TAxrAin" 



Fig. 



1. — Colonies strong in honey above and below, and only six weeks on 

 the stands, during which time each colony was divided twice. 



show color, and tliat is usually followed by 

 sweet myrtle, from which enough stores are 

 irathered to carry us through to orange 

 bloom in February and March. On my way 

 back to Palmetto I plucked a big bunch of 

 wild sunflower to prove to Mr. Clute that 

 things were going well with my bees. But 

 he had been further afield than I, and my 

 tale was but a tame one to the one he could 

 tell. 



THE BIG SAWGRASS. 



In the vernacular of South Florida, " a 

 sawgrass " is a flat that is under water most 

 of the year, and on which grows a wild 

 grass with a fine saw edge. It is what 

 covers most of the Everglades, and its 

 presence means first-class land, rich and 

 black. We have many sawgrasses in Mana- 

 tee County — some of them covering hun- 

 dreds of acres. The tract to which the title 

 *' The Big Sawgrass " is applied is about a 

 mile north of Erie station, on the Seaboard 

 R. R. It covers about a thousand acres. 

 Too wet as a rule for fall and winter crops, 

 it is given over to tomatoes in the early 

 spring, and brings bountiful crops of them. 

 The rest of the year it is covered with 

 smartweed, thoroughwort, and wild sunflow- 

 er. For the sake of brevity I shall call the 

 last-named flower W. S. F., and the tract 

 fif land a.s the B. S. Ci. The last week in 

 August Mr. H. L. Christopher, discouraged 

 with the poor yield he was getting at Terra 

 Ceia Junction, moved his bees to a live-oak 

 hammock on the west side of the B. S. G. 

 As Mr. Clute is the adviser of everybody in 

 this section who works with bees, Mr. Chris- 

 topher had taken him out that tlay lo see 

 what wonderful luck he was having, and to 



65 



get his suggestion as 

 to future manipula- 

 tions. The tale he had 

 to tell so far exceeded 

 mine that I soon stop- 

 ped talking and took 

 to listening. Having 

 first seen the light in 

 that great State on the 

 west bank of the 

 Father of Waters that 

 takes its name from 

 the mighty Missouri, T 

 had to be shown, and 

 we agreed to run up to 

 Erie Monday after- 

 noon and look the B. 

 S. G. over. 



About 3 p. M. the 

 train left us at the lit- 

 tle flag station, and we 

 walked north across 

 the prairie through the 

 saw palmetto. A mile and a half of that 

 kind of thing grows monotonous, and we 

 were not sorry to rest and look at the flight 

 of booming bees. The 20- weak colonies had 

 been divided and were now fifty strong 

 ones. Hives from which colonies had twice 

 been started were cai-rying a super, and the 

 super was full of capped honey. Every hive 

 of the fifty was heavy with stores, and 

 seemed to be begging for combs or founda- 

 tion — any old thing in which to place nee- 

 tar. To us it looked almost like a crime 

 that the beekeeper was not right there vig- 

 orously running an extractor. It was more 

 room or a bad case of swarming, and that 

 right then. Before he would let me snap a 

 picture, Mr. Clute insisted that we take the 

 liberty of sampling smartweed honey, which 

 he said was of the best. A taste was all 

 that was needed to convince me that it was 

 A No. 1 white, of fine flavor, and should 

 command a top price in any market. The 

 picture was then taken, and we started to 

 explore the B. S. G. Explore is the con-eet 

 term. It was a wilderness of weeds, many 

 of them far above our heads, and only by 

 hard work could we make any headway 

 through the tangle of heavy growth. The 

 bees sailed over it with ease, can-ying loads 

 of sweets. But we could scarcely penetrate 

 its dense jungle of grass and flowers. We 

 knew that we were near the big drainage 

 canal that had been completed within the last 

 year, and thought that if Ave could get to it 

 we could go east along its left bank to the 

 head of the ditch. The steam-shovels had 

 dropped the earth and marl fifteen feet 

 from its banks, and we planned to travel 

 along this spoilbank. But W. S. F. had 



