 

 during my absence later. The shade is 

 not desirable; too dense. Here o/i/y 

 /zi'o /;ifids of /nt/uy u'tTf produced for a 

 number of years — sec/ ion /loiny and e.\- 

 /racted. And here, too, is where I 

 learned to change to bulk-comb honey, 

 in a jiffy, after I learned of it; in less 

 than two seasons changing to bulk- 

 comb honey production exclusively. 

 This was 15 years ago. 



In Fig. 2 is shown the first out yard 6 

 miles south, and two more (Figs. 3 and 

 4) still several miles further south, 

 where hundreds of tons of bulk-comb 

 honey have been produced since their 

 establishment. Mesquite tree shade 

 here is an ideal one for an apiary. It 

 is not dense, gives a partial shade, and 

 as it comes into leaf late in the spring, 

 and sheds them early, the sun plays 

 with the hives of bees both early and 

 late in the day. Here the divisible 

 brood-chamber hive, described in one 

 of my articles, prevails, except in Fig. 

 4. This yard is now changed to that 

 kind of hive, as are nearly all the yards 

 now. By looking closely the shallow 

 bulk-comb-honey supers will be seen 

 on the hives. Fig. 4 shows full-depth 

 bodies with extracting combs nearly 

 filled with honey, and the bulk-comb- 

 honey super given between it and the 

 brood-chamber. This plan is used on 

 all of our colonies, but shallow ex- 

 tracting supers are used, which are ex- 

 actly the same as the bulk-comb supers. 

 It is a method that has helped us to en- 

 courage brood-rearing at the same 

 time, to keep down swarming and get 



more honey, and will be described 

 fully later. 



The best two apiaries are in Figs. 5 

 and 6. Their average a year ago was a 

 little over 180 pounds of bulk-comb 

 honey per colony, and 160 pounds the 

 past year. Fig. -5 shows an average of 

 4 supers on all around in the early 

 summer, and there were several with 

 eight 30-pound supers on at the end of 

 the season. One of these "sentinels," 

 as I call them, was shown last month. 

 A number of the colonies in them were 

 produced in the two places nearest 

 home, shown in Figs. 7 and 8, where 

 the most of our increase is made dur- 

 ing the season, and then moved out to 

 yards where needed, or new ones es- 

 tablished. Here all kinds of hives are 

 brought into play, as we make it a 

 practice to make use of ei'eryi/iinff all 

 the time, if we possibly can, as it is just 

 so much money lost if left lying around 

 as idle capital. One of the secrets of 

 success is, in my opinion, the constant 

 turning over of the dollar that we 

 have already invested, and " making it 

 make more dollars " for us. We do 

 this in these yards, as well as in other 

 things. 



The last four pictures show some 

 yards nearly 200 miles away. Fig. 9 

 was just located when the picture was 

 taken, and has no supers on as yet; 

 while Fig. 10 has already received its 

 first round. The other two, 11 and 12, 

 "have legs." They are built crane- 

 style, so that we can wade around in 

 the water when we have those terrible 

 — yes, " tearable " — floods in those river 

 valleys. They have been in a half- 

 dozen floods, sometimes with the water 

 right up to the entrances of the hives. 



7.— Where Most of the Increase is Made. 



8. —Where Most of the Increase is Made. 



