August, 1919 



GLEANINGS IN BEE C l' L T U R E 



491 



IN this day ami 

 age when 

 great syndi- 

 cates are owning 

 and operating 

 from two to ten 

 thousand colo- 

 nies of bees it 

 would be idle to 

 say that this 

 man or that man is the biggest beekeeper in 

 the United States or the world. Last year, 

 when prices on honey were up to the peak, 

 one concern took .*50,000 worth of honey: 



NEVADA COMB-HONEY WIZARD 



Man luho Took $22,000 -worth oj 

 Honey Last Year, and now Expects 

 to Harvest 10 Carloads^Comb Honey 



By E. R. Root 



Fig. 1. — One ol' liiiriy K. Warren's apiaries at his 

 home ranch near Yerington. The regular honey 

 flow had not started. As soon as honey comes in 

 with a rush, the working forces of three hives will 

 he turned into one, and at the same time all the su- 

 pers will be put on one hive. See Figs. 3 and 4. 



and large numbers of individual beekeepers 

 in the great West harvested from $10,000 

 to $20,000 worth. At a later time I shall 

 have something to say about these men and 

 their methods. 



For the present I jiropose to .jump over 

 into Nevada and tell you something about 

 one of the most extensive producers of 

 comb honey, if not the most extensive, in 

 the United States. He is a wizard at the 

 business. I refer to Harry R. Warren, 

 whose headquarters are located at Reno, 

 Nev., but whose bee operations, centering 

 at Yerington, radiate hundreds of miles in 

 all directions. He is now operating 70 api- 

 aries with an aggregate of nearly .3,000 colo- 

 nies. He has been making increase and 

 buying combless packages of bees and hiv- 

 ing them on frames of brood and foundation. 

 Indeed, he had the nerve last fall to turn in 

 an order for 3,000 two-pound packages of 

 bees, with queens, for which he was to pay 

 $15,000. He has already had delivery of 

 about 1,200 packages. These two-pound 

 packages, or "baskets," as he calls them, 

 he figures will more than repay their cost 

 in comb honey. 



This man Warren and his brother are 

 operating hundreds of acres of alfalfa for 



honey, hay, and 

 alfalfa seed. 

 They have three 

 big tractors, two 

 big threshing 

 machines, sevcL 

 automobiles, five 

 of which are 

 two - ton trucks, 

 besides big 

 teams of horses and agricunaral machinery. 

 The entire force at present consists of 25 

 people. Mr. Warren himself gives his time 

 to the bees while his brother is working the 

 ranch. Such extensive operations could not 

 be carried on without a good foreman; and 

 they have one such in tlie person of a re- 

 turned soldier, an experienced beekeeper, by 

 the name of Truxton V. Damon. I hope to 

 show his picture, as well as that of Mr. War- 

 ren, in our next issue. 



What is the secret of Warren's success? 

 x\ny man, in order to succeed in any kind 

 of honey production, must be a believer in 

 strong colonies. Mr. Warren is one who not 



Fig. 2. — One of the typical Harry Warren comb- 

 honey colonies. The lower brood-nest is nearly 

 square, tilled with shallow frames. The space on 

 each side is covered with boards, leaving the supers 

 (eight-frame) directly over the center of the brood. 

 Mr. Warren prefers the shallow brood-nest to either 

 the eight- or ten-frame Langstroth hive. While he 

 operates the ten-frame Langstroth, he uses the 

 eight-frame comb-honey supers exclusively. As there 

 is little or no rain in his locality, no special protec- 

 tion against rain is needed. 



