VOL. LXI— NO. 7 



HAMILTON, ILL., JULY, 1921 



MOMnLY, $1.50 A YFAR 



MOVING BEES ONE THOUSAND MILES 



BY C. S. ENGLE. 



WHEN I was a small boy my 

 parents moved from a beauti- 

 ful farming country in middle 

 Tennessee to Beeville, Texas. At 

 that time there was a terrible drought 

 in southwest Texas. In some places 

 the plains were covered with car- 

 casses of dead cattle. We were told 

 that no rain had fallen for six 

 months, and would have as readily be- 

 lieved none had fallen in six years, 

 from the appearance of the counti-y 

 through which our train traveled. 



The country in which we settled 

 was very healthful, with a mild cli- 

 mate. Cattle raising was the chief 

 occupation. There were also located 

 here a score of beekeepers, with 

 many thousand colonies of bees. In 

 favorable seasons good crops of 

 honey were gathered from the hua- 

 jillo, catclaw and mesquite, small 

 trees and bushes. This honey is 

 white and of fine body and flavor. 

 There was the horsemint plant that 

 produced a strong, amber honey. Cot- 

 ton was not grown extensively in this 

 locality and could not be termed a 

 honey plant. 



Beekeeping never interested me 

 until the spring of 1911. Then I 

 was taking an agricultural course at 

 the Agricultural and Mechanical Col- 

 lege. Prof. Wilmon Newell an 

 nounced to all entomology students 

 that he was going to organize a class 

 for the study of beekeeping. I be- 

 came interested and attended every 

 class in beekeeping. 



When vacation came I secured two 

 colonies of bees and worried them 

 to death by too many experiments 

 and investigations. At the end of the 

 season I had several empty bee- 

 hives and a desire to become a real 

 beekeeper. 



The next year I bought 75 colonies 

 of bees and secured a crop from some 

 of them. In that land of extremes, a 

 late, cold spell had injured the early 

 blooming honey flora, while terrible 

 rains held back later honey flows; 

 then a cessation of rain for the rest 

 of the year cut short the only flow 



that materialized. This is about the 

 way the seasons continued to run for 

 several years. 



In 1914 a fair crop of honey was 

 secured, but the market was ruined 

 by a few honey producers who tried 

 to unload all of their honey at once 

 by cutting prices. A great deal of 

 the 1914 crop was carried over to 

 1915. There was no spring crop, and 

 much of this honey was used for bee 

 feed. The winter of 1915-16 was 

 extremely dry and pi'ospects, from a 

 beeman's viewpoint, were bad. How- 

 ever, in March the mesquite trees 

 and bushes put out a heavy crop of 

 buds and blooms and yielded a crop 

 of fine white honey. The flow kept 

 up for four weeks through hot and 

 cold weather, also through showery 

 weather. Most of the bees were not 

 quite ready for the flow, but aver- 

 aged about 50 pounds per colony. 

 The beekeepers were agreeably sur- 

 prised at this sudden flow from 

 mesquite, as it is not a cei'tain yielder 

 of nectar in this section. Other 

 honey flows did not materialize, but 

 the dry weather continued. Bees 

 went into winter with very little 

 honey. 



When the Spring of 1917 arrived 

 the whole southwest section of the 

 State was terribly dry. I had nearly 

 three hundred colonies of bees that I 

 had to feed early in the season. The 

 lack of rain killed all chances of a 

 flow from any of the many plants and 

 shrubs. I made weekly visits to the 

 apiaries and filled the outdoor feed- 

 ers with syrup made of high-priced 

 sugar. 



It was in the early summer that 

 three of the largest beekeepers left 

 this dry country. B. M. Caraway and 

 W. H. Laws each moved a car of bees 

 to Wyoming. H. B. Murray moved to 

 north Texas. 



That fall I tried to feed the bees 

 enough sugar syrup to carry them 

 through the winter. The lack of 

 pollen kept the bees from rearing 

 brood, and they went into winter 

 quarters weak. Two apiaries had 

 stored a little honey in the brood- 

 nests and wintered fairly well. The 

 balance came through in poor condi- 

 tion and many of them dwindled 

 away. That spring we had a few 

 vei-y light showers that helped plant 

 life considerably. I fed more syrup 

 until the bees gathered honey enough 



Bees loaded in freight car, ready to go. 



