Jan. 12, 1905. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



25 



(£onxxnttton 

 Procccbino;s 



THE ST. LOUIS CONVENTION. 



J 



Report of the 35th Annual Convention, of the 



National Bee-Keepers' Association Held at 



St. Louis, Mo., Sept. 27-30, 1904. 



Coutiaued from page lO.J 



The President called on Prof. Louis H. Sclioll, of 

 Texas, to address the convention on 



SOHETHINQ ABOUT TEXAS BEE-KEEPINQ. 



Prof. Scholl — I have not had time to get up a paper 

 as I should have done, and, therefore, I have only taken 

 a few notes which I generally put down in this little book. 

 I shall say a few words about Texas, although I do not 

 know whether it will be as a paper would have been. The 

 trouble is I don't know what you all want to know about 

 Texas. We have a State dowh there, a big old piece of 

 land, and have some bee-keepers in there, and some of 

 them are a pretty good size, not only in the number of 

 colonies, but they grow big, too. 



Now, most of you know something about the statis- 

 tics of Texas in the way of the production of honey. In 

 the last census, gotten out in 1899, we have nothing to 

 show exactly what we have down there, but I have 

 been working on it in the way of getting statistics for 

 our department, and have obtained some figures that 

 are considerably larger than the census reports got out. 

 In getting these statistics I am trying to get a complete 

 name list of the bee-keepers in the State, and in that 

 way I have them report to me the number of colonies 

 they have, the amount of honey produced; and other 

 things, and thus I have gotten at some figures. I may 

 say that we have over 400.000 colonies of bees in the 

 State, and the amount of honey produced by these is 

 only about 5,000,000 pounds, that is, the average per col- 

 ony is only about twelve pounds, due to the fact that we 

 have so many little one-horse bee-keepers and box-hive keep- 

 ers, although we have some of the very best you can 

 find anywhere, and some of them with large apiaries and 

 producing lots of honey. Now, figuring on these colon- 

 ies at that low average we have an output of more honey 

 than any other state, and we claim that Texas is in the 

 lead in the output of its honey product. If that is the 

 case with such a low average, where would Texas be with 

 the average raise, which can be done because we have 

 the country down there. If we improve our bees and 

 everything we can have an output away beyond what 

 we have now, and in that case Texas would simply be 

 away ahead. 



Now somebody may be interested in the way I would 

 divide Texas as a honey State: Beginning with North 

 Texas, north of Fort Worth, where we have very few 

 bees, it is a plain, and nothing but cattle there, and 

 very little bee-forage. 



In East Texas, where we have our pine forests and 

 oil and rice lands, we have along the low places and 

 rivers a good deal of basswood, quite an abundance of it, 

 and of holly, and these yield a large amount of honey, 

 but the trouble there is the country is not settled up yet 

 and there are very few apiaries located there. Those 

 that are located produce a whole lot of honey, but the 

 great abundance of the honey is of poorer quality. 



Take Central Texas, that is the great cotton-belt; 

 there we produce cotton-honey mostly, and there is 

 where we have more of the horse-mint, but of late years 

 on account of the drouth the horse-mint has become 

 scarce, and on account of the boll-weevil, which is one 

 of our greatest evils down there, the cotton crop has 

 been cut short. 



Take West Texas, it is a somewhat mountainous por- 

 tion and there are only some localities that produce honey 

 properly, and sumach is the only honey-plant worthy of 

 mention. I 



Then South Texas, below Houston, is a low, swampy 

 plain, and rice and things like that are produced more 

 tlian anything else, and along the rivers and the lagoons 

 and lakes wc have the rattan-vine which yields a lot of 

 honey, but it is of poorer quality. It is shipped to the 

 Northern market for manufacturing purposes. 



When we go to Southwest Texas we go to a coun- 

 try that I do not think can be surpassed anywhere. We 

 have there almost an unlimited amount of bee-pasture; 

 we have the mesquite tree, the wahea, the cat-claw and 

 many other things; even the prickly pear, with which 

 some of the prairies are just covered, helps us out a 

 good deal in some years. 



I have been asked a great many questions about loca- 

 tions in Texas for bee-keepers. I might say that we have 

 many locations in Southwest Texas where bee-keeping 

 could be carried on and large amounts of honey gathered, 

 but most of these are away from the railroads and most 

 of the land is sandy land, and a person would simply 

 have to go out and camp and "bach" out in the woods, 

 and haul his product to the railroad stations about 40 or 

 50 miles, and run things at long distances. Southwest 

 Texas is not a very good farming country. It is only 

 of use as a cattle country and for bee-keeping. They 

 both go well there. As the railroads are opening up the 

 land, bee-keeping will progress and open up new locali- 

 ties, and the time will come when Southwest Texas, if 

 properly stocked up with bees, will be the greatest bee- 

 country I know of or have any idea of. 



I would like to say a few words about agriculture 

 at the Texas A. and M. college. I have had the position 

 as apiarist at the Station and have charge of the agri- 

 cultural work of the State, and I believe that great good 

 could be done by having such work carried on by the 

 Experiment Station. I would like this so that other States 

 might take up the work as they surely should do. I 

 think much good could be done if they could do so. We 

 have at College Station an apiary of 40 colonies, and a 

 bee-house and all the equipments necessary, besides a 

 good deal of other equipment which is mainly kept there 

 for show and for the use of students, to get them ac- 

 quainted with the different materials used, and I think 

 we have the best equipped station or experimental apiary 

 anjrwhere in the world; at least it has been pronounced 

 so by everybody that has seen it or knows anything 

 about it. It was established in 1902, when we received 

 an appropriation from the State Legislature of $750 to 

 start \yith; that was for two years; for the next two years, 

 1904-5, we have received $900 more, and with this money 

 we have been enabled to establish this apiary and all the 

 equipment, and we have received from the college ten 

 acres of land for the location, with a ravine running 

 through it, all of which makes an ideal location for an 

 apiary. \A/'e have put up a bee-house which has been 

 planned and built so that later on it will be used as a 

 plan to be given out to the bee-keepers so that they can 

 copy after it, and build ideal bee-houses for their own 

 use. 



We have in this enclosure about four acres of land 

 in two fields put into cultivation for the testing of honey- 

 plants, and we have planted a good many different honey- 

 plants that have been written about, and that we have 

 run across, to see as to their value and whether it will pay 

 or be profitable to plant trees. We have tried as many as 

 forty different kinds for the last two years — forty-one dif- 

 ferent kinds- this year — and we have found only a very 

 few adapted to the conditions of Texas that will be profit- 

 able to plant for honey; these at the same time are 

 planted for forage. Besides, many of the experiments 

 that we have carried on show that it would not pay to 

 raise any of these others for honey alone. Further ex- 

 periments will be carried on along these lines. We 

 have been looking around also for honey-plants or shrubs 

 from further west, from the more arid regions, with the 

 view of planting these in localities where the natural 

 honey-flow is scarce. If wc could propagate plants from 

 other localities, in other words, put up an artificial 

 yield of honey, it would increase apiculture and we could 

 have honey-producing localities where no honey is pro- 

 duced now. This will take a good deal of work and 

 time. 



In the apiary we have several diflferent races of bees 

 which are tried for different experiments. As we get 

 their results they will be published later. 



In the way of experiments we have a good many on 



