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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



September 



Texas Beekeepers Meet 



The Texas Beekeepers' Association 

 held its 28th annual summer session 

 at College Station, July 26, 27 and 

 28. As it was conducted during the 

 Farmers' Short Course, it had the 

 form of a school rather than that of 

 an ordinary association meeting. 

 One very notable fact was that all at- 

 tending the course were present at 

 eveiy session, from the beginning 

 unto the ending of the meeting. The 

 school was .started with the lecture by 

 Dr. L. H. Pammell, of Ames, Iowa, 

 on "The Relationship Between the 

 Honeybees and the Pollination of 

 Farm Crops." Dr. Pammell at one 

 time was a member of the faculty of 

 the Texas A. & M. College and 

 called the attention of the beekeep- 

 ers to the large number of observa- 

 tions he had made on the value of 

 bees as pollinating agents in Texas. 

 He also called attention to the fact 

 that one market gardener, raising cu- 

 cumbers under glass, had this spring 

 purchased 200 pounds of live bees to 

 keep in his greenhouses, having no 

 other object than to secure the 

 proper pollination of the cu:umber 

 plants. 



Dr. M. C. Tanquary, of the Experi- 

 mental Station, gave an outline of 

 the work which is being done for the 

 beekeepers by the Experiment Sta- 

 tion, going into detail with reference 

 to the foulbrood woik. 



E. C. LeStourgeon, Manager of the 

 Texas Honey Producers' Association, 

 told the school of the market situa- 

 tion and of what had been accom- 

 plished and appealed to every bee- 

 keeper in the State to help in stabil- 

 izing the honey market. 



Mr. Lloyd R. Watson gave the bee- 

 keepei's an excellent account of the 

 behavior of the bees during the 

 swarming period and some results of 

 observations on swarm conti-ol in 

 Texas. 



Mr. T. W. Burleson, of Wa.xa- 

 hachie, gave a full account of ship- 

 ping bees in combless packages and 

 carefully explained each step in his 

 system, and gave excellent advice to 

 beginners in the combless package 

 business. 



Mr. C. S. Rude, State Apiary In- 

 spector, gave a summary of the re- 

 sults of the work in foulbrood eradi- 

 cation for the past thi-ee years and 

 .showed very definitely from statistics 

 that foulbrood can be controlled and 

 eradicated if the beekeepers will co- 

 operate with the inspectors. Mr. 

 Rude gave some very definite figures 

 relative to the results obtained in 

 counties where foulbrood has been 

 prevalent in the past and stated defi- 

 nitely the policies of his department. 



Mr. E. B. Ault, of Calallen, gave 

 his system of apiary management and 

 explained to the beekeepers how sys- 

 tem was absolutely necessary to get 

 results in managing any number of 

 colonies of bees. 



Mr. E. W. Atkins, of the G. B. 

 Lewis Company, gave very briefly the 

 advantages of standard equipment. 

 He stated that the kind of a hive had 

 little to do with the amount of pro- 

 duction, that it was the beekeeper and 

 his management that governed the 



amount of honey obtained. He fur- 

 ther stated that no matter what hive 

 a man used, whether home-made or 

 factory-made; that he should have for 

 his own yards a standard equipment 

 and, of course, if the standard equip- 

 ment used is also the standard of his 

 neighbors, that it would be to his ad- 

 vantage in that he could buy and ex- 

 change bee fixtures if such a thing 

 would become necessary, with the 

 least possible trouble. He stated that 

 the use of the standard equipment 

 saved the beekeeper one-third of his 

 time. 



W. O. Victor, of Uvalde, gave an 

 excellent summary of a year's work 

 in beekeeping and told the beginners 

 or unsystematic beekeepers the abso- 

 lute importance of doing certain 

 things at stated, definite periods. 

 Mr. Victor is looked upon as being 

 one of the best instructors in bee- 

 keeping in the State. 



R. R. Reppert, Extension Ento- 

 mologist, told the beekeepers of their 

 relationship to the beginners in bee- 

 keeping and box-hive beekeepers and 

 asked for the support of the Bee- 

 keepers' Association to help in better- 

 ing the conditions of beekeeping 

 throughout the State and to help in 

 the securing of one man in the Ex- 

 tension Department to devote his 

 whole time to extension work in bee- 

 keeping. 



A. H. Alex, queen breeder for the 

 Experiment Station, told of the work 

 in the experimental queen yard and 

 gave a system of queen raising for 

 the individual beekeeper. 



Louis H. Scholl, of New Braunfels, 

 gave a summary of his system of bee- 

 keeping, which is grouped about the 

 divisible brood-chamber, and told of 

 its developments. He stated that af- 

 ter seventeen years of commercial 

 bee work in which the divisible brood- 

 chamber was used, that he was now a 

 stronger believer in this form of hive 

 than he ever had been. 



H. B. Parks, Secretary of the 

 American Honey Producers' League, 

 spoke on the relationship of bees to 

 their locality, stating that the bee- 

 keeper must know his territory and 

 must know the relationship that ex- 

 ists between the bees, the flora, the 

 climatic conditions and geographical 

 locations before they can rightly han- 

 dle the problems of beekeeping. He 

 stated, further, that the Isle of Wight 

 disease would have been explained 

 long ago if locality had been studied 

 as diligently as disease symptoms. He 

 advanced the theory that the mite 

 causing this disease was an active 

 parasite on some solitary bee in the 

 Isle of Wight, and attacked the honey 

 bee upon its introduction to that 

 island. In light of this fact, investi- 

 gators in the diseases of bees should 

 not limit their study to the 

 honeybee, but should also carefully 

 study the closely related forms. 



W. A. Black, of San Antonio, 

 called the beekeepers' attention to 

 their relationship to their communi- 

 ties, and to the State, in matters of 

 local government and the improve- 

 ment of the political situation of the 

 country, as well as the commercial. 



Seventy dollars was subscribed to 



the Dr. Miller Memorial Fund by bee- 

 keepers present who had not already 

 subscribed. 



The meeting was voted as .t decid- 

 ed success by those present and it was 

 further agreed to meet with the Col- 

 lege Short Course again next year. 



The officers for the following year 

 are: T. W. Burleson, Waxahachie, 

 Texas, President; Wm. Zimmerman, 

 Vice President; Alma M. Has^lbauer, 

 Secretary-Treasurer; W. O. Victor, 

 Superintendent of Fair Exhibits, and 

 H. D. Murry, Judge of Exhibits. 



H. B. Parks. 



San Antonio, Texas. 



Pears Two-Thirds Average Crop 



The July 1 forecast of production 

 of pears is 9,016,000 bushels for the 

 United States, which is about two- 

 thirds the five-year average, and may 

 be compared with last season's esti- 

 mated crop of 17,270,000 bushels. 

 Leading producing States include 

 New York, 1,329,000 bushels; Cali- 

 fornia, 2,656,000 bushels; Washing- 

 ton, 1,456,000 bushels; Michigan, 

 505,000 bushels.— U. S. Market Re- 

 porter. 



More Sugar Beets in Germany 



The acreage in sugar beets in Ger- 

 many during 1921 exceeds that of 

 1920 by 149,730 acres. The total 

 area sowed to sugar beets in 1921 is 

 placed at 813,024 acres, as com- 

 pared with 668,294 acres during 

 1920.— U. S. Market Reporter. 



Bee Specialist for Virginia 



F. S. Andrews has recently been 

 appointed Bee Specialist of the Ex- 

 tension Department of the Agricul- 

 tural College at Blacksburg, Va. 

 Virginia is doing much to encourage 

 the development of all lines of ag- 

 riculture within her borders and we 

 are glad to note that beekeeping will 

 not be neglected. 



California County Crops 



In a recent issue we gave figures 

 showing the total honey crop for 

 California in 1919 as 5,501,738 lbs. 



Figures are now available for each 

 county. The counties reporting the 

 largest crops are, in order: 



San Bernardino County, 536,935 

 pounds. 



Los Angeles County, 519,019 lbs. 



San Diego County, 480,165 lbs. 



Riverside County, 480,016 lbs. 



Contra Costa County, 285,683 lbs. 



Those reporting the least crops are, 

 in order: 



Plumas County, 1,683 lbs. 



Santa Cruz County, 2,646 lbs. 



Mariposa County, 2,670 lbs. 



Yuba County, 3,344 lbs. 



Bees in Georgia 



Georgia reports production of } 

 1,403,869 pounds of honey in 1919 

 from 136,698 colonies of bees, or a 

 per colony average of 11 pounds. 

 There are more bees in Georgia than 

 in 1919 by 6,000 colonies. 



