THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



January 



A Floral "Snow-Drift." 



HV H. E. HII^I.. 



N MAKING a hurried 

 move some distance up 

 the river, in November, 

 the eight-frame, single- 

 story, L hive, which was 

 in u.se as a fertilizing hive, 

 .shown in the accompany- 

 ing picture, being in an 

 isolated nook, was over- 

 looked. Some ten days later, when I 

 returned for it, it was found almo,st com- 

 pletely buried by a solid mass of creani}'- 

 white flowers. The vine is known localh' 

 as Madara-vine, though it is not the 



During the day, while writing the letter 

 on 'Locality" for the December nimiber 

 of The Bee-Keeper, I ha 1 thouglit much 

 about the vast difference of conditions 

 that obtain at the same time in our own 

 country. In .some parts of the North I 

 knew that the .snow-drifts were fence- 

 high, and as I discovered the buried hive 

 l>eneatli its load of flowers, "Here is a 

 South Florida, 'snow drift,' " thought I — a 

 tropical, floral '"snow-bank," gay with 

 butterflies, sweet with the perfume of 

 Inirsting blossoms and musical with the 

 hum of busy bees. Truly ours is a great 

 country, and the matter of locality in 

 many ways is one that has a most import- 

 ant bearing upon our industry. 



Then, glancing down the river shore. 



A 1 I.OKIDA "SNOW DKIl'T." 



true Madara-vine, and it had entwined 

 itself compactly about everything in the 

 immediate location of the hive. The 

 mass of delicate white blos.somshad come 

 to beautify the place almo.st with the sud- 

 denness of the snow-falls in the North, 

 west, of whirli I had just been reading. 



I observed a lone cabbage-palm, another 

 of our beautiful nectar-yielding trees, 

 .standing in the water's edge. "What a 

 lovely initial that would make," thought 

 I again. If only The Bee-Keeper had ten 

 thousand subscribers, so that the expense 

 were justified, or, rather, made possible 



